WhatsAppening tonight? A journal entry reposted from Pendemic.ie

I’ve designed a WhatsApp quiz
A virtual table quiz
And before you say it
I know there are fancier tools like
Teams, Hangouts and Zoom to see each other’s faces and more importantly to check nobody is cheating
But my sister lives in Cuba, her internet is poor so we’re going semi analog.
It’s all about inclusion, maybe this will be a disability in the future,
We’ll have to devise a politically correct expression for sh*t internet, connectively challenged?

Then there’s the virtual drinks and dinner parties
I don’t want to think about how a virtual hookup would play out.
How quickly we have adapted to this brave new world of physical isolation
We adapt, we always do in crisis.
Terminal illness has the same effect. We rally round.
Our lives are reduced to a trodden path between home, work and hospital.
After the funeral, we are unmoored, scrambling to remember our lives before.

It’s like living in a sci-fi movie, a dystopian novel, everyone says.
It is but it’s the boring part, the bit the directors and writers cut.
The esprit de corps, this ‘this too shall pass’ before it all goes wrong.
Mingling in person and touching your face has become the new smoking.
We’re a two or three-ply toilet roll away from anarchy.
I want to buy a CB Radio, more seeds and tablets for distilling rainwater
But my sons tell me I’m crazy and have read too much fiction.

Back to the Quiz
We’ll be dialing in from Wexford, Dublin, Manchester and Viñales
We’ve divvied out the rounds
The sister in Cuba is working on a Redmond trivia round,
There better be a question asking to name the only sibling that did Honours Maths.