The Covid Chronicles: September Update

Summer is over and Autumn is here. We have had as many adventures as possible within the restraints of COVID-19 rules here, road tripping to Dingle and Donegal with Jared, and to Wexford, Waterford, and Tipperary with our Canadian friend Sarah. 

Less fun highlights include things like on August 18 we spent an hour or so at the local Garda station complaining about an accommodation owner whose establishment we had stayed at. She had been harassing us after a bad-but-honest online review that didn’t put her business in the most favourable of lights. 

She had taken umbrage with our honesty about the lack of cleanliness and lack of COVID-19 precautions, and well… the fullness of this story will be another post for another time after the Gardai have fully dealt with the matter.

Jared started a new Quantity Surveying job on August 24th, and he is settling in nicely. He is the lead QS on a small-ish project and is honoured-but-anxious about doing well.

I’m sure, dear reader, that you are aware of the second wave of COVID-19 that is currently occurring around the world. Ireland is certainly not immune to that. Most things are still open, and most people are still physically going into work despite this. There has been a resurgence in COVID cases since schools went back, and we’re now sitting at something like 300-400 new cases a day, over half of those in Dublin.

The government has issued anyone without work a COVID payment of €350 a week, but this has recently been revised based on previous earnings to a tiered system of either €300, €250 or €200. I assume this is to encourage those on minimum wage to go back to their jobs. I’d like to see any of the politicians here try and live on €800 a month, or even €1200 a month. What a joke. I can’t scorn too much, as this payment is certainly better than nothing and has been a life-saver for us since June. 

There is a lot of fumbling and tweaking with the rules by the new coalition government, and they are struggling to strike the balance between business interests and public health. Face coverings are mandatory on public transport and in shops, and there are hand sanitising stations at every entrance.

Schools are open, shops and restaurants are open – but now limited to outdoor dining only, and international travel is still allowed in and out of Ireland to a small number of ‘green list’ countries – though Ireland has been struck off the list of some countries in recent days.  

I cannot quite fathom how a country that is on an island (regardless of the NI situation) and has the same population as NZ has so many more cases. As of today, Ireland stands at a cumulative total of 36, 155 cases, and 1,804 deaths. 429 new cases on Sep 30. Kiwis, your situation could have been very, very different. 

Comparatively, at the moment, Ireland is not doing too badly when you compare cases per 100 000 throughout the EU, and by and large part, we feel quite well looked after and safe here. It is a stark contrast compared to NZ though, with Ireland sitting at 85 cases per 100 000 people presently.

Moving on… 

Sep 16 I found out that my nannying job was being made immediately redundant. My last day was Sep 18, and they will pay me out for 6 weeks in lieu of notice. They were extremely generous to me while I was there, and loved having me, and said they would keep me on if they could, but the mum had had a reduction in hours, to just school mornings and so overnight I became surplus to requirements because they could do all the pickups and drop offs between themselves. I learned a lot from my time there, but also it was time to go, so I think it’s definitely for the best.

They had recently found out that though they’d kept me on over lockdown, and were hoping to claim the government wage subsidy for that, they had been approved for it from Revenue, and then the decision was reviewed and reversed, so they had to pay back the wage subsidy. 

I suspect this had a bit to do with their recent decision. 

Sep 22 I had my first day of relief teaching in Ireland. I was eased in very gently with a ‘support teacher’ role where I had a maximum of 2 students at a time. Despite the school being in an area that causes raised eyebrows when mentioned, the students were super lovely and well-behaved.

I then got more work for Thursday and Friday last week, and went to one of the two days booked. It was very comfortable to be in a classroom again. I had forgotten exactly how much I enjoy teaching, particularly the all-care-no-responsibility of relieving. 

But it was not to last. Unfortunately for me, Jared had been feeling rather fatigued since Sunday, on Thursday (Sep 24) he checked in with his GP, and he got sent home from work and was asked to go for a precautionary covid test. 

He received a text confirming his appointment to go for a test at the National Show Centre, out in Swords, north of the airport – a 3 hour walk away from our inner city apartment. We don’t own a car, and hiring a car if you might be covid positive seemed ridiculous to us, so we were certain there must’ve just been a mistake. After 5 days of trying to get this fixed, he finally got a test done on Tuesday (Sep 29) after walking to the walk-in test site closer to us and asking them to sort it. 

In contrast, one of Jared’s colleagues got sent home Friday for a covid test, had the test at the drive through facility Saturday morning and got his result Saturday evening, happily returning to work on Monday morning.

Now Jared’s employers have a question mark about his competence and dedication because he was trying to work within the systems and follow the rules, but it made him look like he was just playing hooky.

Not good when one is within the probation period of a new job.

As at Wednesday evening, we’re still at home, isolating, waiting for the results. It is so frustrating how things that should be so simple are so complicated sometimes. 

On Sunday night just gone, to add more frustration to our isolation, I received a phone call from the aforementioned accommodation owner – two full months after we stayed there – completely out of the blue. She sounded drunk, and was still trying to get us to take down the unfavourable review. She then took to calling, texting, leaving voicemails and all kinds of things over the next few days. It even got to threats of violence and death threats. 

We tried to make a complaint over the phone to the Gardai, but no, one must show up in person to complain – COVID or not – so after 2 days of this with no sign of the harassment abating, I did exactly that. 

Given Jared is symptom free, it’s likely to be a negative COVID-19 result, but we shall see. We wait for the Gardai to do something about the harassment. We wait to be able to see our friends again, and resume looking for a new flatmate or apartment. 

1 Oct: Jared got a text about 6:30 this morning confirming his COVID test showed a negative result, so he has trundled off to work this morning. 

Just when I was starting to feel like we’d got a nice little life set up here, it feels like the rug has been pulled out from under us. No time for resting on one’s laurels here. It is time to rebuild our little life all over again. I do appreciate a fresh start and a bit of a change, but I like it much better when it is me who is choosing that rather than having it inflicted upon me. 

It would be deeply unfair of me to blame this on being new to the country or because we’re not Irish or anything like that. There are loads of people in all kinds of different circumstances that are struggling at the moment. I feel blame at the moment is generally pointless and unhelpful. The best we can do is pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, smile, and try again. 

When one door shuts, another one opens right. Now to find the door.

New life in Ireland 2.0 here we come.