Andrew vs. The World

Crazy to think that we are only about 7 months into this massive pandemic with no real end in sight. Being stuck at home and not really going out has affected different aspects of my life in many ways, but not all of it is necessarily bad. I figured that the double entendre of this blog post's title is rather fitting, not just because it describes the month of March which is when the lockdown first started, but also because once the smoke is cleared I, and mostly likely everyone else, will come out of our shelters and return to society as completely different people. In fact, as I am writing this I can already think of three ways that the pandemic has affected me. Relationships I'm sure it should surprise no one that I, like everyone else, don't really see as many people anymore. I mean the whole point of social distancing is to keep the virus from spreading after all. Surprisingly I was against the idea of quarantine initially because even though I personally identify as a...

One of the roughest experiences I've ever had travelling was hands down trying to fly home from India during the coronavirus pandemic. To say that shit was rough was an understatement. But it was definitely an experience for sure. Since commercial flights were shut down, we had to wait about a month for the United States to issue emergency repatriation flights for citizens stuck in the country. I still remember how relieved I felt when I got the confirmation email, knowing that after 9 months of being abroad and 1 month under lockdown I was finally going home. I stayed in the city of Bangalore, and the airport in the city was shut down so we had to come up with the next best thing. We had to find a way to get to the closest airport from us. And that was all the way up in Goa, which was nearly a 12 hour drive from our apartment. And given our situation we had no other choice but to go with this plan. But somehow me and five other people were able to formulate a plan and get our asse...