I think not being in New Zealand right now
is causing a lot of home sickness.
I wish I could be contributing in helping in New Zealand.
That's definitely hard.
I'm proud.
It's actually like it's a--
I feel I'm envious I'm not there
but I'm proud of how it's being handled.
I wish I could just hop on a plane
and fly back at this moment
and tell people who may be trying to get their heads around
what they're about to start.
(soft music)
I'm currently based in Bristol, in the UK.
I arrived here in Reggio Emilia nearly a year ago.
I'm currently in Brisbane City, Queensland, Australia.
I'm in Radisson, in Arabia.
I am a nurse here and I'm working in an oncology,
stem-cell transplant and palliative care unit.
I haven't taken much strain to my actual job.
Yeah, it still feels quite normal being there,
which is really nice.
Saudi Arabia's been in lockdown probably,
not from lockdown, but they started closing things down
about three weeks ago.
There's hours where
there's complete lockdown, which is police.
But it's coming into Ramadan in Saudi as well, so like,
do you know how the supermarket shelves in New Zealand
and, I mean, most of the world, are completely empty?
And Saudi Arabia, because it's coming into Ramadan,
so usually their supermarkets are wildly overstocked
during Ramadan,
but, like, literally, there are stocks up to the ceiling.
What's happening in Brisbane is very little.
And just Queensland, in general.
The Queensland borders have closed.
And as far as isolation goes,
forced isolation, that's about it.
There are things like nail salons, like water restaurants,
they're forced to close for the foreseeable future.
But there is absolutely no other rules on isolation.
There's no lockdown, as such.
It's so hard because everyday is just--
We don't know what's happening.
Now the latest is that, I just read on the La Repubblica,
is that maybe the trend is starting to go down.
Which is obviously very, very good news.
But some days we have this and then it goes up again, so.
We're just riding this wave all together.
But what I do now, every single day,
I open my window and I talk to numbers and numbers
on the opposite balcony.
(foreign language)
It's refreshing to them as it is for me.
Boris gave us an announcement
to say that we were going on a lockdown
similar to New Zealand,
which gave me a lot of confidence.
Like, in saying that though, I was,
I really don't think Boris is a good communicator.
New Zealand's been taking so much early action
that what the UK and what New Zealand are doing
is sort of aligning, at the moment.
Which, again, I think is really bad,
but really useful for me.
So I just listen to what Jacinda's saying
and I sort of just take heed of that.
(soft music)
I would be coming home to a really stilted,
well, stalled economy.
With no job, no flat, going into winter.
So, I mean, really.
I'm a full-time employee here.
And it's going into summer.
I'm in a nice flat, a nice environment.
It makes sense, for me, to stay put.
Yeah, I just didn't realise how big it was gonna get
and how quickly things would develop.
And by the time I kind of did, I was like oh,
I'm close enough to finishing my contract
and now it looks like I might be extending (laughs).
In Saudi Arabia, about three weeks ago now,
they closed the international borders,
except for shipping of goods services, land borders,
sea borders and air borders.
So no one's leaving or coming out.
I'm naturally a proud person,
but it's also in the fact that
I already have a car here, for example.
I've got rent to pay, utilities, got health insurance.
My whole life is here already.
It would have been very easy to,
being sort of in between employment period,
to just pack it all and then come home.
But it would've just complicated my life a whole lot more.
What I did is
I booked my ticket home, I was aware that
it was getting harder and harder.
And a couple of hours before I cancelled,
I cancelled for a number of reasons.
I knew that I was in an apartment, by myself.
I could control my isolation, my hygiene,
everything that went on the moment I stepped inside.
Also, I would've been going to Paris
and crossing through several countries to get home.
I didn't feel comfortable being exposed to unknowns.
Knowing I would be going into self-isolation
and being less than 100 metres
away from my 80-year old grandmother.
(soft music)
Your life is going to change in the next four weeks,
it's going to feel bizarre, different, surreal.
And just remember that these are all short-term sacrifices
for our long-term gain.
Staying home is contributing 100%.
It's reducing the workload on us,
as healthcare professionals.
Yeah, it's so, so important.