Tag Archives: Pandemic

How I really feel

I used to have a boss I liked a lot and had a great working relationship with. His temperament was pretty much opposed to mine. He was calm, collected and impeccably polite, yet he was in a way fascinated by my very Hungarian directness and passion. It happened a few times that after listening to my public diatribe about yet another corporate malfeasance or short-sightedness, he looked at me and said: “Well, Zork, why don’t you tell us how you REALLY feel?”

After spending months of researching, collecting and sorting information; after nearly a year and a half of disheartening incredulity, frustration and anger; I am ready to let you know. Continue reading →

My Covid nightmare

I woke up from a nightmare this morning. It was an end of the world scenario, where evil was coming for us. A benevolent looking big man trying to calm and console the petrified meek leading them away to – what was clear to be – their demise. Watching their fearful submission made me think that they knew it too. Then I woke up to our covid Reality. A perfect reflection of my nightmare. Continue reading →

Cui Bono?

My mother-in-law just turned 86. She is very active, much of her time is spent with sight-seeing trips and long hikes. She is suffering from the lock-down, but she is also puzzled. She is wondering where are the piles of dead bodies promised by the experts? She is surrounded by people of her age, the highest risk age group. Not only nobody she knows is sick, but nobody she knows know anybody who is. Why is everybody trying to scare her? Why is she getting confusing and contradicting information? Why is the story changing all the time? She is not alone with the questions. Continue reading →

Exposure

 

I could not decide what would illustrate best what I am trying to say about the most important aspect of the Covid-19 pandemic. The first picture is the infamous Mordecai Richler gazebo on Mont Royal in Montreal. It was a restoration work with a final price tag of $700,000.- Yes, that is seven hundred thousand Canadian dollars for something that you can buy brand new at Home Depot for less than $7,000.- (taxes include). It is a monument to government incompetence, waste and corruption. It is a glaring exposure of the problems that lay behind.

The second picture is about the perverse exposure of our dirty little secrets. We have many, and the pandemic with the whipped-up panic around it exposed them all. The pandemic is real, the response to it is just perverse. The problems it exposes exist on several layers. The politics, its consequences and what it says about us. Continue reading →