Life in a Pandemic

Jeremy Wagstaff writes: As part of his Life in a Pandemic podcast series, Jeremy talks again to Susan, a childhood friend he spoke to a month ago. She's taking cover in her home in northern England, where she runs a company that makes colours -- for everything from paint to body bags. Susan, living alone and wrestling with trying to run a company deemed essential to the country, finds the virus coming a little too close for comfort. 

It's April, time to revisit Tim and his pepper farm in Braidswood, Australia. 

Jeremy Wagstaff writes: My former colleague Joyce, still in her native Taiwan. Is the poster child of how to handle a pandemic still doing well, or have things, as she feared, slipped? Joyce is one of the several people who are sheltering in places that aren't where they supposed or necessarily want to be. Running to Taiwan was her idea when Hong Kong was on the verge of being overrun with the virus. When I last spoke to her she was worried, not about the government, but about her fellow Taiwanese. Were they being a bit too relaxed about the whole thing? 

Jeremy Wagstaff writes: The latest in my series on lives disrupted by the coronavirus. We return to Dinny in Tana Toraja, the remote highland home her husband's Toraja people. Dinny is grappling with economic crisis as her company of weavers implodes under collapsing tourism, and with the more personal questions about relationships: Is Zoom just for chat, or should we be talking about something deeper? She finds surprises galore among friends she thought she knew.

Dinny's company and campaign:
Website: Toraja Melo
Instagra: @torajamelo
Facebook torajamelo
Hashtag: #WITTOCorona (Weaving In The Time Of Corona)

Jeremy Wagstaff writes: In this episode I speak to Joyce, a Taiwanese friend who was also for many years a journalist colleague at Reuters. Joyce is a straight shooter like any good journalist, but she has a soft spot for her homeland, and so it wasn't a surprise that she was proud of how her government had confronted COVID-19, despite of, or perhaps because of, it not being a member of the World Health Organisation. After a few months in Hong Kong Joyce was now back in Taipei, and wasn't as optimistic as those around her.

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Email us at [email protected]. Life in a Pandemic is produced by Jeremy Wagstaff and Sari Sudarsono for CleftStick.com. 

Jeremy Wagstaff writes: This is Susan, a classmate of mine from primary school. We haven't actually seen each other in nearly a half century, and my last memory of her was in a sack race at my 7th birthday party. Facebook has brought us back together, sort of, but this was the first time we'd actually talked since she got second prize, if I recall, in the egg and spoon race. She now owns, or runs, or both, a company in Manchester, and a cottage with what looked beautiful views somewhere in the countryside far from where we grew up. I wanted to hear from her about what COVID-19 looked like. And, as ever, I learned that this thing affects everyone in different ways.

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Email us at [email protected]. Life in a Pandemic is produced by Jeremy Wagstaff and Sari Sudarsono for CleftStick.com. 

Jeremy Wagstaff writes: This episode is about Dinny, an Indonesian friend who has a particular vantage point from which to watch the Coronavirus saga. She has long dumped the polluted streets of Jakarta for the highland life of her husband's Toraja homeland. Dinny runs a small company that employs local weavers. When I caught up with her she was in reflective mood: it was changing her compatriots already in startling ways, but was all this the fulfilment of a prediction not from the animism of her adopted homeland, but something altogether more recent?

Subscribe and get updates as soon as a new podcast episode goes live in BuzzSprout. We are also on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcast, and Stitcher.

Email us at [email protected]. Life in a Pandemic is produced by Jeremy Wagstaff and Sari Sudarsono for CleftStick.com. 

Another conversation between Jeremy and his globe-strewn friends. This time it's Toby, a German he met in Singapore during  time as a technology journalist with Reuters. A former concert pianist, Toby doesn't fit your idea of a startup founder, which is perhaps why he makes for more interesting company. But how is the lockdown affecting his battling business? Jeremy tracks him down to his mother's home in the German forests, where he has some surprising insights -- and predictions about Life in A Pandemic.

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Email us at [email protected]. Life in a Pandemic is produced by Jeremy Wagstaff and Sari Sudarsono for CleftStick.com. 

Part of my podcast series on life in a pandemic. I first visited Afghanistan in 1996, shortly after the Taleban had taken Kabul - to everyone's surprise. At Kabul airport the Reuters stringer, Salahuddin, was there to meet me and by the time we got to the guest house we were both rolling around with laughter in the back seat of the taxi. Given the dire straits of the country it probably wasn't the best look but his dark humour and my silliness forged a tight bond between us. But there's never a fairy-tale ending for Afghanistan, and Salahuddin has stayed on when he could so easily have left, continuing to report on the country. When I caught up with him in March 2020, his laughter was still there, in the background, but Salahuddin fears Covid-19 may be one crisis too many for his country.

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Email us at [email protected]. Life in a Pandemic is produced by Jeremy Wagstaff and Sari Sudarsono for CleftStick.com. 

The second interview in our series, where Jeremy catches up with a former student from China, who is studying in the U.S. but found herself separated from her husband on a family visit back to Kunming.

Get updates as soon as a new podcast episode goes live in BuzzSprout. We are also on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcast, and Stitcher.

Email us at [email protected]. Life in a Pandemic is produced by Jeremy Wagstaff and Sari Sudarsono for CleftStick.com.