Covid-19 is a hellscape of a suckfest. Many of us are struggling here in Australia. We speak to an Australian, Marina Cid, who is trapped in Spain, about how she is coping with indoor family life. And staying glam despite Covid-19 and its fallout.
Trapped in Spain
Starting a business, the month before the world went into a global lockdown is probably not the best timing. But when life hands you quarantine why not make a Quarantini?
In 2018 I flew out of Brisbane airport with my husband and two daughters for a year-long adventure to live in Valencia, Spain. We planned to learn the language and start a new business. Mission accomplished! As we were planning our return to Australia, we were caught up in the Covid-19 lockdown. Our outside life has come to a screeching halt. We are now adapting to life in an apartment in the Spanish city.
Lockdown
The first 15 days of lockdown have been surprisingly a lot easier to deal with than I imagined. But, we can only leave our 250m2 apartment, one adult, at a time, for essential requirements, food and pharmaceuticals. We don’t have the luxury of time out for independent exercise, like most other countries. Despite this it’s okay. In fact, I’d say the love and appreciation of my husband over the last 2 weeks has increased.
My kids, 6 and 9, are ever-present, yet still, we have been bonding as a family unit. My husband and I are the parents, the teachers, the personal trainers, the chefs, the playmates the medicos, the dance instructors. In a lot of ways, we’re just stepping up to slightly more significant roles. It’s not all new – just more intensive and without breaks. Only a few weeks ago I would have said, it takes a village to raise a child, now I know, when pushed, it only takes a household.
Beautiful Valencia
Covid-19 and Adaptation
We are trying to bring the world in, but everything still requires our involvement. We stream in music lessons and PE every morning. And, we have our friends on a video Messenger roster system. Australians or antipodeans in the morning, Europeans in the afternoon. In between, we try to get schooling done and squeeze work in wherever it can fit. It is the least of my priorities, but it carries on, slowly. Which is perfect for right now.
It was just one month ago that I launched my brand Chiqui Alta. I design and produce beautiful Spanish handmade leather flats in bigger sizes EU39 to 46 (Australian size 7 to 14). It’s all in the timing they say, so that sucks! I’m lucky the couriers are still working and come to my door. They’re always hospitable, standing at least two meters away with their masks and their gloves on. I almost throw the boxes to them, and we have a laugh. As they leave, I am thankful and envious of those still working out in the world right now.
Be Calm
Right now, I’m hanging onto the quote: “You can’t calm the storm. Instead, try and calm yourself. The storm will pass.” Buddha (I think).
Wherever the words come from they speak to me. Despite this being a bloody long storm. In this situation, there is so much out of control. Not just my shoe business, but:
-My 80-year-old mother, a world away, who refuses help and insists on going to the butcher and fruit shop.
-The number of people dying.
-The number of people not heading the pleas to stay home.
-The lack of understanding on this subject
-The oversupply of information like there is no other topic
-The failure of governments to heed the instructions provided by the WHO two months ago
-The irresponsible businesses and governments that are still urging people to go out.
Breathe! That’s what I can’t control.
What I can control is my household. Not in totality, I can’t control my husband or my kids, but I can be a calm role-model for my two girls. I can choose to remain motivated, have a positive attitude and try to make the best of being in isolation.
Covid-19 and Motivation
Being motivated is a goal. Every day I get up, get dressed, put my shoes on. It might be that I’m a shoe designer, or that when I was bought up, this was an adage in my family to get ready before breakfast. Whatever the reason, I refuse to spend my days in track pants and slippers. The sound of shuffling across the floor just drives me mental. I can’t wear tracksuits or slippers all day. No way. I’ve not given up.
Due to Covid-19, in Spain, residents were only allowed to leave the house for essentials like food.
It seems I’m not the only one. I rolled across the floor laughing when I saw an Instagram post this morning: “There is only one reason people who work from home get dressed: it’s because you can do f*ck all in a dressing gown. I nearly set myself on fire twice, got caught on various door handles and banisters, nearly resulting in whiplash and my belt dangled in the toilet post-wee.”
Dressing Up
My daughters have taken dressing up also. They’re into wearing my high heels pretty much all day long. I don’t mind. If it means they’re happy and focused on their little worlds, I feel reassured they’re not thinking about the storm outside.
Good Shoes to the Rescue
Right now, my dress-up shoes are my soft butter leather ballet flats. I am very grateful to have them, alternating them daily for variety. I have a pair at the front door to wear outside. They’re easy to slip on to go on the essential runs to the local grocery store. I don’t have to deal with touching laces and or struggling to put my shoes on. I can just slip my feet in (or out), and I’m good to go.
Covid-19 has people in Valencia trapped inside. But they can however, get groceries.
Also, I have a couple of pairs for inside. I can wear them all day. They’re easy like slippers and keep my feet off the hard floors and yet give me a slightly polished edge, as though I care. This helps me psychologically. It reminds me I’m still working as the most critical person in my girls’ lives, more than ever, right now. My Hightails also tell me that I’ve not given up.
Along with my ballet flats, I also prefer to wear either jeans, stretchy tailored trousers, flowy wide-leg comfortable pants or even black drop crouch ¾ length pants. Anything that is not a tracksuit.
Covid-19 and Goals
Having a few goals for each day is also really helping. For my peace-of-mind, I’m trying to take it day by day. I start each morning by asking what everyone wants to get done that day. If my youngest wants to bake a cake or my eldest wants to House Party her friends, we try to make it happen. If we get some schoolwork done, play a few family games, fit some exercise in and some alone time for everyone — we all feel good.
Also, if we don’t get things done, we roll them over.
I’ve heard people getting upset about homeschooling their kids and what a stress it is going to be. I kind of expected it to be horrible, but actually it’s been fun. I’m getting to know my children better, and in ways I don’t know them. Also, we are living in a confined space in Spain. I think if I was in a big house with a garden, I could easily let my girls go jump on the trampoline all day, but I don’t have that here. We’re all adapting.
The roof of Marina’s apartment building has a small space that allows her to jog and stay fit.
School
There’s some role-playing going on in our house too. When school starts at our home, my kids call me “Mrs Cid,” and they love it. This little twist helps me also. When I’m more like a teacher, they know the boundaries are the same as at school.
To make the transition from mum to the teacher every morning, we get in a pretend car and drive to school. When the journey ends, I wave good-bye and drive off and then Ms Cid, their teacher arrives.
It’s all pretty light-hearted and fun. If they call me mum during school time, I say, “She can’t help you, she’s not here.” We laugh, and they ask me again as the teacher.
My friend Gemma said she is playing a drinking game at home. Whenever someone says “Mum,” she has a drink. At least as Ms Cid I get a few hours reprieve.
An Uncertain Future
I’m not sure how long we’ll be in lockdown for. If we need to spend more time inside to decrease the peak of the virus and save lives, I’m good with that. The short-term pain is worth it, and there is a silver lining to spending more time with your family (and not spreading deadly contagion).
I’ll no doubt have to relaunch my shoes again, and they may take longer to sell than expected, but it’s kind of insignificant in the scheme of trying to make my mother stay at home and my kids feel safe and loved. I don’t know what the next 15 days has in store for us. I hope my deepest fears don’t come true and shortly this will be all a distant memory, where we learn to slow down and appreciate each other some more.
And although it might seem long, I do know, this storm will pass.
Marina Cid is the Creative Director at CHIQUI ALTA, home of the ultimate tall chica flat. She is also a mother, runner, blogger, traveller and an Aussie living in Spain building the dream. Follow her on Insta @chiquialta
Sunglasses. We all have them, but what if yours were saving the oceans too? A new joint social venture is underway to turn a commercial gill nets into something useful – upcycled sunglasses.
Gill nets are a danger to threatened marine creatures. In 2018, donations from the public helped WWF buy the licence for the last commercial gill net operating full-time in the northern Great Barrier Reef. WWF then retired the licence. They took this action to protect dugongs and other endangered marine creatures which can be drowned if accidentally caught. WWF were then left with a 600-metre-long net. So, they got together with VisionDirect and they came up with the concept of ReefCycle sunglasses.
Sunglasses That Save the Reef
A target has been set to presell 1,000 pairs. That would signal enough demand to make it viable to continue to turn harmful plastic fishing nets into sunglasses. Said WWF-Australia CEO Dermot O’Gorman, “Plastic once used to kill marine life becomes a product to protect your eyes. They are ideal for people who value saving wildlife, sustainability and creative reuse.”
Gill nets are being made into sunglasses
O’Gorman said eight million tonnes of plastic are dumped in our oceans every year, including nets which drift in the open sea, drowning endangered marine life. “If unwanted nets are upcycled, instead of dumped, we can reduce the pollution choking our wildlife.”
The ReefCycle sunglasses are on sale at visiondirect.com.au. They cost $89 for regular, $139 for polarised, and a prescription option is available. People purchasing ReefCycle sunglasses will help protect local marine life with 50% of the proceeds going back to WWF for conservation work.
So if you are looking for a new pair of glasses, then how about a purchase that will make you feel good and do good? Go on, you know you want to! ■
Good thing you have those sunnies, you’ll need them for lazing in your organic pool.
Evan Connell is the Chief Online Marketing Strategist and founder of Apparition Online. He explains how you can get those sales figures to shoot upward!
So your book is finished. It is sitting on your coffee table, looking all shiny and new. But now what? How do you get book buyers in front of it? And, even better, wanting to purchase it?
There are a few things in the marketing mix that you need to get right. The secret? You will need to make a soft copy version as well as a hard copy. That is, have the same book for sale, but in an electronic version. This can be in Kindle format or using another similar platform. Or it could just be in a PDF format. I hear you ask, “But why do I need a ‘soft copy’ as well?”
There are a huge number of books launched per day. But you need to catch the reader’s attention and make them want to click on your book and then start the purchasing process.
Sell Your Book Online by Creating Engaging Content
You can even create GIFs for your book
You may need to write a new introduction for the eBook, as you are selling it online and you are trying to grab the skimmer’s attention. This is different to how you sell a hard copy book in a bookshop.
When selling online, you need to hook the readers right away. You must have an engaging introduction followed by good content. The introduction to your eBook should both set the stage for the contents, and draw the reader in.
Proofread and Finalise
Once you have finalised the content of your eBook, you must proofread it to death. There’s a saying in editing circles – you can’t proofread your own work. Get someone else to have a look over it if you can. You need to recheck the whole content. Make sure there are no spelling errors or grammatical mistakes and rewrite it. This is especially important in the introduction. If the reader feels that the whole book is going to be a shabby mess, they will scroll on. You must get all of the bugs out!
Make your Content Presentable
Design is a massively important part of publishing. If you don’t have an artistic eye, hand the work over to someone who does. The content of your eBook needs to be visually appealing – to the point of being eye candy. Depending upon your eBook concept, you can also include pictures. In this Instagram-shaped world, visuals do keep the eye on the page and attract readers. Go for it!
Sell Your Book Online with a Killer Cover
Getting the cover right is the holy grail of publishing. The saying goes, ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover.’ But every person who buys a book does exactly that. The visuals and taglines are incredibly important. People will decide in 10 seconds whether they like the book or not, just from the cover. Oo you have to get this part of the sales equation exactly right.
Design The Landing Page
Once the whole eBook concept is finalised and uploaded for sale, it is ready for the next step. That is, to create a landing page for it. The landing page is any page of a website that the user lands on when they click the link to find out more information, or to buy it. This page is crucial: it is there to funnel potential buyers into a purchase. You will need an engaging landing page that customers won’t bounce off.
Sell Your Book Online by Sharing and Promoting
One of the leading ways to push your book to many people is to promote it on social media. There are lots of different ways to do this. You can go with facebook and Instagram, and use them as a way to reach many people with your blogs or extracts from the book. You can also share other blogs that are related to your book’s subjects, as a way to keep interest.
Jellyfish chips. Just hear us out here. By the end of this article, you will be willing to try one.
With declining marine animal populations, there’s not enough creatures eating jellyfish. Jellyfish populations have started to bloom all over the world, causing all sorts of environmental problems. So what do we do with these blubbery creatures?
Danish researchers may have developed a solution. They have discovered a new method to rapidly transform the soft umbrella-shaped jellyfish body into a crunchy treat.
Jellyfish have been a staple in Asian cuisine for centuries, but remain an oddity to the western palate. Traditionally, in Asia, the bell or body of a jellyfish is marinated in salt and potassium alum for several weeks to produce a crunchy, pickle-like texture.
Texture
Texture has a powerful effect on how we perceive and enjoy food. Mathias Clausen of the University of Southern Denmark became intrigued by jellyfish when he bit into the marine delicacy and experienced an unexpected crunch. “Tasting jellyfish myself, I wanted to understand the transformation from a soft gel to this crunchy thing you eat.”
Clausen and a team of other Danish scientists then developed a new technique that produces the same crunchy results in only a few days, rather than the long wait the traditional Asian method has. “Using ethanol, we have created jellyfish chips that have a crispy texture and could be of potential gastronomic interest,” Clausen said.
The fishing industry is looking to jellyfish as a viable food source for the expanding global population. Furthermore, jellyfish have numerous health benefits; they are rich in vitamin B12, magnesium, phosphorus, iron and selenium.
This new scientific approach may affect future commercial viability of jellyfish, as well as other foods not commonly found on the dinner plate.
Okay so maybe eating them isn’t your thing. But here is the latest advice on treating jellyfish stings!
Thinking of a holiday abroad this year? Nicole Buckler recommends getting your gondola on and heading for Venice to enjoy it in all its shabby-chic glory. Because within our lifetime, it could be gone.
Shabby-Chic Glory
In the Italian novel Invisible Cities, Kublai Khan points out to Marco Polo that for all the beguiling cities he has described in great detail, Venice was not given a mention. To this, Marco Polo fictionally replies “Every time I describe a city, I am saying something about Venice.”
Venice is famous for a reason. It is absolutely, hopelessly, achingly gorgeous. And I am a touro-sceptic, being very dubious of any place that is so overrun by tourists that they outnumber the local population. This is certainly the case in Venice, the city of liquid boulevards. As cynical as I am, I was still monumentally impressed in spite of myself. You would not be human if you didn’t love the place hard.
Nothing could detract from the city’s charm and its intriguing similarity to postcard pictures that everyone has seen all their lives before arriving. No vile tourist behaviour or damp mouldy hotel or overpriced bland carbonara pasta dish could take away the feeling that Venice is the mythical Atlantis of Italy that never sank (until now). The only way to see how exquisite Venice really can be is to use your feet and a swanky pair of shoes.
Getting Around
The street names and general haphazard geography are derived from a system that was perfected in in Bizzaro World. However stumbling aimlessly amongst the antique pavements and frighteningly green canals is what you should be aiming for.
Try to shun the main drag for a while, and you’ll find that only just two streets away is the real Venice. It is a little bit shabby, a lot quieter, and peopled by genuine Venetians in the flesh, who walk by with an air of business-as-usual. These same Italians have no reservations whatsoever about hanging their underwear out of their windows over the narrow canals. This is for every tourist to be educated as to which style the ageing Venetians prefer (uniformly large and white in fact.) It is amongst these said alleys that you will stumble upon baroque backstreet churches and gorgeous food shops. The local fare is presented so delectably in the windows that it looks like a painting.
Piazza San Marco
Follow the sporadic signs and the general flow of the tourist river, and you will stumble upon the piece de resistance of Venice, the Piazza San Marco. St Mark’s Square has for centuries been inundated by human visitors and pigeons. The latter take the form of face-seeking missiles for most of daylight hours.
The square is bordered by the amazing San Marco Basilica, a spectacular place of worship. And, the Palazzo Ducale, a pink and white Venetian Gothic palace which is the political heart of Venice (also dubiously known for its now disused torture chambers). It is also flanked by the 15th Century Torre dell’Orologio. This a tower within which a huge bronze bell is chimes every hour. The square is lapped by one of the largest canals of the region, the Grand Canal. Gondolas line up along it so that even the most photographically challenged person in the world can take a supremely magnificent photograph.
It is business as usual for the cafes of St Mark’s Square, despite the never-ending floods.
Gumboots at the Ready
For an outrageously priced, bank-breaking cappuccino, you can sit in one of the two outdoor cafes in St Mark’s Square. Here, you can listen to the live orchestras that compete for airtime. Even if you have to remortgage your house to do it, it will be the most scenic coffee you will ever consume Italiano style.
St Mark’s is situated at one of the lowest parts of the city. So when high tides come to visit, the square is covered in water. Absolutely lovely in the moonlight, but for locals an increasingly damp annoyance. It’s a great irony that the element that made Venice so renowned is now threatening its very existence. The city can no longer hold back the rise of the surrounding tidal waters. I was told that the piazza is now almost fully immersed in seawater during autumn and high tides. Raised wooden walkways are placed around the square so that tourists can still mill about the piazza. But, expect wrecked shoes and being salted by the oncoming ocean.
Alas. Venice flooding is getting worse. Unfortunately the grand plan drawn up by the city to stop such flooding isn’t going to save it. Recent storms in 2018 put 70% of the city underwater. Without intervention, Venice will be gone by the year 2100.
Raised walkways are now a perpetual fixture in the sinking city.
St Mark’s Basilica
St Mark’s Basilica is the world’s most spectacular place to go about your worshipping business. It is living evidence of Venice’s maritime and commercial might in a previous era. The Basilica is famous for holding many treasures; most of them plundered from different places across Europe. In this department, Constantinople seems to have lost most booty to the plundering Venetians. It is said that the dodgy Venetian merchants even nabbed the bones of St Mark. They shipped them from Alexandria, and built the church specifically to house his remains, hence the name.
The interior is indeed dazzling, with marble and pure gold floors. It has sparkling mosaics made with centuries of concentration from skilled artisans. It is proof that 12th-Century Venetians must have experienced a disco era after all. The Basilica feels like a leaking spiritual phenomenon with its uneven sinking floors. You can’t help but wonder how many people have sat at its pews and prayed for the best over the many centuries of its existence.
St Mark’s Basilica is Italy’s most famous church outside of Rome. It’s opulent design, with gold ground mosaics, made it a symbol of Venetian wealth and power. From the 11th century onward, the building has been known by the nickname Chiesa d’Oro (Church of gold).
The Canals
Nothing flavours Venice better than the gondolas. Some boats (perhaps meant to attract honeymooners) feature bright red vinyl seats with fluffy heart-shaped cushions. They look like something stolen out of an Italian Iap-dancing club. The gondolas are expensive and embarrassing to be seen in, but they come with a singing Italian, bleating out all your Italian classical favourites. This is while trying to steer amongst all the other gondolas bobbing about with their stripe-shirted captains. You can’t help but get in one. You’ve come all this way, after all, so you must.
Another alternative is the water taxis which are as expensive as the gondolas but without the corny kinda feeling. However one of the best transport options is the waterbus or Vaporetto. It is a fast and relatively inexpensive method of getting yourself around the pretty city.
Food Delights
Venice, for all its historical splendour and former affluence, has had to come down a peg or two and morph its trading economy into a tourist economy. I was warned that Venetians relieve the frustrations of this decline on tourists by charging outrageous prices and by being a little indifferent. Away from the main tourist strip of bland fast-food pastas and cheap horrendous wines are the backstreet restaurants. On all counts they are reasonably priced and serve up damn tasty Italian food. They are also thronged with local patrons who are friendly and noisy.
Around the Venice International University, the bars are pumping and full of talkative Italian students. The drink of choice is Aperol, a scarily bright orange liqueur, mixed with soda, and at around €2 a pop I was a big fan.
While there are some hotels within the city, they are very expensive and can be difficult to access with a suitcase on wheels. A good alternative is to stay on the mainland in a town called Mestre, which is still considered a part of Venice. Prices are much more affordable, and public transport to the island of Venice is cheap and fast, taking around 10 minutes to cross the bridge to get you there.
Getting There
Most visitors flying into Venice land at Marco Polo airport, 12km from Venice. The budget flights will land at Treviso’s minuscule airport, north of the city. Venice in summer is jam-packed and sweltering. You’ll have to offer many sacrifices to the sun gods to get a patch of sand on one its very few beaches. The European Spring is a great time to go (March through to May). European Autumn is also a good time to go, starting in September after the European school holidays have finished. If you like waterlogged feet, be sure to visit in winter. Crowds will be smaller and lines shorter. Don those gum boots and you’ll do just fine.
Author bio
Nicole Buckler Editor-in-Chief
Nicole Buckler has been a journalist for over 20 years, working in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, London, Dublin and Taipei. She recently returned to the Gold Coast, saying she has seen the world but the best place on earth is right here, and she’s never leaving again. You can contact her at Nicole@sunkissmedia.com.au
