Hey there,
Have been out a week and it feels like a month. Is hard to think about the quarantine days in any cohesive or linear way. Have talked to a bunch of folks this week that all went through it and we all have similar recollections. As one could guess, many were families with kids and most of them had adjoining rooms, so there was someone else there and you could go from one room to another, which sounded OK. One guy said he was in a room with just his 10 year old kid and it was worse than I could imagine...and was imagining that to be pretty bad.
The one through line in all of the quarantine tales was that around the 7 day mark, people almost lost it. In various ways...like they were gonna make a run for it, or like me, they hit the bottle in an unhealthy way.
This has been a great week that feels more so due to the freedom and seeing folks I hadn't in 6 months. There will come a time when we leave this dump for good and there are some nouns that I will never forget .
Here is one I will absolutely not miss though...Effin' year round mosquitos. There was a good month and a half where they got frozen out in Seattle and my body was bite free. Already have them from behind my ear to the top of the feet, and as I am typing this in the office on Sunday morning, one is circling me like it's a shark and I'm a wounded sea otter.
Not a surprise though. The locals get all freaked out about a cold snap when it 'dips' into the 60's, and most days have been in the upper 70's with today looking like it is gonna hit 90...so ideal mosquito breeding weather. Have to powder up before going out to keep the globes dry. Watched a Dimitri Martin stand-up special and he was saying that calling them balls was misguided. You hit and kick balls. He suggested they should call them something like mints or lozenges and from now on, will refer to them as such. Flip-flops are accepted in all major retail outlets and our windows are open all day and night. Even had to turn a fan on one evening as it was a bit uncomfortable to sleep. Yin/Yang my friends.
After 6 months away, not sure why I was expecting the place to be much different. Covid is really under control currently. They post numbers everyday and there are usually 5-10 'imported' cases, ones where people in quarantine from other countries test positive, and only a handful of 'local' ones total. Of those, there is detailed tracing information about them. After quarantine, one must self-monitor their health for 7 days, which seems weird cause I self monitor my health 24/7, but it is an official 7 days where the government is keeping an eye on you. They text me at precisely 9am every morning asking to rate my health from 1-3, with 1 being all clear. If you don't reply immediately, they text you every 15 minutes asking the same. If after an hour you don't reply, they will call and if you don't answer, the cops will be sent out. I have replied within the hour time frame, but have also received two phone calls from the local police (in English) asking me if I feel OK. I took my home PCR test they issued at the airport yesterday (21 days after arrival) and was very negative.
They sent me a text asking about that result too.
In every business you enter, you must scan a QR code onto your phone and send a text to the Man so they can alert you if you have come into a place where someone that had it was. What is almost jarring to see is the mask wearing. They wear them in businesses for sure, but literally everywhere else all the time. Walking on the streets at any hour, I have yet to see a single person not only not wearing one, but never with it sliding under their nose. Not once. And a lot of folks wear eyeglasses and they have somehow figured out how to not have them fog up.
It appears that all of the places I like to frequent have made it through their covid times and are still open. My friends at the coffee and vegetable stands were happy to see me but I was happier to see them still in business although they all say that it was a tough summer.
Would be remiss if I didn't mention the roads. The dopes are still doing dopey things, but does it feel like a little less? Has it been microscopically less with each passing season, but so little that it is hard to perceive? Have seen some traffic reconfigurations that have been done recently in areas that I have been tilting windmills against for years. Betty says that the cops have been cracking down on a couple of the more egregious habits they have. Driving habits is one of the three pillars of my gripes against this place.
Betty told me she was driving here now and was excited to see her in action. She picked me up from the hotel at midnight and drove home. Roads were quite empty so didn't see her navigate through swarms of scooters. On the drive she told me a story.
One day she is coming home from work and to get to the lane our apartment garage entrance is on, you needed to cross a busy street. 4 lanes of traffic to be exact...I can show you.
You can get into the middle as the merdian is big enough to fit a car without bleeding into oncoming traffic, but at an angle as it isn't quite a car length wide. It is also long enough to fit three cars at an angle. Typically, the turn our way is busier so if we are first to the space, will take the middle space to go left as many cars make a U-turn there and that is better from the first spot of three. The third space is for cars to make a U-turn going the other way as their is no left turn there as it is a school.
Betty relates that she is in the middle space to go left waiting for oncoming traffic to clear, and when it does, a car is in that first spot and cuts her off going into our lane in a way where she almost hit them. This car then turns into our garage and it also happens to be the car in the parking spot next to us.
The car is driven by the driver of the people who live on floor 13 and he drops off his passengers at the elevator before parking. Betty eyeballs the floor they go to, takes the elevator to 13 and knocks on the door. I don't know the tone she used, but from experience can guess it wasn't gentle, and tells them that if she sees their driver do shit like that again, she is gonna report them to the cops/building/God only knows who.
The cutoff move this guy made is typical for here and it (and all the other moves like it) drive me insane and have always railed on them for it. I will lay on the horn for sure, and scream a blue streak if I get the chance, but road raging to a persons apartment is next level. The good thing is that she now has a better appreciation of the way things are from the drivers perspective and can relate to my frustrations and anger in a way that escaped her previously.
Last thing that I've noticed about being back is that people are concerned about China taking action militarily. It has always been part of the conversation, but as something far off in the distance. This week, almost every conversation past small talk has touched on the topic...like what is the timeline to leave the country, or the escape plan if things get hot. I know that the situation is making it through the normal media BS as so many people in the States asked me before I left why we would be going back at all. Daily life goes on, but that it enters into my mind regularly is something new and it sucks. If you are not clear on what the deal is, John Oliver did a piece on it a few weeks ago that I feel does a great job of explaining the situation and would direct you to see that if you want to know more.
That's that. I was hoping that by the end of this entry that I would have killed that mosquito and could show you its carcass, but it has eluded me.
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