Is there a week where the number of active cases doesn’t move higher in the world? Unfortunately it’s not this week…we now at 3,198,287 active cases world wide. 373,351 dead. No new big spikes in numbers in Australia
Currently we down to 73 active cases in Victoria, down from 86 last week.
Hot desking is officially dead at NAB and Westpac. Pretty hard to justify in the current environment. The Victorian Government has also said if you return to the office in June, your organisation will be fined $100,000 for breach of the Health and Well being Act. I was discussing the state of the world over coffee with a mate from the legal profession over the weekend, and he said something interesting, that should you die from COVID and it’s found to be somehow trace back to work, then your family should be able to sue your workplace for breach of the Health and Well being Act and not providing a safe working environment.
If you lived in Switzerland then the company might have to pay part of your rent if you work from home the courts have ruled. Don’t know if that applies to mortgage, but then again rent is like under 500 euro per month in France, so they don’t really have obsession with owning a home. The Swiss are also the only ones to have released a contact tracing app based on the new API by google and apple (meaning the app actually works).
Basically the conditions that google and apple have imposed is that the data needs to be kept local on the phone, and can’t be pooled to a central server and GPS data can’t be used. All for privacy reasons. So if you get COVID all you do is login to the app, say you have covid and it alerts all the other people who you have been in contact with, without the need for authority in the middle. Other gov (including AUS) have opted for a model where they can gather that data and allow them to do data analysis to monitor their citizens, which I remind you doesn’t work because you need everyone to have the app open and the phone screen on, draining your battery as well. In any case it’s a step to becoming an Orwellian society, in which contact tracing will be eventually used for more than just health related issues. In either case app monitoring is not needed, just wear a mask if you are in highly populated places. My parents do (…after much resistance). Even the président de la république française has a mask (fabriqué en France of course)
New Zealand is down to a single active case of COVID. I was thinking about how international travel would work in the future, and here’s something to consider, make sure you have extra annual leave stored up. Here’s the scenario, you go overseas, you will most likely get quarantine for 2 weeks using up 2 weeks of annual leave, you come back, you get quarantined for two weeks again, but could probably at the very least work from home for 2 weeks. So for a 4 week trip to the USA, South Korea, NZ, China, Japan, UK etc – you need at least 30 days annual leave to be able to enjoy 4 weeks. There’s a possibility that we will over index on domestic travel in the near future. So I’ll share with you my fav domestic travel to consider – Drive from Darwin to central Australia by campervan (yes even with the kids, kids love adventure – or at least my kids do). My hot tips are
-Darwin: Feed the very big fish at the beach. Don’t feed yourself to the crocs, they live in the sea as well. Eat and shop at the Saturday night market on the beach. Have lunch at the yacht club.
-Don’t miss Litchfield national park and swimming in the natural pools.
-Do the crazy jumping croc thing at Kakadu and the morning boat cruise.
-130km/h is really pushing it for a camper van.
-Look for the random natural hot springs a long the way.
-Road trains are actually huge and take a significant amount of time to over take. They usually signal when they see it’s safe for you to overtake.
-WAVE to every car you see coming in the opposite direction!
-Maybe skip the rest stop where their top attraction is abduction by aliens.
-The attack creek rest stop is actually safe and quite nice to start a roadside camp fire. No aliens here
-Glen Helen Gorge has really dark skies that you can see the whole milky way on a clear night. No aliens here too.
-Fill up petrol at EVERY stop. I drove on red dot for 25 mins because the petrol station had no petrol. It was so nerve racking
-Uluru is actually a good 6 hours from Alice springs! I used to think it was right next to each other.
-Uluru is soo big! As you are approaching it, it takes the breath away that can never be expressed in a photo or video. The only other time I have been that impressed was getting off the bullet train at the stop for Hua Shan in China.
My daughter has been watching this video and probably knows more about coronavirus than most 4 year old. For all of you with young kids like me, I would like you to forever remember this lesson from Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of my fav astrophysicists, he’s not normally that serious, and often educates you on facts you thought were true but are really not.
Social Distancing at the beach reminds you of anything?
Markets & Economics.
My must watch conversation this week is with Kiril Sokoloff, chairman and founder of 13 Global Strategy and Research.
First 10mins of this was interesting on how the Super Industry could evolve. Also people have been withdrawing their super to put towards a deposit on a house. I’m not surprised to be honest.
This is worth listening to, if you’re interested in the state of the property market in Australia.
The news has largely been dominated is the US is burning
Police are firing at their own citizens, even shooting at the press, and not just an isolated incident too, they are also ramming people with police cars. And it’s not just the police misbehaving. And a number of cities currently have curfew because of all the riots – Minneapolis, Chicago,Los Angeles, Atlanta, Denver, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Cleveland, Columbus, Portland, Miami, Milwaukee, Salt Lake City, Rochester.
To put it into perspective, the last time the government has spent this much was during world war 1 and world war 2.
Apparently Goldman Sachs doesn’t like bitcoin because they can’t generate a fee from it, since that’s their whole business model.
Other Stuff
Today I’m going to invite you on a journey with me, a journey that’s going to take 10 years.
Grab a notebook (I tend to use Leuchtturm1917 – they sell at my local bookstore or Rhodia since they are easily accessible in France) and a pen (I usually use a Uniball Jetstream 0.7, they sell at office works as recommended here) But really any pen and notebook will do.
Your instructions are –
-Find a peaceful and quiet time to sit. Doesn’t need to be fancy, but away from all distractions of screens and away from the family. I tend towards early morning before the kids wake up, it’s also when I’m most creative.
And I want you to write. I would like you to write about your day, 10 years in the future from today. “It is winter 2030, I am currently XX years old, and my kids are now 14 and 10….”
Where are you? What are you doing? Describe your day from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed, what does that day look like. In as much detail as you want, down to how the sheets feel if you want. What have you achieved in those 10 years if you could not fail. IF anything is possible. And I want you to write for as many pages as you want about any aspect that you want. It doesn’t need to be perfect, this is only for you to read not to be shared with anyone (ok, your spouse if you wish). And then after you are done, I want you to put this notebook in a safe place. Because every year around June, I want you to pick it up and read it. Now this is not one of those stupid interview questions of where you see yourself if 10 years (you have my permission to just get up and walk out of those interviews), this is you describing a day 10 years from now to yourself. And I’ve been told by someone more successful than me to then watch the magic happen. You will hopefully find that your writing will be full of hope for the future. And I know not everyone will do this (humans tend towards inaction), and don’t tell me ‘great idea, I’m gonna do it’, I don’t want to hear that sh!t, just do it. And if you come along this journey and you bump into my future self, I would like you to say hi and tell me how you went.
Started having mushroom coffee last week, and I think my energy and focus have both drastically improved. However the downside it tastes like Mr Speaker coffee (aka dirt) and it’s definitely no cup of truth.
You can’t control what happens in the world but you can control how you respond to the situation. Enjoy your week.