Hello! Yes, it’s been ages, and things have been so topsy turvy.
The COVID-19 virus is now wreaking havoc, and when I say havoc, I would spell it in capitals.
HAVOC.
The greater Manila area, as well as the island of Luzon, is on lockdown. Classes (online and onsite) are suspended and save for a skeletal staff, work is also suspended.
The only thing I can do to do my bit (yes, it feels like I am signing up in aid of some war effort) is to cooperate. I have elderly parents, and my brother and I are sickly people. This also means I have to guzzle a fair amount of Vitamin C, drink gallons of water, drink rivers of water, and eat nutritious food, and minimise contact with the hoi polloi general public.
We’re currently three weeks in, and I miss going out of the house, but to ensure the good health of many, [strict] compliance must be observed.
Lord, I am so not making sense at the moment.
These three weeks made me realise how many things I have been taking for granted. Things like going to work, running an errand, getting some time alone and dating myself (no kidding, I do that, like a lot). I also miss my occasional milk tea run. I am now actually making a post-quarantine/lockdown bucket list of things to do:
- Buy office supplies–I AM NOT KIDDING
- Buy a bucket of Chickenjoy
- Drown myself in milk tea: my two poisons of choice would be Macao Imperial Tea’s Cream Cheese Cocoa with pudding or Infinitea’s Caramel Milk Tea with 75% sugar, no pearls, and pudding only.
- Visit my aunts
- Buy an oven toaster and a waffle maker
- Visit and check in on my church friend who lives just down the street.
- Go to my uni’s main library to borrow a book I need for a report.
- Buy a bag of crisps and a jar of dip and INDULGE.
I am not going to lie, though. I was able to catch up on sleep, and have time to do my uni coursework. I tell you, submitting a list of references and making sure that they are all peer-reviewed publications was no easy task! I was given the go-signal to make an annotated bibliography. As most of my references were PDF documents, it was a bit of a pain reading it from the computer screen. However, no pain, no gain. So I am currently writing the summaries by hand, and will encode them later on. I try to do at least two or three a day, so I wouldn’t panic when crunch time comes. And then, there’s still that report that I need to prepare. Oh, dear.
So, I end this little update. Hope you are all well, safe and healthy inside your homes!