Back to white

Overnight, a new layer of snow fell over Umeå, and I struggled a bit with the bike trailer on the way out to Innertavle. However, since about a month back, I have a Spotify subscription which makes the biking somewhat less monotonous. While perhaps not the same as playing “An American Prayer” in the speakers of a white convertible, there are still echoes of other times and places (which suddenly have become equally inaccessible).

Later in the afternoon, we had our first PhD final seminar over Zoom. It is fascinating to see how “normal” this way of working has become. Nevertheless, at the gym yesterday there were lots of older people, and the same outside COOP today where four older men were coughing and betting on horses, making me even more concerned about the road ahead. Still, my main worry remains the developing world that often lacks the most basic infrastructure to combat the disease (such as running water to wash hands etc.) and where many people live hand-to-mouth which makes any “lockdown” particularly painful. The only possible comfort may be that the age structure of many developing countries is significantly younger than in the developed world.