PART 18: RUBY

March 2020, Melbourne

So, this week has been a bit of a different one. I didn't work this weekend, which is the first weekend I haven't worked this year. Which, I mean, isn't all that long. It's only the beginning of March. But yeah, I've worked every weekend leading up to now. This weekend, like the weekend that’s just gone, I took off to go to a music festival with my boyfriend. So that was really fun. And yeah, I got to see the Pixies which one of my favourite bands. So that was fantastic. But yeah, so this week was a little bit of a weird one.

My partner was planning to go to Sydney on Thursday, just for one night, to see some friends of his who were on a cruise from, like England, I think, maybe Asia. I'm not sure, they were on a cruise that was stopping off in Australia. And he was flying to Sydney just to like catch up with them for one night on their stopover thing. So, he was meant to fly down on Thursday for that. But yeah, all this Coronavirus stuff was going on started to make me feel really anxious.

I mean, at this point in time, or like, last Wednesday, when we're trying to decide if he should go or not, there were like 80 cases in Australia, I think, or maybe a few less. Either way, that's a lot for virus. I mean, in Australia, I feel like we don't really get impacted by those sorts of viruses, you know, like SARS, and whatnot. They don't really make it to Australia. But the numbers have just been going up like really fast. I think because we're a little bit geographically isolated, you know, those viruses don't tend to get to us.

So, I don't know… I mean, I have an anxiety disorder, so maybe I was overreacting, but on Tuesday or Wednesday, I said to my partner, “I really, I don't know that you should be going to meet people who've come on a cruise ship from like, any international location, with all this Coronavirus stuff going on, and then go straight to a music festival with like 12,000 people at it”. So, we had like a bit of a discussion about that. And yeah, look, I don't know, maybe I was just, completely overreacting. But anyway, he cancelled his trip to Sydney. I don't know. I just feel like yeah, cruise ship and highly infectious disease are a super bad combination. But anyway, I'm probably just overreacting.

So, he didn't go, and it meant we got to go away a day early on our little trip. We went and camped overnight in this camping ground out near Meredith. And it was just, really weird to me, because like, campgrounds I've been to in the past there’s always been lots of people there, like family holiday parks. But this one was just like in the middle of nowhere, and there was no one camping there except for me and my partner. But yeah, it was like really, really peaceful.

Then we went to the music festival the next day and we camped there for two nights. The first night, we made these big batches of sangria and just got like really drunk. And then on the second night, I didn't really drink. My partner doesn't really drink much. His heritage is Chinese so he gets like pretty bad Asian flush if he drinks. So, he doesn't normally drink very much. On the second night, we just didn't really drink and the bands that we really cared about seeing were playing. So, we watched them. And then on Monday we drove back to Melbourne and back into normal life.

But in saying that, now I'm starting to feel a bit paranoid about going to work because yeah, I don't know. I just feel like every day I look at the news as more and more cases of Coronavirus, but it's Grand Prix weekend coming up. And that's one of the really big weekends in my industry, so, I don't know, maybe by the next audio recording, I'll be able to tell you what I decided.