Strikes and sickness

Hey we took a break! Here is a blog to make up for it! Mitchell is writing it! Sorry!

So last blog we'd just got back from San Diego, my union was then on strike so I was going onto campus a few times in the week to join in the picket line. Having seen lecturer strikes in the UK I was prepared for setting up stalls at all the entrances and handing out flyers and answering questions about the strike, what it turned out being was a huge number of people and we were all given signs and we loudly marched and chanted around campus. There was a huge number of people it being grad (PhD) students, postdocs and staff researchers. It was a pretty big thing in California happening at all the UCs, there's a load of articles about it but I found one here: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/02/closed-labs-cancelled-classes-inside-us-higher-education-largest-strike

I took the extra time I had to help a friend out, Fannett, who is the wife of a postdoc at UCR and I'd taken to improv previously. She was going for her driving test and needed someone to accompany her with a California driving licence so we went along on Tuesday. She'd previously been driving in France so was able to drive us to the test in a rental car on her international licence and wasn't really worried about the test but like us needed to get a California licence soon. I waited at the DMV while she did the test but when she got back turned out she'd failed! From her description of what happened it sounded to me like it should have been a minor rather than a fail but there wasn't a lot we could do about that, fortunately she was able to schedule another test for the next day so we went right back and this time she passed! Although she thinks she made exactly the same mistake again and this time it was a minor but we didn't really investigate further.

I spent a lot of the time on the picket line with Laura, another British postdoc in environmental sciences, and Soroush an Iranian postdoc from her department. On Tuesday we went for a meetup where we went rock climbing which it turned out Laura was going to as well (Laura was the person who'd originally recommended meetup to us so it wasn't very surprising). Me and Emily got trained on all 3 different types of climbing so are now signed off to go back whenever we want, and we got to do a few walls after that. The two major types were climbing with a rope being held by a person who lowered you down carefully, or a rope attached to a machine where you had to just drop off the wall and then the mechanism would engage to slow you falling which was much faster than a person doing it and quite scary to do!

On Wednesday evening we went to a boardgame meet up which Laura and Soroush went to as well so I drove all 4 of us. The larger tables were all full when we arrived so we ended up on a table on our own but it was nice to hang out with those guys in a social setting with Emily.

Having been pretty social this week and having a bit more free time being on strike, I'd organised going out for drinks in downtown Riverside on the Friday evening with some internationals, Laura was actually busy (and preparing to fly to the UK over the weekend) but Soroush came, along with Fanette who was insistent she owed me at least one drink and a few other people including Jaz, an English undergrad who I'm not sure if we've mentioned before in the blog, and René and his wife from Germany who actually live in our apartment complex. We met up in bar which was a coffee place in the day and pretty quiet, closing at 9pm but was a good place to meet up. René had found some potential bars and he led us a little out of downtown and while we were all getting a little concerned the further we got the bar was actually lovely and me and Emily had a couple cocktails some of which Fanette bought. We had a lovely time and completely forgot to get any pictures which was a shame.

As the evening went on a majority of the group was ready to head home while a smaller contingent of us, Jaz (and her roommate who'd joined us while we were at the bar) and Soroush headed to a club. Soroush had recommended one he knew and said while we were walking that he 'didn't usually have to queue but we'll see'. When we got there a decent sized queue was moving fairly quickly so we shrugged and went to join the back, on our way Soroush was greeted by a security guard who clearly knew who he was and was surprised to see Soroush was with a group, after counting us he shrugged and then led us to the front of the queue skipping us right to entrance while telling all the staff in the area that Soroush had a group, all of them responding with good natured surprise. Minutes later the 4 of us were in the club while Soroush had said he had to find a bartender he knew while we all wondered who this quiet man was to apparently be a person known by everyone who worked here. Recovering from that we had some very strong cocktails and very large shots and danced until the lights turned on (1:30, the latest we've seen any place be open in Riverside).

After we got home I had fun messaging some people back home who had just woken up and called Callum while we had some snacks (although I did crash and I think fall asleep mid conversation with Callum which wasn't my finest moment).

Waking up Saturday I felt pretty rough which wasn't too surprising but as we headed into Sunday and I got feverish and starting coughing so I assumed I was finally getting whatever it was Emily had had a couple weeks prior and unfortunately had to skip the improv show I was meant to be in that evening. While I tested negative on Saturday, Monday morning while I was psyching myself up to go join the picket line, I tested positive for COVID, and Emily had started to feel ill again too. I texted everyone we'd been out with on Friday but all of them have remained healthy, I think based on the timeframe I got it on the picket line but honestly who knows. 

The next week sucked, it was really bad, both of us had at least one night where it felt like we didn't sleep at all, Emily had days where she could barely function and I was eating an ice pop every hour to try to deal with my fever (they did actually really help). In amongst this we did fail to write a blog, sorry! This week was thanksgiving, we were meant to be taking the four day weekend to travel to Zion national park in Utah for camping but we ended up cancelling, I don't think camping in the cold would have been fun and honestly I don't think either of us were up to driving all that way let alone anything else.

The week following this we were feeling a little better and Emily drove to her work to pick up her work laptop and we both did fairly relaxed work from home days. On Wednesday I'd stopped coughing so headed into the lab late in the evening avoiding everyone and set up an experiment for the next day and was in for the last two days of the week although in a proper N95 mask and still trying to stay away from people as much as possible.

Writing this now on the Sunday ~2 weeks after our symptoms started I feel fine now and Emily is occasionally a little fuzzy but mostly fine. She'll maybe carry on working from home for a few more days though as it's easy for her to do. I have a rescheduled improv show this evening, while the other one went ahead without me a show I was going to miss on Thanksgiving weekend was cancelled as most of the troupe got COVID at the show I missed! I think it's another wave happening in this area so I'm going to be back to masking more stringently and I'm hoping most other people do too although I'm worried we're all kinda done with it now and we're just going to let it rip around when it comes, which isn't the best. Get your second booster if you can! I think it would have made this last week less of a catastrophe for us!

How do we sign off on these?

Best regards,

Mitchell