Home Quarantine (7)

I am still logging into work, so the daily schedule is not much different from normal. Get out of the bed by 6am, coffee and cleaning, yoga and shower before 9:15am. Starting to look at the computer until lunch time, break for lunch, pick up the computer again until 6pm. Then alcohol time! Saturday and Sunday makes the big difference, althogh the local police station still calls me every 2 hours, I can sleep until my hearts content. Take all my sweet time to practice Ashtanga and mop the floor again. It is fantastic to have 2 slow days once every week.

I am generally very diappointed with the Chinese media that I can get hold of, perhaps I am just not trying hard enough to look for the articles or newspaper that doesn't simply regergutate the western mainstream media's opinions or news. In general, I don't think these Chinese media are capable of supporting their own investigation center outside of the domestic turf. Sigh...

Picture was taken with my brother and nephew when we met in Appi ski resort in Iwata prefecture before the COVID outbreak. That was a great holidays!

Home Quarantine (6)

Day 7 in home quarantine, I spent time learing Japanese (I vow to get food and drink to my table next time I visit Japan), dealing with work (otherwise I get really too bored) and cleaning the apartment/cooking. The weather has turned great today, the balcony has the warm breeze coming up from the field nearby, bright and sunny day. Who invented home quarantine? Healthy people will be ill if locking in for 14 days!

The picture looks like Jon was trying out the sling in the water market in Thailand - the vendor in the market was very clever. He provided the slings and some fruit seeds or pods, hard as stone. In front of us, some tin cans were hanging on the trees out of the alley way facing the water. We get to shoot the can, if hitting anything, a candy is the reward.

Home Quarantine (5)

One more week to go. The vaccine has claimed 29 lives in Norway, the authority came out sand said we should stop vaccinating the old a frail people very young and healthy people should still be vaccinated. But hello, only old and frail people die of COVID virus. Young and healthy people do not die of COVID - by statistics. What is the rational? The so called health experts probably never study statistics in university, or they are just too eager to get a share of the publicity for their future career development. It has been a good day in Taipei, the temperature has gone up a bit to 20C during the day, no need to have the radiator on. I am too bored and going through the food Mom has stocked up for us. Planning what to have for lunch and dinner the next day. I am also calculating the space left from the freezer so that I can put the food scrapes (we are not allowed to throw away any garbage, they can be virus infused). It is like a 3-D Tetrix game. You eat this, and you have space for more garbage. In Hong Kong, I have my own small composite bin in the balcony, good enough to turn the veggie bits into some neutritions for the plants. But Mom hates nature, she never had a plant in her living space, how strange. The picture was taken in Vietnam a year before last, we were on the Tuktuk texi and thinking we are being conned. It is not about the money lost, it is the feeling of being ripped off that kills me.

Home Quarantine (4)

Almost half-way through, another 7 days to go. My phone buzzes on average every 2 or 3 hours saying I am again running away from my apartment. Even the police officer gets fed up, she asked, how many days are you going to be around.

Back to the virus, I am not a medical expert, so I stand in no position to make the judgement. That's also part of the reason that I started to dig around trying to find more information about this virus since last January. However, the more I look, the more indication I found that media is showing only one-side story. There is no debate, because all second opinions are ignored or discredited in the name of "they do not care about saving lives". There is no science, because I have not yet seen a solid, sound, proper study about how effective masks are - there are tons of pseudo studies about masks, WHO or the media only want to publish the ones providing positive results about wearing masks. There is no consistency, if lock down work is essential to keep everyone safe, why are certain people like supermarket workers are allowed to travel freely? Surely they carry gems like any other living beings. If staying home works, why they ignore the fact that virus can survive on the hard/plastic/metal surface for hours, that means the water bottle you got from the supermarket could be covered with virus. But they tell you staying home is the best thing you can do to you and your family. If wearing masks protects others, why N95 is allowed - the valve in the mask is to allow air flows out, in other words, it filters in, not out. If I see anyone wearing N95 masks, I should be running for my life - but the media nor the government is not telling us this. They only dully repeat, wearing masks to protect yourself and others. There is no truth, no media ever compares the natural number of mortality 2020 and the year before. I was so curious whether this virus is lethal, because I don't see people dying on the streets. So I went to the government website to look for the mortality statistics in Hong Kong. They only published the figures in 2017. There were 80,000 inpatients due to pneumonia and 6,000 death. In 2020, COVID-19 so far claims 150 lives, similar to the car accident mortality a year! Where is the consistency, science and truth? When the whole society abandon those values and retrieve to the option of living in a locked down society because that's the laziest way out, I am really losing hope.

The picture is our X'mas lunch last year, I tried to make Yorkshire puddings, but not very successful. It is so hard to get hold of good piece of meat in Hong Kong (unlike in Taiwan, Mum has stocked up the fridge with great premium meat and produce, we were surprised by the quality of food ingredients in every meal, and casually claimed this is nothing special, huh?).

Home Quarantine (3)

My mobile phone switched between 2 stations averagely around 6 times a day. Every time I got the SNS message saying that I am violating the quarantine rules, I rushed to the landline and called the local police station - explaining that it appears I am away from my apartment but in fact, it is the mobile phone base station playing up on us. It is almost like a game, who gets it first! I am trying to set up the routine during this lock up period. Getting out of the bed by 6, coffee and yoga before work starts. Lunch, cock tail and blogging before dinner. Movies or TV then going to bed. 10 more days to go. I am religiously doing Ashtanga yoga for almost 3 years until now. Ashtanga yoga is an extremely challenging sport, as a practioner, you decide how difficult the practice should be, you decide whether you should try a pose that's one level up, you do it when you feel you are ready. In other words, you are your own instructor. Although it is still extremely fun to practice in the studio with a real instructor and fellow studuents - instructor normally walks around and inspect individual's practice. He/she gives some adivse, but studdents still practice according to his/her level and pace. The same posts and sequence daily (except Saturday) provide the stability. You can change, feeling different during the practice because you had different diet, mood, mindset the night before. How fun it is, it is like doing an experiment every day and I am always anxious to see what is the outcome. Interestingly these few days in Taiwan, I found that I have become a bit more flexible in twisting. I wonder what has changed. Renting the biking machine for Jon, I had to explain to Mom that this is the hamster wheel. She was giggling like a little girl, ha ha.

Home Quarantine (2)

There is only one opinion in traditional (newspaper, TV) and social media, that is, lock down works and wearing masks saves lives. In the name of keeping everyone safe, we give up our freedom and allow the government turn itself into a police state. The second day of our quarantine, we were visited by 4 police officers at the door. Of course, they cannot set foot into my apartment because that will violate the quarantine rules. They came to be sure that we are home, because my phone carrier shows that my mobile phone signal has transferred from one station to another - I think it is due to the 2 base stations shifting the workload to balance the workload. The change of base stations sets an alert to the police station, and they turned up. I think they really just want to scare you into understanding that you are being watched. Nothing else. I suppose the standard protocol is to visit every newbie in quarantine once so to scare them good and proper. Wow, what's running through my mind is the secret police roaming into people's house and taking away whoever they think should be taken away, no explanation and the family's never going to hear from the missing one. If any country can lock up their country men in the prison violently and aggressively like China has done, sure it is possible to quickly control the spreading. But at what cost? I would rather live in a country without these nonsense and with the possibility of getting COVID-19. The great barrington declaration signed by 50,000+ medical expert, doctors explains the situation clearly - young people should live our lives as normal and the government should protect the vulnerable (nursing home), the virus is not as lethal as the media or politicians want you to believe. Plain and simple, but why this point of view is not being accepted or wildly available in media? Because it doesn't stir up panic and fear, it is bloody too plain and boring. I think I need to work on my scotch/whiskey collection now, it is all too depressing.

Home Quarantine

We decided to put up with the 14-day quarantine when arriving in Taipei and another 14-day when heading back to Hong Kong. The decision was rushed because Taiwanese government will impose stricter quarantine rules after 15th of January. The tigher rule says that you have to quarantine under the assumption that one person per hotel room or apartment. For a couple arriving in Taiwan, you are required to live in a separate room that is equiped with a onsuite toilets and shower. The 2 of you should not see each other although living under the same roof. I do agree that there should be no one who do not require quarantine sharing the same living space, but for a couple living and traveling together before landing in Taiwan, what is the point to have them living in separation? The rule is obnovious and, clearly, the purpose is to stop people from traveling back to Taiwan. I suppose most Taiwanese are very happy about the govenment taking action to shut the boarder - the data does support that early closure of boarder is the key to reduce the COVID cases. However, what is the cost of lock down and how much we allow the state to take control over people's life, these questions are left unanswered because people are geniunly afraid of the virus, and that seems to drain all their brain power. No one is allowed to think differently, if you do not agree to the lock down or mask wearing, you are a murderer and have no rights to express any opinions. Murders should be punished, not to allowed to speak - no fair and honest trail is required. I smell great culture revoluation - where science is not respected, statistic data are ignored, only being politically correct and conform with the crowd can save your life. Anyhow, I am of no interest to challenge the rule - it is not so good not to see my parents for almost a year. We flew home, going through various checking points (filling in lots of forms - strangely the government believes in the power of words. As long as you sign into a form that you are not ill enough time, they believe you are health). We are now staying at home, counting the days when we can go out running, hiking or cycling. The picture was taken by our windsurfing friends back in Cheung Chau island, Hong Kong. We picked up windsurfing just 7 months ago, practiced almost every weekend.