What Else But To Adapt? — Life Under COVID-19
Illustration by Charlotte Mui
I was huddled in a corner, facing the door. My feet were a shoulder-width apart and firmly planted on the floor in the basic horse stance (read: kungfu is a part of our culture, but do not wave Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee or Jet Li at me or I will knife you). I was determined not to let myself come in contact with any part of the train. Who knows what hands might have touched them? It didn’t help that I had already run into seven people without masks on during my ten minute walk to the MTR station.
Despite the government’s prolonged measures of social distancing in the city, the morning commute to work was crowded as usual. Office workers with sleep still in their eyes, leaned their foreheads against the handrails as their disposable masks puffed out with their heavy snoring. But even they jolted awake whenever they heard someone clear their throat.
It had been just over three weeks since I last stepped foot inside the office.
Things had calmed down a lot in Hong Kong as the numbers of new found COVID-19 cases remained within the single digits column for days, many of which being imported cases and their close contacts. Our company had begun discussing the reopening of our public library space (which had been shut down for a month), as well as the necessity for staff to work in-office again. Gone were the days of optional working from home. Instead we were landed with a rotational shift schedule that nearly made my coworker pull her hair out in frustration of having to change the roster again.
It’s an attempt at easing us back into the ‘normal way of things’ and yet after having spent a month of learning to work in the comfort of my own home, remote working had already become the new normal in my easily rewired brain. Though I hate to admit that I am comfortable with the situation because while I am privileged enough to have a job that barely made any changes, my own family (and I’m sure many others) is dealing with the extra pressure of pay cuts and mandatory unpaid leaves.
In addition, the fear-driven stress of possibly contracting the virus is doubled as everyone in my family were well over the age of 50 and weren’t exactly the healthiest of the bunch.
Just two weeks ago, my grandma was hospitalised because she could barely breathe. We rode the ambulance with her at midnight and watched as her heart rate dropped to the thirties. She was breaking out in cold sweat despite being well covered with a red blanket. The paramedics gave her an oxygen mask that seemed to help a bit but when we arrived at the hospital, she was wheeled into the resuscitation room. With the pandemic induced cancellation of visiting hours, I was terrified that it would be the last time I saw her.
It’s scary, when the people you love and care about are part of the vulnerable. It’s even scarier when they’re the same people you see as your shield from the outside world.
But what else can you do but to suck it up and adapt when the world you know is burning down around you?
During the week my grandmother was hospitalised, we brought everything she asked for to the hospital so the staff could send it up to her, hoping that no news meant good news. I took on extra freelance and tarot reading jobs to try and make up the income difference while playing a lot of animal crossing just to keep my mind off things. Mum embraced the days off as a break from her hectic work shifts and took it upon herself to make new types of tea. One in particular was a fruit tea that was more like a warm fruit punch and tasted exactly like what you would imagine mulled wine would be as a child. My aunt continued to take care of us and remains to be the amazing constant in our lives, keeping us fed, aware, and grounded. We stayed home as much as possible and marathoned Disney movies as group therapy while stuffing ourselves with food and gossiping about anything we could think of.
Adapting, in my family, meant putting up with the shit show and finding the ‘small joys’ in spite of it. Mum calls it the ‘Spirit of Ah Q’ in reference to the novel by Lu Xun. I’ve never read the book, but Wikipedia defines it as the “euphemism for self-talk and self-deception even when faced with extreme defeat or humiliation.” Maybe that isn’t the most accurate way to call it, but adapting needed a certain level of self-hypnosis in order to find a glimmer, no matter how small, to hold onto so that we could keep on living.
Sometimes, that glimmer was retail therapy.
The other day, my aunt and I were on the way home from picking up the groceries when we passed by a ‘yeh-lang’ (read: thrift store but specifically for defected items or inventory from closed down businesses) that was selling cheap ceramic mugs. We went home with two — one with a hand-painted Portuguese floral design that she deemed would look nice on camera for when I decide to film myself painting, and another with a Christmassy sloth on it with the words “Happy Sloth-i-days” inside the rim. We tore off the newspaper wrapping like they were Christmas presents even though it’s the middle of April.
When I was younger, I never really had a need for material things so I rarely asked for them. However, my boyfriend of four months has a strange habit of buying random trinkets that referenced what I liked; a pin of Olaf reading an art book upside down, a Jack Skellington mug, a Kiki’s Delivery Service themed notebook, Celtic tarot cards, an anthology of gothic horror short stories, locally made soy candles that somehow managed to smell like a new moon… these are just a few items from the collection I now have (and am finding it difficult to display everything). I think he’s spoiled me for good but just looking at them sparks joy (hello, Marie Kondo) and I’m reminded of this dork who appreciates me for who I am.
After staring at the mugs for a while, I asked my aunt if it’s weird to buy things just because you liked it.
If it’s only just one or two inexpensive pieces and it makes you happy, she replied, what’s the harm?
Now I have two gorgeously large and slightly chipped mugs that I have no idea what to do with, but will always remember how excited my aunt and I were when we barged into a store that was filled top to bottom with defected ceramics.
So here I am, back in the office and trying to fall back onto the old reliable routine of cataloging art books, drafting an article that was supposed to be done about a week ago, and writing the first rant-iteration of this, all at the same time.
Barely successful.
Despite this ‘easing back to normal,’ something just doesn’t sit right.
Since Easter, I’ve been receiving texts from friends I haven’t seen in months, asking to meet up. When I scroll through Instagram, I see so many acquaintances going out and meeting up in cafes and going on hikes. One even had hotpot with their colleagues.
Yes, the numbers are down. Yes, things seem stabilised. But given that we live in such a globalised world that countries are just a plane flight away, how do you expect the pandemic to be completely controlled especially when we’re proven time after time that our government is unwilling to take preventative measures until it’s too late? And with Wuhan’s gate re-opened with a direct train line headed straight to our city, how can you be so confident that a third wave isn’t heading our way?
Perhaps it’s because you don’t think you’ll die from the virus. Well I don’t think I would either. But it’s not about us.
Grandma was discharged from the hospital on Friday morning, and the first thing we did after bringing her home was to go out and buy as many different kinds of takeout food that she could eat as a mini-celebration. We bought potstickers, salmon sashimi, siumai, rice noodle rolls, fishballs and — I was about to pick up some fried chicken as well but the dude at the stall didn’t have a mask on so I just U-turned and walked away.
Sitting back on her sofa chair, grandma cleared half of the sashimi on her own. While she ate, my aunt and I held her hand and listened to the story of the patient in the bed opposite her. How he got scolded by the nurses because he slept during the day and was on the phone all night long and how she was jealous because we hadn’t left her phone with her (to be fair, she doesn’t actually know how to use it). She kept talking about how kind the doctors and the hospital staff were while taking care of her and how they would put up with her nagging and complaining and basically coddle her. Her fingers were tight between mine, just as how they were that night, moments before she asked for an ambulance.
Maybe the best way to feel better was simply knowing everyone that mattered was alive and well and maybe that’s all that is needed for things to be normal.
So no, I would rather keep sending I miss you texts to you and every other friend I haven’t seen in over two months than to risk asymptomatic transmission either way.
And I guess that means for as long as I have to go to work and for at least fourteen days after being at work, I am barred from coming in contact with my grandma, mum, and aunt.
Yay.
// Collapsed events between 14 to 27 April 2020 compiled into a rant //