Leila had a nice quiet morning of work and a 10 min breakfast on the bench in the sun. She waited for Alex to wake up before making coffee, using the last of the Press beans. She then worked all morning. Alex spent the morning flitting between his microeconomic problem set and doing research for his discussion at 5pm with a Togo professor of Epidemology. It was a extremely sunny morning and when we made coffee (Leila was hugging the Oatly below), we sat outside in the sun and it was super nice. Alex had a really enjoyable break reading ‘Nine Lives’ by Ursula Le Guin which was an awesome sci-fi short story about clones. he read in the sun and it was super warm and lovely. For lunch he had a large plate of veggies (including coriander stems) and it was super good. They went out to try to start planting but got side-tracked by a socially distant tour of the communal garden given by Kay, our neighbour. She is cute but loves to talk. We saw the asparagus coming up as well as the purple broccoli, wild garlic and Swiss chard which are ready to eat. Leila then made lunch after her team call which was similar to Alex’s but plus an egg.
From 3pm, Alex’s lectures started and he went into semi zombie mode listening to econometrics and rather spent the time doing pull-ups, the washing up and Covid research. He then made a lovely decaf coffee and did not offer it to Leila, so she drunk some of it to annoy him and in protest. He then had a call with the Covid professor while Leila went upstairs to do a barre class and call Nicky in her break. It was good in terms of information gathering but Alex worries that the team of ex-consultants were to consultant-like and didn’t really give the epidemiologist any reason to trust or want to work with us. In the afternoon, rather than focus on his Dev-102 lecuture, Alex joined Leila in re-potting plants. Alex carried on listening to his lectures throughout which ended up in some oddities where he had to stay in range of the kitchen (and made Leila carry some of the compost). It took 1 hour to do all 3 planters but the gardening crew were very happy. Leila felt happier that she had finally contributed to the group in some way (and less guilty about taking food from the garden in the future!)
In the eve, Alex did Leila’s Ismaili data analysis in excel rather than focus on the Jeffrey Sachs talk, the latter was really disappointing, especially since he’s probably one of the biggest names in development and also the founder of the MPA-ID course. He gave generalisations, and Alex had much more fun writing formulas into excel. Meanwhile Leila cooked a dinner that was too spicy for her to eat, but it was super good and they ate in the sitting room with a Netflix fire and then chilled and did some reading before heading upstairs to sleep.
Coffee, Wine and Isolation 