My Corona Experience

As you might have noticed, your LinkedIn feed has been quiet because I have not been posting it full with my daily posts and articles for a while. Reason for that being that it is extremely busy at this moment.

This morning I woke up and had an idea for this article, let's just summarize some of the things which have changed in work and personal life since this corona thing happened, especially now that our Government in The Netherlands has expressed yesterday that our lockdown will be extended to at least May 20th.

Work

The impact this all has on work has been huge. There's companies out there who never even thought of allowing employees to work from home...here we are now! Crane is quite flexible in this and luckily our infrastructure allowed it pretty well, but that's not the only challenge you face when working from home. I noticed that I now work more than ever, because the place you live in is now also the place you go to work in. It's really hard to not run to your laptop and just answer that last E-mail, or write just one last offer to a client etc. etc.

Especially in my field of work, it's not particularly great to be stuck to one location. Usually I'd go out and see clients, see some nice parts of my country and make friends along the way. To me, speaking to clients over LinkedIn messages, phone or video is nothing compared to actually visiting their sites, seeing the operation they're proud of and of course get a more personal connection with them. We all adapt of course, but I like the pre-corona way of working a lot more I have to say.

Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meetings...bet you're hearing at least one of them multiple times every at this moment. Almost every internal meeting is now crammed into virtual meeting spaces, which takes some people some serious getting used to efforts. I have seen a lot of video's pop up lately about people making blunders on videocalls, accidently undressing or going to the bathroom with their call still running. Nonetheless I have to say that in general we all seem to be adapting pretty easily to everything.

Private Life

Now this one's depressing. No friends, no family, no bars, no restaurants...good for the wallet, increasingly not good for the mood. As a guy who takes his girlfriend out for dinner once a week, not being able to do that is becoming really annoying, same goes for just going to your local pub to grab a beer. These are all luxury problems for sure, but they are still problems that could potentially mess with you mentally. They can also be solved creatively, for example my girlfriend and I cook a special dinner once a week to treat ourselves, me and my friends have a drink with each other over video and I visit my grandparents...behind glass! In the weekends I like to go out for a drive, get some fresh air and have picked up some hobbies that use my technical background. One of my latest projects (as seen on the picture) is a 1600mw Blue Laser that can even light matches, but has no purpose at all! Of course, it's about the challenge of building it, not the...practical applications?

Close call...

Last weekend was very intense, my girlfriend works in a Doctor's practice and her mom works in an elderly care house. Both of them have professions that are both crucial, but also slightly risky in these times. Until last week, no contaminations were announced whatsoever and our hopes were getting high that we might not have to experience COVID-19 ourselves. But then it went wrong...well, almost. My girlfriend's mom was informed of the fact that a patient in her department was diagnosed with COVID-19, her being wel above 50 with some health issues put her in a high-risk category, as well as my girlfriend who has to handle dozens of patients daily and myself, as my dad is of age and has had issues with his lungs. To make matters worse, her mom developed a dry cough, respiratory problems and was feeling ill, could it be her pollen allergy? We did not know for sure, but luckily her employer arranged for her to have a test on COVID-19. As we had both been in contact with her and she does not have a driving license, we took her to the test location, which was in the garage of a Hotel. The operation was very fast and clean, although the test looked very uncomfortable (long probe all the way down your nose) and with all the crew in protective gear it looked like something from a pandemic movie. Yesterday we got the results in and luckily she was tested negative...her symptoms were caused by the pollen allergy. However there people out there getting positive results and I can only imagine the stress coming up when that happens. My thoughts go out to anyone who has had to endure this themselves.

Thank you for reading, really curious about your experiences and thoughts on this situation, have you been experiencing this crisis so far?

Take care everyone and stay safe.