A year no one planned for
Every month in 2020 brought a surprise. It started with the Australian bush-fires. Then we had the pandemic, death of many celebrities across the world, recession, job cuts, protests, cyclones, floods, and many others. At the end of the year which no one had a clue of what is going to happen next, China, from where the virus started seems to have things sorted out and reports very little covid cases per day while the rest of the world has seen multiple waves of cases increasing and is struggling to control the spread.
Keeping the changes around the world aside, as an individual it has been a crazy year for me. A look at what has changed and impacted me.
- Movies: I love watching movies in the theater. Period. Undivided attention in watching the movie, the sound effects, the beautiful scenes on the big screen, popcorn ;-). Do you still need more reasons? The experience of watching a movie on a big screen is something that nothing else can give. Sadly with the pandemic, every movie-goer has to settle to watch new movies on TV or laptop. Though the theaters are open now, it is scary to be out there and watch movies in theaters. The last movie I watched is “1917” in January.
- Meeting friends: It was not easy to go out and catch up with friends. One good thing out of the pandemic is the video calls. This was not very common in the pre-pandemic days. As meeting and going out got difficult, we started doing video calls. Apart from this, all I managed was to meet three of my friends on different occasions.
- Eating out: February. Yes! That’s the last time I went out to a restaurant in 2020. Though I have been ordering food online, it’s not the same as going out and eating. These days it’s mostly eating while watching a movie or tv series.
- Travel: I try to go on at least one trip a year to be away from the routine. Sadly this year all the travel I managed to do was a weekend trip to meet some friends and another to home. No travel implies no break from routine and no break from the office. It’s been 10 months since I went home. This is the longest I stayed away from home in my entire life.
- Work: How can one not talk about work when discussing 2020. This has impacted many around the world. I still remember how the 2009 recession impacted me. Though I had a job guarantee this time, the path ahead was very unclear for us in March. Speaking of work-life balance, there are people who even started missing going to the office. Initially working from home was a little difficult to manage. Especially with calls late in the evening and night, the thin line between work and personal time became non-existent. But once I got used to it, I now find going to the office difficult ;-). And with pandemic when the entire road map of the products changed, I ended up spending more sleepless nights and foodless days. Hopefully more updates about work in another post by the end of the year.
- Hobbies: I started a couple of new hobbies during this lockdown just as a distraction. At the moment, I am thoroughly enjoying it. Hopefully will continue them even when things are back to normal.
IPL T20 in September was very refreshing. It gave close to two months period when there was something interesting after office hours. Though RCB was on fire in the beginning, it slowly started fading and ended badly.
Fist bump, masks, washing hands, video calls is the new normal. Though there are many vaccines successfully finishing their trials, no one really knows how long it will take for us to go out safely and peacefully without bothering about the virus. Fingers crossed and waiting to see what surprises 2021 brings to us.
