The vaccine

 The talk of the goddamn pandemic has died down in this blog in recent months. Because it's become such an inseparable part of our daily life there's nothing to talk about it. We're not meeting friends, we're not eating out, not partying, not going to work, travel's stopped. Life has paused, even when there are a large number of rulebreakers, the truth is that we are all mostly doing our part because we don't want the disease to take our sense of smell and taste forever. Besides, dining-in is mostly banned, and poorly looked down upon, and people are afraid that if you ask them to go out to eat, you might be testing their resolve etcetera. So these have been quiet months, and the pandemic isn't mentioned because it's such a looming part of our lives.

But! This is the good news now! The talk of it might be increasing in these pages in the near future. Because there's vaccines coming in. At least half-dozen people I know have had their first shot of the disease, about a similar number have gotten both the shots. And the vaccines are coming closer now. They're saying if things work out well, we might be getting vaccine by late April, May, for the regular healthy young adult crowd as well.

And it's not just here, India's apparently been sending them out to Nepal, my parents and grandparents have a good shot at getting those shots in the next three months. Sure, it is not advisable to be out and about immediately after taking it, and we should be careful to wait out the potential variants and mutants that might be resistant to the vaccines, but we're going to have a decent late-summer and Fall finally. This global disaster, the nightmare we have lived through is going to be over, finally. Hopefully.

That's one thing to look forward to in these otherwise dark times.

Friend sbk's father is planning to get the shot in the next month or so, and then another month of waiting, plus some time for making sure there's no problematic side-effects, and they're thinking of bailing out from this company in a matter of two or three months. A bit funny because his original plan was to be out last March -- he even put on a bet with roommate Pk for a lot of money -- but the pandemic delayed things by a little bit. A year exactly. Of course the money's not going to be changing hands.

In any case, the other side of the pandemic, the vaccine and the speeding up -- or perhaps slowing down -- of life and events is that people are getting married, forrealz. Sk for example, is on track to hitch the knot in a few short months,  a scary-sounding prospect for me because none of my friends have made the journey yet. Well...not officially, in terms of the cultural social aspect yet. For everybody I know and care about, it's the next obvious step after being in a relationship and moving together, not just necessarily for the ease of immigration documents for all the sides.

So the vaccine is coming, it's coming soon, and I'm getting nervous, because I may reduce a year from my age for the lost year, but it appears that the rest of the world is moving on. What fools. FOOLS!