Another 6 days of 14 to stay in quarantine. It is not dull, but I do start missing to move around. Gymnastics is not the same as being outside or at least running up a staircase. But all this is not allowed. All I can do is open the window for a bit. Joints and muscles seem to ache more when you don’t use them. Nothing serious, just uncomfortable. Otherwise, I go with my days quite disciplined. I slept in the first day, as a result of jetlag and the hilarious journey. But the rest of the time, I am preparing material in the morning and then read in the afternoon. In the evenings, I listen to audiobooks. Now, it is Mikhail Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita. Before it was Max Frisch’s Homo Faber and Montauk. Audiobooks I find a good way to recapture on the common literature body. But I would feel strange to listen to a book, I never read before. I also tried some American nonfiction. Even though the books may be good, narrators with American accents talk very straight into your face. Then I tried a female American narrator, and it was like listening to Amy Coney Barrett’s pressing voice.
I am now down to one meal a day and rarely get hungry. Even I exercise, I need no energy at all above the base metabolism. For that, I made a choice of restaurants registered on Foodpanda. It works great. The driver delivers to the reception and the concierge will make sure it arrives quickly. I don’t have a microwave to heat things up. So, speed is essential. Then the bell rings; I put on my mask and Lisa, a middle-aged lady from South East Asia, has put my package on a little chair outside my door. Sometimes, I chat a few sentences with Lisa, who is very friendly. She takes care of at least a whole floor of quarantines, like me. This is my only human-human interaction. Then I get a call once a day, where I report my body temperature. Even with my laptop, I am very “connected”, I avoid private “Zoom calls”. I had a few calls work related to Tilburg University. But that’s it. I am quite lucky in this situation, that I am more of an introverted character. I can imagine for somebody extroverted, it must be hell.
I have a huge can of Nestle instant coffee. That was not a good choice. A friend made me aware of Aeropress. That looks like a handy piece of equipment, and I will get one for sure once I am out.
Tomorrow morning, I have to submit another specimen and submit it to a lab in Wanchai. For that, I booked a delivery service online. Let’s see how it goes. Only after confirmation of my negative COVID-19 test will I be released on Sunday, October 18th. Even though this is not pleasant for me, SARs 2 - COVID-19 is even less pleasant for others. I heard from friends, what it means to get it. And, seems not everybody has the immune response of the current US president. Whatever that story was. So, I instead keep a low viral footprint.
I am running my computer models to understand the spread of the epidemic. Some decades ago, I had the idea to use these models in marketing and treat it like a “disease”. These were interesting consulting projects in the 1990s. But rather than showing you my raw Pascal code, I recommend looking at the models merged below by Grant Sanderson, who also has a website I follow regularly: https://www.3blue1brown.com/
A ray of sunshine in quarantine: German organic apple juice.