The modern plague
I'm not sure if it's a failure of memory or of willful ignorance, but I could not remember exactly when I first heard about it. As everyone who has lived the first few months of this year would know, it's the time of the modern plague - one that has affected almost every person globally, disrupting their lives, uprooting their routines, destroying their livelihoods, and changing their relationships with everything, people, time, money.
I vaguely remember social media posts about some sort of viral disease hitting China, but paid scant attention to it. Another SARS? Another H1N1? Another type of flu whose name I can't remember? I just got my influenza shot. So what, it does not affect me.
As the realisation that the disease has hit the country via Singapore in late January while I was about to fly to Koh Samui, I began to feel a slow dread, about how it's transmitted, about how serious it could be, about how it could infect so easily, about how it affects the respiratory systems.
I began to consume news upon news upon alarming social media posts and stories coming from its Ground Zero, making myself more anxious with each click. Being surrounded by tourists from China while queuing at Immigration at the small Samui airport made me feel nervous. Are they from Wuhan? Were they already in Southeast Asia and therefore not exposed from the disease back home?
At the resort the feelings of dread deepened, with each cough and sneeze by a Chinese tourist across the dining area making me cringe in fear. And the more news and social media posts I come across, the more afraid I felt. People collapsing on streets, in hospitals, alleged cover-ups, deaths, the disease's march across the world, one country falling after another.
Never would I have thought that the Bon Iver concert I went to in Jakarta the previous week would be the last for this year. And that particular vacation would be my last trip overseas for a while.
On the flight home, a European tourist sitting across the aisle from us was ill, coughing, sniffling. I spent the next week on the verge of being ill, feeling under the weather and sluggish. I probably had a cold, or paranoia made me feel sick although I wasn't.
In March, we went to a comedy show in Malay (komedi stendap..haha) and there were temperature checks and hand sanitisers before going in. And like the concert and the vacation, I'm guessing that was the last I would see a comedy show in a theatre hall for a while.
Mid-month, the country went into a partial lockdown. It wasn't called a lockdown exactly, I suppose to not incite panic and chaos (too late, the panic buyers and the hoarders don't give a shit). It was to be the first of a series of abbreviations we have to suddenly learn to get used to.
Luckily for us, we went grocery shopping the weekend before it was announced and had sufficient things to survive. Then the lockdown got extended, and next thing you know it's June.
It wasn't that hard for me to WFH (see what I meant about getting cosy with abbreviations?) because I have actually been doing that on and off since last year - hey, my company, my rule! but the difference is that I don't actually get to go anywhere except to get groceries or stuff from the pharmacy. No dinners out, no cinemas or shopping jaunts on the weekend, no date nights, no office, no bras, no shoes. New normal became a popular term, oft-repeated.
I had to buy beauty products from online shops I mistrust because of some previous fuck-up, I bought books online (to add to my 300 to be read books pile), I practiced becoming a recluse. And I liked it.
Before the loosening of the rules, I had not seen my parents since around end February and I was glad I got to see them during Eid although it was a strange Eid celebration. Only one day, long breakfast at my parents, then shooting over to my in-laws for a late lunch then tea time at my place. At every house there were hand sanitisers and masks in place. No open houses this year, no client open houses (important for showing face, potential networking and amazing free food). We didn't even get new baju raya, I just wore an Indonesian batik dress with some random black long skirt and declared it a baju kurung and my husband wore the same baju melayu he wore last year. I didn't taste a single kuih raya, and finished all the packed raya food in the fridge in a week.
Even Ramadan was different this year. There were no invites for buka puasa, not with family, relatives or friends. No corporate buka puasa, no Ramadan buffets. No wastage, but no treating the colleagues or family for a buka gathering either. No freezing in the office, the husband cooked and we ordered food from the neighbourhood restaurants.
Everything tasted good when you have to be moderate with your choices. I never washed so many dishes in my life, taking the lift became adventures, we began to worry as time flew by because we had planned to cut opex and move to an office with better rental, and we had yet to find a place.
I managed to read around the same amount of books I would have read if life was normal, strangely. I had read an article about how difficult it was to concentrate and read during the pandemic. True, I was frequently distracted and read too much doom and gloom stuff on social media, but somehow I managed to plow through the books.
Our body clocks were ruined, sleep cycles disturbed. The insomnia visited a few times. There was a time when we were up til almost sunrise, and we both gained some weight. There were times when I read about businesses closing that I felt anxious. People losing jobs, selling food online to survive.
We had been hit with so much the past couple of years, and now this.
Our search for a new place intensified after the loosening of regulations. After some wrangle with a place that thankfully we decided to not go for, we finally found a new office. Currently we're in the middle of decorating it, no interior designers, just internet references and trawling online for pictures of furniture.
There are so many things that I miss though. Eating out, dressing up, going to the cinema, going to a gig, laughing out loud at a comedy show, not wearing a mask, reapplying lipsticks, sharing food, hugs, not being paranoid about other humans, not worrying that you might catch it and not having that nagging feeling that you won't survive it if you do.
*****************************
In this strange new post-plague world, so much have changed. No longer are there greetings through the shaking of hands, the air kissing, the hugs. You have to breathe your own stale breaths for the most part of the day behind masks, eating out is rare, and the few times you do it feels like a private party.
Half of the people you work with choose to work from home, some developers and building management show their true dirty colours - refusing to reduce rent or give discounts despite buildings standing empty and tenants reconsidering whether it was even worth having a physical location.
You had to apply for handouts, subsidies, to ease the burden and cashflow. You hoped that your projects wouldn't be cancelled, you hoped that people would still spend and that there would be work and that your industry would not stoop to an ugly price war, as it has begun to descend.
You no longer feel like spending indiscriminately, money has to be saved except for things you need (and books). Eating home is preferable, and you decided that not having frequent human company is a blessing.
Can you live in this world and thrive in it?
I suppose the answer is something that will come not so soon, maybe next year. After the trauma becomes a past tense, after the vaccine is found, after it's safe, after the new normal is back to looking like the old normal.
I vaguely remember social media posts about some sort of viral disease hitting China, but paid scant attention to it. Another SARS? Another H1N1? Another type of flu whose name I can't remember? I just got my influenza shot. So what, it does not affect me.
As the realisation that the disease has hit the country via Singapore in late January while I was about to fly to Koh Samui, I began to feel a slow dread, about how it's transmitted, about how serious it could be, about how it could infect so easily, about how it affects the respiratory systems.
I began to consume news upon news upon alarming social media posts and stories coming from its Ground Zero, making myself more anxious with each click. Being surrounded by tourists from China while queuing at Immigration at the small Samui airport made me feel nervous. Are they from Wuhan? Were they already in Southeast Asia and therefore not exposed from the disease back home?
At the resort the feelings of dread deepened, with each cough and sneeze by a Chinese tourist across the dining area making me cringe in fear. And the more news and social media posts I come across, the more afraid I felt. People collapsing on streets, in hospitals, alleged cover-ups, deaths, the disease's march across the world, one country falling after another.
Never would I have thought that the Bon Iver concert I went to in Jakarta the previous week would be the last for this year. And that particular vacation would be my last trip overseas for a while.
On the flight home, a European tourist sitting across the aisle from us was ill, coughing, sniffling. I spent the next week on the verge of being ill, feeling under the weather and sluggish. I probably had a cold, or paranoia made me feel sick although I wasn't.
In March, we went to a comedy show in Malay (komedi stendap..haha) and there were temperature checks and hand sanitisers before going in. And like the concert and the vacation, I'm guessing that was the last I would see a comedy show in a theatre hall for a while.
Mid-month, the country went into a partial lockdown. It wasn't called a lockdown exactly, I suppose to not incite panic and chaos (too late, the panic buyers and the hoarders don't give a shit). It was to be the first of a series of abbreviations we have to suddenly learn to get used to.
Luckily for us, we went grocery shopping the weekend before it was announced and had sufficient things to survive. Then the lockdown got extended, and next thing you know it's June.
It wasn't that hard for me to WFH (see what I meant about getting cosy with abbreviations?) because I have actually been doing that on and off since last year - hey, my company, my rule! but the difference is that I don't actually get to go anywhere except to get groceries or stuff from the pharmacy. No dinners out, no cinemas or shopping jaunts on the weekend, no date nights, no office, no bras, no shoes. New normal became a popular term, oft-repeated.
I had to buy beauty products from online shops I mistrust because of some previous fuck-up, I bought books online (to add to my 300 to be read books pile), I practiced becoming a recluse. And I liked it.
Before the loosening of the rules, I had not seen my parents since around end February and I was glad I got to see them during Eid although it was a strange Eid celebration. Only one day, long breakfast at my parents, then shooting over to my in-laws for a late lunch then tea time at my place. At every house there were hand sanitisers and masks in place. No open houses this year, no client open houses (important for showing face, potential networking and amazing free food). We didn't even get new baju raya, I just wore an Indonesian batik dress with some random black long skirt and declared it a baju kurung and my husband wore the same baju melayu he wore last year. I didn't taste a single kuih raya, and finished all the packed raya food in the fridge in a week.
Even Ramadan was different this year. There were no invites for buka puasa, not with family, relatives or friends. No corporate buka puasa, no Ramadan buffets. No wastage, but no treating the colleagues or family for a buka gathering either. No freezing in the office, the husband cooked and we ordered food from the neighbourhood restaurants.
Everything tasted good when you have to be moderate with your choices. I never washed so many dishes in my life, taking the lift became adventures, we began to worry as time flew by because we had planned to cut opex and move to an office with better rental, and we had yet to find a place.
I managed to read around the same amount of books I would have read if life was normal, strangely. I had read an article about how difficult it was to concentrate and read during the pandemic. True, I was frequently distracted and read too much doom and gloom stuff on social media, but somehow I managed to plow through the books.
Our body clocks were ruined, sleep cycles disturbed. The insomnia visited a few times. There was a time when we were up til almost sunrise, and we both gained some weight. There were times when I read about businesses closing that I felt anxious. People losing jobs, selling food online to survive.
We had been hit with so much the past couple of years, and now this.
Our search for a new place intensified after the loosening of regulations. After some wrangle with a place that thankfully we decided to not go for, we finally found a new office. Currently we're in the middle of decorating it, no interior designers, just internet references and trawling online for pictures of furniture.
There are so many things that I miss though. Eating out, dressing up, going to the cinema, going to a gig, laughing out loud at a comedy show, not wearing a mask, reapplying lipsticks, sharing food, hugs, not being paranoid about other humans, not worrying that you might catch it and not having that nagging feeling that you won't survive it if you do.
*****************************
In this strange new post-plague world, so much have changed. No longer are there greetings through the shaking of hands, the air kissing, the hugs. You have to breathe your own stale breaths for the most part of the day behind masks, eating out is rare, and the few times you do it feels like a private party.
Half of the people you work with choose to work from home, some developers and building management show their true dirty colours - refusing to reduce rent or give discounts despite buildings standing empty and tenants reconsidering whether it was even worth having a physical location.
You had to apply for handouts, subsidies, to ease the burden and cashflow. You hoped that your projects wouldn't be cancelled, you hoped that people would still spend and that there would be work and that your industry would not stoop to an ugly price war, as it has begun to descend.
You no longer feel like spending indiscriminately, money has to be saved except for things you need (and books). Eating home is preferable, and you decided that not having frequent human company is a blessing.
Can you live in this world and thrive in it?
I suppose the answer is something that will come not so soon, maybe next year. After the trauma becomes a past tense, after the vaccine is found, after it's safe, after the new normal is back to looking like the old normal.
Comments
Post a Comment