Pandemic Chronicles

My blog posts while being in self-quarantine/isolation during the time of COVID-19 Pandemic

Getting Smoked in San Francisco

After over six months of being quarantined indoors, I should by now be quite used to staying indoors. And I am.

We humans can adapt to changes very fast. As someone who was in perpetual motion and going to different places and meeting other people all the time, I quickly embraced my inner hermit. And I found a way forward.

I have formed a simple routine to get through the pandemic. I go for a morning walk when roads are empty. An afternoon stroll to the park, where I sit down, read a book and sip on some fizzy water, and then post-dinner stroll to the water, sometimes with my camera. I strive to walk 10,000 steps every day. Going out gives me a reason to wear different outfits and adds a real-world texture to life.

Last week, however, I had been unable to do any of that. I have

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Musings
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San Francisco under a shroud

"A wise god shrouds the future in obscure darkness." Horace

San Francisco this morning has been under dense fog advisory, and rightfully so. The ash and smoke from the wildfires overwhelming California and the Northwestern United States are only compounding the problems. Portland and San Francisco have the worst air quality anywhere in the world.

And yet, I can’t resist going out in the fog and seeing if I can capture any moments. I went up to Russian Hill, hoping to make a photo of the Bay Bridge from the top of California Street. As the images show, it was hard to see anything. Down the hill, it was impossible to see the top of the Transamerica Pyramid when standing right beneath the iconic building.

I saw the red sun for a brief minute, not glowing, but glowering down, as if frowning at human incompetence. San Francisco is under a

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On Photography
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Faster & faster it goes as the seasons’ change

The weather in San Francisco is pretty much the same throughout most of the year. It usually only varies by about ten degrees. The cold means wearing a sweater in the morning with a jacket. A warm day involves wearing just a light cotton sweater. Either way, you dress in layers. The seasons of the sea, however, are more extreme and expressive. 

As someone who frequents the beaches around the San Francisco Bay Area, I have learned about the sea seasons. Like the spring, summer, fall, and winter seasons we have on the land, the oceans also celebrate their own seasons. The oceans have three seasons: Winter Storm (December – February), Upwelling (March-August), and the Oceanic season (September- November.) 

As the name suggests, the upwelling is when the ocean has a lot of energy, and swells are significant. The waves are furious and urgent. The oceanic season is more gentle

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Musings, On Photography
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How I stay sane in 2020

Never have those who are invisible been more visible in our society, and while they have always merited more gratitude than they have been given, never have we owed them quite as much as we do this year. Let’s take a moment and thank every single one of our essential workers who have kept the society moving during the pandemic.

2020 has been an incredibly difficult year for our planet, and it is not a surprise that many of us are feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, anxious, and depressed. According to a study by Boston University’s School of Public Health, the rate of adults experiencing depression symptoms climbed from 8.5 percent before the pandemic to 27.8 percent by mid-April. I bet these numbers are even higher today.

My way of dealing with anxiety and negative feelings is to decrease my exposure to online stimuli. Less news is good news. I spent fewer minutes on

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Notes
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Rethinking Care

I don’t have much to say today. I am feeling decidedly low energy and tired. One of those days, when you just want to simply catch up on email and reading. And that is precisely what I have been doing. However, I do want to share two stories that fall in the must-read category. They have nothing to do with technology or tech economy. instead, they focus on elders, elder care, and why society needs to reevaluate its relationship with the seniors. Also, they point to the inherent flaws in over-reliance on a profit-driven, scale-focused private healthcare system. 

I was reading these stories, and at the same time comparing them to the treatment my parents got in the hospital in India. My parents weren’t the easiest of patients, yet I can only be grateful for the hospital staff’s work. And I think it is just that some societies value their

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My Reading Picks
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From a distance

"What I need is perspective. The illusion of depth, created by a frame, the arrangement of shapes on a flat surface. Perspective is necessary. Otherwise, there are only two dimensions. Otherwise, you live in the moment. Which is not where I want to be." ― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

I could smell the smoke. I could see the dark, gloomy skies filled with the burned remnants of our world. What I didn’t understand the magnitude of the damage. So, whenever I can’t understand something, I need to get out to someplace where I can pause, reflect, and reassess what I have been experiencing.

Marine Headlands are my favorite getaway. Hawk Hill is a location with a grand vista. Point Bonita Lighthouse is another stop that makes me appreciate the splendor of San Francisco and the majesty of the Pacific. On a typical day, at sunset, it is a place of

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Musings, On Photography
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Why the shift to online commerce is here to stay

As you know, I have been following the emergence of new behaviors during the pandemic very closely, especially online commerce. So for frequent readers, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that the pandemic has been an accelerant for e-commerce. There were already early indications –USPS saw a 60 to 80 percent increase in the number of boxes it had been ferrying during May 2020.

More concrete confirmation came from Amazon saw its revenues go up 40 percent year over year to $88.9 billion. Amazon is a good proxy for the rest of the commerce. For example, Walmart saw its U.S. eCommerce sales grow 37%, while Sam’s Club eCommerce sales grew 35%.

Michael Sivak, of Sivak Applied Research, took data from various sources and estimated that during the second quarter of 2020, inflation-adjusted e-commerce sales in the US were up 43.3 percent compared to the same three months in

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Technology
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Home Alone

It is not that often I wake up in a funk. Today, I have come down with a case of megrims. I think it has a lot to do with the wildfires in Northern California, and the damage they are causing to humans and other ecosystems. San Francisco (and surrounding areas) have the fifth-worst air quality on the planet right now. 

I have been in San Francisco for nearly 18 years, and over the past five years, these kinds of smoky conditions have become more prevalent. As humans, we can see and feel the impact of the wildfires, but what goes unnoticed is causing more long term damage. 

I recently read1 that as fires get closer and into urban areas, they start contaminating the drinking water supplies. Burning homes and other structures, vegetation, and plastic materials all eventually enter our water supply. And there are non-human ecosystems (such as microbial) that

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Musings
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Is Las Vegas a Super Spreader?

Analysis of cellphone data by X-Mode and Tectonix during four days (Friday to Monday) in mid-July shows that many of the roughly 26,000 devices identified on the Las Vegas Strip showed up in every state on the mainland except Maine in those same four days. This spread reminds me of how people traveled from New York City to different parts of the country and helped spread the virus. Will Las Vegas casinos become the hotspots, and the city itself will become a super spreader?

Read: Las Vegas gambling with lives/ProPublica.

My Reading Picks
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