Friday 5 for November 27: Pandemic daze

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Friday 5! Please copy these questions to your webspace. Answer the questions there; then leave a comment below so we’ll all know where to check out your responses. Please don’t forget to link us from your website!

1. Where do you get most of your pandemic-related news?

Um... hate to say this... Facebook first and then verify the sources by going to the more traditional local news sites like Honolulu Civil Beat, Honolulu Star Advertiser, Hawaii News Now, Hawaii Tribune Herald. Nationally I will occasionally check what the networks are posting to YouTube, Twitter, etc. There are also the State and National health links such as CDC, and Hawaii Dept. of Health. Just letting you know these options vary in terms of timeliness and thoroughness of the coverage.

2. How do you feel about your local government’s leadership during this pandemic?

They are not very good at leading this crises. The Governor says you can do this or have to do that and the four mayors often disagree, like whether or not to quarantine all visitors for 14 days upon arrival to Hawaii or from within the islands of Hawaii. State says you get a negative test, and you don't have to quarantine. Counties are saying quarantine negative test or not... BAAAHH!!!!!! HUMBUG!

Best to just hunker down, stay home and not go out as often... thereby killing our economy even further than it already is. Hawaii's economy has been in the toilet long before the pandemic hit. We have some of the highest taxes in the nation, the highest cost of living in the nation and some of the stupidest public works projects in the making such as the $14 billion rail project that does not want to die and only suck more money out of the taxpayers.

Guess what? Many taxpayers have no jobs and can't afford the continual bombardment on our wallets. The tourists are not coming to alleviate some of that horrible rail tax collections, thanks to the insipid non-leadership of current elected officials. I don't see much change happening with the some of the recently elected crop of leaders coming into office.

We're doomed.

3. What does your favorite mask look like, and about how many masks have you accumulated?

First of all I HATE MASKS and the mask mandates. Ugh!

Favorite mask you ask? NONE. I only wear them because government requires me to wear them. More of our freedoms have been taken away in the name of safety because of the pandemic. 

I have about 8 to 10 masks of various quality. I am not a fashion guru or anything like that so I just go for something cheap and mostly plain colored... like the standard cheap ass light blue ones, or black or white cloth ones. I don't care much for patterns. I rather blend into the woodwork vs. stand out in a crowd.

4. Where have you most often had takeout during this pandemic?

I have not eaten at a restaurant since February 2020... my last restaurant meal was with a friend at LikeLike Drive-in. After 67 years in business and because of government closure and regulatory "martial" laws passed in the last 9 months, this restaurant and hundreds of others are now gone and closed forever.

I haven't bought a takeout meal from anywhere since the pandemic started. I just buy stuff that I cook mostly in my microwave and stay at home most of my days. Life is no longer interesting, much less fun.

5. What new interests, skills, or hobbies have you picked up since mid-March?

I'm mostly in a state of depression lately and some of my hobbies haven't interested  me much as of late. I have no motivation to go out to take photos or just see stuff. I am feeling so blah in this science fiction like, dystopian life we are now living in.

Learning the ins and outs of my recently acquired iMac with MacOS 10.15 is a new skill I am doing. I had to replace some of my older 32 bit MacOS apps with 64 bit compliant ones, several of which are new... so there is that. I divorced myself from the Adobe suite and Office because I hate subscription based software. Luckily some of the Apple apps and non-subscription software I bought years ago allowed transfer to new versions on the new Mac without incurring new costs. Thankfully I had kept most of the old software registration information, which meant all upgrades were free. So now I am learning a bunch of new versions of software I have used for a long time.