Day 2: You can just call me Bob Woodward

After a pretty restless and broken night's sleep, I woke up on my first full day in quarantine at around 7am. I had left my blinds open overnight and fell asleep to the view of the Adelaide skyline, so woke up to rather lovely looking morning (I have had a few friends tell me that I've got back just in time for great weather - I have to take their word for it, its 22 degrees for me everyday for the next 2 weeks.) and got up out of bed. A coffee, some TV, and another care package, from my parents this time (this one had Balfour's Custard Tarts in it - I almost cried!), before breakfast appeared at the door - scrambled eggs, tomato and a hash brown with some fruit and a juice.

My initial plan coming in to quarantine was to try and work on my health as much as possible - I didn't bring any alcohol in, no cigarettes (we'll get to that later too), and I had planned to not have any junk food or sweets either. So much for all that...

May I draw your attention to the junk food, sweets and beer present in this photo

The other part of this plan was to set myself a routine, and regiment the space around me as much as possible. For anyone unfamiliar with CGP Grey, this video is a good point of reference for what I was going for:

So, a few rules for myself:

1. Keep the room clean and tidy. - Clean is more important here than tidy, without space to put stuff away, my desk is covered in books and knick knacks - but any rubbish goes straight in the bin, the bed is made as soon as I'm up, towels are folded and hung up etc.
2. No kicking around in pyjamas all day, and stay out of bed if I'm not sleeping. - The pyjamas thing is easy - I don't wear any (oooh, saucy!) but I'll make sure to put on actual clothes through the day - even if it is just shorts and a t-shirt, and not settle for a bathrobe. The staying out of bed thing is a bit harder, with only an office chair as an alternative, but so far this has worked. The work around on this one is to reconfigure the bed into a "couch" for watching TV or reading books - just adjust the pillows and seating position so I'm not lying down.
3. Exercise! - I've assigned myself the hour just after breakfast - 9-10 as work out time. I'm normally a long distance runner, so this is taken some adjustment. I brought a skipping rope in with me - with a bit of rearrangement of the room, there's plenty of space for it. I'm also trying some static bodyweight exercise - I found this video useful to get started, and it's also taught me that I have terrible core strength:
4. Break up the rest of my day and no drinking before dinner. After gym time is up, its time to have a shower and get dressed. Before lunch is free time to read, watch TV or anything, but between lunch and dinner is time to do something constructive - at the moment, its writing this blog until I get caught up and aren't trying to plug out a couple of posts a day.

After a workout and a shower, I spent some time browsing twitter, and to my surprise (and glee) had a bit of a chat with Brady Haran (Hi, Brady!), a podcaster and youtuber that I've followed for a long time, and is currently in Quarantine over at the Pullman, lording over all with his balcony. He is also currently writing a quarantine blog  and was the inspiration for me writing this one. Check it out here: https://www.bradyharanblog.com/quarantine-diary-index

He will also be holding a blessing from his balcony on Saturday over in Emo Park, which I'm pretty disappointed I'm gonna miss: 

https://twitter.com/Unmade_FM/status/1305700477061926913?s=20 

After lunch - a BBQ chicken wrap, some pita and dips and a sandwich, I settled in to start writing the first couple of instalments of this very blog, and apart from a call from a nurse and taking delivery of yet another care package (we'll get to that in a sec) I whiled away my afternoon trying to put together sentences good. 

After posting up my first couple of installments, dinner arrived - a pretty spectacular lamb shank with mash, as well as a dessert and a soft drink. The aforementioned care package included a 4 pack of Coopers new Hazy IPA - a beer I have been very excited to try since it was announced, so I put the softie in the fridge and opted for that instead.

Safe to say, neither disappointed - the Shank was honestly restaurant quality and fell off the bone, and the beer is dangerously smashable.

While I had been doing quite well through the day; in my hubris I thought maybe I had managed to kick jetlag's arse in barely 24 hours, but by dinner time I was seriously starting to fade out and was quickly getting tired. I perked up at a message alert from a stranger on Facebook though, with the cryptic message:

"Jack, have you been told who forms the majority of guests in this hotel yet?"

Sworn to secrecy - my source, who shall henceforth be known as "Deepcough" (Yes, that's probably in bad taste, but Watergate jokes never get old and I'm probably never going to get the chance to protect a confidential informant's identity ever again), told me that about 130 of the hotel's population at the moment is made up of ADF servicepeople who have just returned from helping out with Victoria's COVID response over the past 2 months.

***Hot Scoop Alert***

Deepcough went on to tell me that they've currently been here for a week, and were previously housed in similar accommodation while in Victoria to ensure no one brought the virus back across state lines. I asked what the Victorians' response to lockdown has been from a frontline perspective, having only seen (the frankly pretty atrocious) media coverage from across the other side of the world. They told me that most people were understanding of the measures in place and handling it well, and that it is a vocal minority muddying the water surrounding the response (and being bolstered by constant Dan Andrews-bashing and doom and gloom reporting - that's my own editorialising, but we'll save that for later).

Overall, their experience seemed positive - many of the cohort are reportedly undertaking remote training for specialist courses, and working on keeping steady sleep and exercise routines.

Pretty chuffed with my journalistic endeavours for the day, I was able to keep awake for a few more hours, with some phone calls to friends and family and the first episode of the new season of The Boys (it's a seriously great show, go watch it if you haven't already!), before it was time for bed and a much better nights sleep.

**If anyone else would like to share their experiences in quarantine please feel free to get in touch, and if you'd like to remain anonymous, I am happy to make up more unfunny and ridiculous aliases**