Yesterday the Prime Minister of Canada announced that no one should leave their home unless absolutely necessary. So we are now on official lock-down. We broke our volunteer lock down the other day just to make sure we had enough food as it looks like this is gonna be a lot longer than 2 weeks. Most stuff was stocked, as long as you were looking for fresh goods… toilet paper, most pasta, canned goods, mac & cheese, those were all gone… But we got what we needed.
Last week, before I left Montreal, my work sent out a notice that they were going to test the feasibility of working from home by sending the IT workers home for 2 weeks starting Monday, that was last Thursday. On Friday they announced that schools in Montreal would be closed for 2 weeks in addition to March Break, so a new announcement was made to allow people who has kids to work from home. By Monday when worked resumed, the internal Covid-19 board had a new update: Everyone work home unless you are part of the support staff making it possible for more people to work from home (i.e the one’s making sure the VPNs could allow that much traffic).
I left Montreal Friday, knowing that I would not be going into the office for 2 weeks. I made the trek out to a friends place who lives far outside of any major city. This would limit any exposure to the virus. But even where we are, we are still at risk… the small village we are just outside of has already reported a case or two from the area.
The internet company out here has even increased the limits on their packages so that people do not run out of bandwidth, which is great, as I still have a job to do, and need internet access to do it. Every day I hear of more people having to go home without pay, or being laid off for the interim… I count my blessings that I still have job, and hopefully will continue to make money and be able to pay the bills. Even though all the major banks will be forgiving mortgage and credit card payments, I still wanna make sure I do not fall behind.
So for now I wait, I wait for the stats of infected and dead to rise, I wait for the virus to do it’s damage, and I wait for the day when everything can start going back to normal… or at least something that might be… considered normal.