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Stick A Read Nose On Your Wolf
Jan. 30th, 2021 09:56 pmThe issue of vaccines has been laying heavily on the mind over the last few days, not aided by the row between the EU Commission and Astra Zeneca. It is clear that the pharmaceutical company over-promised and under-delivered, but the EU's approach to vaccine procurement has been nothing short of woeful. Germany is currently vaccinating at a rate of about 92,000 per day, five times fewer than the UK's rate, with vaccine availability being the key issue (although it is worth noting that Germany's rate of second vaccines is comperable to the UK plus they are doing the care homes and harder to reach places first). The war of words on Friday, with the threat to trigger Article 16 of the Irish Protocol, are an anathema to everything I believe and for the first time since moving to Germany, I have started to doubt whether this was the right thing to do. While I am delighted that the UK's vaccine rollout is going well - not least because it means it protects my family (my aunt gets her jab on Sunday) and many of my friends - the poisonous vaccine nationalism displayed by some of the press is disgusting. Furthermore, I worry about when it will be before I get the vaccine. I am confident the EU will get these supply issues sorted, but it would be an incredible strain on my mental health if life resumes as normal in the UK but here in Germany we have endless more months of lockdown. I am starting to find the current state of affairs very distressing and am unsure how much longer I can endure it. Confuzzled has been cancelled today, rightly, and I just want a way out. I just hope that vaccines can start getting here swiftly as once they have arrived, then distribution should be easy.
Aside from these concerns, it has been a rather positive week. I received both my German driving license and my health insurance card on Wednesday so these processes are now complete, while I got paid for the first time in a personal capacity on Friday. This saw me get paid seven weeks' worth of wages and it is a relief to have money again, not to mention paying into both the German health insurance and tax system. I was fearful my new job wouldn't pay enough, but with little to spend money on right now, I think it'll be fine. Indeed, I am typing this on my new PC, which is eeriely quiet. Wolfie put together a €500 package for me which upgrades my 2011-spec machine to a 2019 affair, and I can already tell how much swifter it is, particularly on VR Chat. The key difference though is the quietness of the fans as my CPU is no longer being overclocked, which makes for an odd experience. I am also struggling with this new keyboard as its rake is slightly different to what I am used to, but I think assimilation will come over time.
This week we have also started to make progress on finding a new place to live, having extended our stay at our current place by another month to the end of March. Alas, the rental market in Berlin is very competitive now and a number of our original houses of interest had already gone, so we've thrown about fifteen possible dwellings at the estate agents and have asked them to do what they can do.
It's been a quiet weekend thus far. We had a McDonald's last night to celebrate my first pay, although it was tainted by a very arsey delivery driver who was upset we didn't put specific instructions to our front door on our Lieferando order. It has never been a problem before, as we often go down to the front door and collect it, but this guy was making a huge exception about it, and in English too. It snowed overnight and we had a nice wintery walk to the cheesemonger, where we got some cheese, black pudding and bacon. I was most delighted as I conducted the whole conversation in German. However, things took a turn for the worse later on as, before I started reading some more Dracula, I pulled a muscle in my back and it's currently painful to move. I'm dosing up on Neproxin and alcohol but it doesn't seem to be having an affect thus far. I'm hoping it'll kick in soon. Speaking of alcohol, we got a delivery from the Uiltje (Owl) Brewery from the Netherlands and have cracked open some of the seventeen cans. The quality of the beer is so much higher than what you can get in Germany and considering it's going to be difficult to get anything from the UK in the coming weeks, we're going to shop from the Netherlands going forward.
Aside from these concerns, it has been a rather positive week. I received both my German driving license and my health insurance card on Wednesday so these processes are now complete, while I got paid for the first time in a personal capacity on Friday. This saw me get paid seven weeks' worth of wages and it is a relief to have money again, not to mention paying into both the German health insurance and tax system. I was fearful my new job wouldn't pay enough, but with little to spend money on right now, I think it'll be fine. Indeed, I am typing this on my new PC, which is eeriely quiet. Wolfie put together a €500 package for me which upgrades my 2011-spec machine to a 2019 affair, and I can already tell how much swifter it is, particularly on VR Chat. The key difference though is the quietness of the fans as my CPU is no longer being overclocked, which makes for an odd experience. I am also struggling with this new keyboard as its rake is slightly different to what I am used to, but I think assimilation will come over time.
This week we have also started to make progress on finding a new place to live, having extended our stay at our current place by another month to the end of March. Alas, the rental market in Berlin is very competitive now and a number of our original houses of interest had already gone, so we've thrown about fifteen possible dwellings at the estate agents and have asked them to do what they can do.
It's been a quiet weekend thus far. We had a McDonald's last night to celebrate my first pay, although it was tainted by a very arsey delivery driver who was upset we didn't put specific instructions to our front door on our Lieferando order. It has never been a problem before, as we often go down to the front door and collect it, but this guy was making a huge exception about it, and in English too. It snowed overnight and we had a nice wintery walk to the cheesemonger, where we got some cheese, black pudding and bacon. I was most delighted as I conducted the whole conversation in German. However, things took a turn for the worse later on as, before I started reading some more Dracula, I pulled a muscle in my back and it's currently painful to move. I'm dosing up on Neproxin and alcohol but it doesn't seem to be having an affect thus far. I'm hoping it'll kick in soon. Speaking of alcohol, we got a delivery from the Uiltje (Owl) Brewery from the Netherlands and have cracked open some of the seventeen cans. The quality of the beer is so much higher than what you can get in Germany and considering it's going to be difficult to get anything from the UK in the coming weeks, we're going to shop from the Netherlands going forward.
