OUR STRANGE NEW WORLD

(A dystopian sense of humour required) I hear the science supports this.  Then I hear the science supports that.  I hear these things day after day and, eventually, I conclude the science supports whatever the government wants the science to support.  The truth is therefore whatever you are being told, or is written on the side of a bus, or a promise made but now denied and erased.  It all has a dystopian hallmark as government clumsily attempts to modify and direct unruly human behaviour, on a grand scale, in this direction or that.   The above was a working bit of script, by the way.  Names have been changed to obscure customers and obfuscate certain semantics and product.  The whole thing builds on a (by now) three year project to upskill and have something a moving skillset compared to the something of a static skillet that had carried me for the better part of twenty years. Gluing (excuse the pun) Gherkin, to meagre Java and Selenium skills, developed in Paris on the kind business

(Pandemic, demagogy and geopolitics collide) A friend has an Uncle who, in the early 1970s, won the Pools and went and travelled the world.  Postcards sent home include one from Afghanistan, taken soon after crossing the border from Iran.  That's two countries most people wouldn't think of visiting, right now, and a border most would would rather not cross.  And postcards from Afghanistan!  Do such things still get made? I've been to Hong Kong on three occasions.  Thanks to unrest, Hong Kong had ceased to be a tourist destination before the pandemic emergency.  Fast forward to today, and I don't know when/if I'll be going back to this favourite (and most photogenic) city. I've been to mainland China once.  I have a friend who lives and teaches in Shanghai.  I have a multiple entry visa, valid through to August 2021.  That visa wasn't cheap, so I'd rather it didn't go to waste.  Likewise, I don't know when/if I'll be going back to China.  Once