Life Marches On

[contrarianarchon]

Okay it's been a while so: Update: I'm still in Norway. Have been this whole time. Trying to go home now and it's being a right old pain and/or horror-show. One wonders what a nation does when your visa expires if you're doing your best to leave the country the whole time and it's going to be fucking horrific in cost (like, equal to six months of my expenses, between flights and hotels-the-government-forces-you-to-stay-in-but-will-not-pay-for and rent that I am paying because canceling a rental contract when my flights might be cancelled at any second for any reason is foolhardy at best and I do not want to be homeless *and* alone in a foreign country while I, IDK, have panic attacks.). Also all my teachers are shit.

And best of all! We're having a second wave which means travel might get totally closed *and* nobody is wearing masks. (At least, as of last month, you can now *buy* masks in supermarkets rather than having to go hunting but *sighs*). For reference: by nobody, I mean "About half of people literally on major train lines, maybe a fifth to a quarter of the people walking on the streets, and maybe a tenth (including none of the employees) of the people in the supermarket. What the fuck.

Comments

[cassini]

[fffffffff wow that sounds like a lot to deal with. and i share your wtf on the sheer amount of people without masks. please, people. for the vast frellin majority of us it is Not So Bad so pls step up on the giving a fuck front ]

[brin_bellway]

Do you have grocery delivery in your area? A 10% masking rate--and especially a masking rate *lower* than that seen in general-purpose areas like sidewalks--sounds suspiciously like a non-essential business: a place disproportionately composed of reckless customers because the cautious ones don't show up at all. If you have delivery, that might make showing up in-person unnecessary enough to cause non-essential-business skew.

(the answer might well be something like "yes for houses, but not for student dorms", in which case my sympathies at falling through the cracks)

---

*hazmat-suited hugs*

[contrarianarchon]

I think the low masking rate in the grocery compared to the sidewalks is an artifact of public-transport-use being a heavily targeted-situation-for-masks - the grocery thus has all the car-users and also all the people who were like "well I'll only be going a short way" - pretty much the only two things within walking distance of the dorms is the supermarket and the train-station. (two other supermarkets and a high school are also technically present at greater distance, but do not seem like factors here). I've seen people (as of a month ago, which was the last time I had the need or energy to go anywhere other than grocery-shopping or laundry-doing - this also makes my information on what people in the city-center are doing outdated) who will get on the train and only then put on a mask while sitting down so it doesn't seem absurd for there to be a pretty large pile of people who only wear a mask while doing "The government has put up signs and sent out emails saying you ought to be wearing a mask right now" activities.

(Also yeah I can't get mail (well, non-letter mail) here very easily at all - my packages get sent to one of three random groceries, one of which I have to take a bus to get to due to my bad leg. An examination of grocery-delivery options in general suggests that for a 10-dollar fee (49nok, that is) one of the expensive supermarkets will put your groceries in a pile outside the building for you to pick up, and one of the student unions in a city other than oslo has got something set up.)

Also honestly I am sealed in a tiny tin can and if the threat of starvation didn't get me out of bed sometimes I think I would be even worse than I am...