Lev Lafayette's journal

I feel like for much of this week I've been engaging in piece-meal progress; patching up my workshop lessons on regular expressions and shell scripting, completing various software builds, making some progress on for my next degree (the masters in higher education at Otago), and working through a whole variety of semi-complete tasks and projects. There are larger projects that I could, and indeed should get my teeth stuck into, but I'm a bit in recovery mode at the moment from (a) completing the MSc and (b) spending three days teaching whilst suffering the effects of a cold. So whilst my overall productivity has not declined by any stretch of the imagination, I have engaged in the more mentally enjoyable activity of letting my mind jump around on multiple subjects in succession. Doubtless, this will not remain, but for the time being it is both cathartic and necessary.

On Saturday went to visit ser_pounce and hathhalla for our semi-regular cheesequest which is now dominated by vegan alternatives, although we did bring a bit of rather delicious "fromage de chevre". Top points I think goes to the sun-dried tomato double-not-cream-not-cheese, it really was quite good. We played a session of Spirit Island a co-operative game of nature spirits combatting colonists and, due to a sheer dumb-luck on my part, I managed to save the island by sacrificing my spirit and causing the colonists to flee in terror. Quite a nice dramatic ending. After that, we played Trial by Trolley by the good people at Cyanide and Happiness, where I made strong use of my utilitarian reasoning to justify running certain people over in preference to others. On a related note, ran a game of Eclipse Phase on Sunday, and played around with the interesting topic of sensors in space as a result.

As another food-related event, as could be expected caseopaya has caught a cold that I had last week. After visiting the medical centre in Ripponlea we made our way down to the old haunt of Elsternwick in search of favourite Chinese restaurant from yesteryear; Wong's Cafe - apparently after being in business for some fifty plus years, it closed down in 2017 or so. I'll miss Wong's; many good memories there, and the owner was always charming. I won't forget how he dutifully told me that I could visit one month as his doctor said he needed to take a holiday; his idea of a holiday was to take his extended local family - about twenty people or so - to China. Anyway, we ended up at Rising Dragon instead which was inexpensive, delicious, and with very generous portions.

I am trying to get my head around (FB link) Australians panic-buying toilet paper, of all things, over the novel coronavirus. There is sensible advice of course from the Department of Health for the public and for medical practioners, but I'm sure that most people would prefer to read hyperbole and conspiracies instead, leading to an outbreak in idiocy. It is true that the virus does have an eclipse phase from incubation to symptoms (where the game got its name from, naturally), the mortality rate is higher than seasonal influenza, and with a high ease of transmission, if not contained. Yes, it ought to be treated seriously, but the over-the-top reactions quite unnecessary.