Leaving Quarantine

Some years ago, I joked about Hong Kong, that it would not be a city but a vertical storage and logistic system for live human bodies. The whole purpose of Hong Kong is to move human bodies efficiently between boxes to produce GDP. I just spent two weeks of quarantine in Wanchai and was impressively demonstrated by my view on the cemetery that the final box of this process is the tiniest one and does not have windows. I am joking again. Of course, there are other things you can do professionally in Hong Kong. For example, build the boxes. Or think in boxes.

 Don't get me wrong, I have fond memories of this city, as I lived on Lamma Island for five years. Some of the best of my life, I may say. I love the South China Sea, the outer islands, the hiking trails, the black kites, the Bauhinia trees, and some places where there is still a character of hard work against all the odds and succeeding. It was not long ago that people swam into Hong Kong for freedom and prosperity. And these people worked incredibly hard, and you can still find this culture of resilience in some quarters. If you want to learn something about entrepreneurship, then close the textbook and get a plane ticket.

 In the end, Hong Kong is a historical anomaly. It would not exist hadn't the British violently forced open the Chinese market and occupying this "rock" for a hundred years before returning it to its homeland. Later as a colony and ruled by appointed governours to serve British interests, it became a loosely regulated financial centre - with all the consequences this entails.

 Also, some local tycoons made their fortune, often by getting government concessions and licenses or by smuggling and drug trade and diversifying into Casinos in Macao. There is a fixed term for some British bankers who came here during the wild days: "FILTH" (Failed In London, Try Hong Kong). Recently, the pendulum is coming back, though. Let's call it FIHKRL; even it's hard to pronounce. So now London builds an amalgamation of FILTH and FIHKRL. It's probably a good choice that a comedian now governs the UK as a Prime Minister. At least in a democracy, people get what they deserve.

 At 00:01 a.m., my quarantine ends, and I will go out into "the wild" again. I am looking forward to it, getting a first hand impressing and catching up with friends. On Saturday morning at 9:30 a.m. I will start with teaching an 8 hour MBA block class. This is always a pleasure, and I hope I won't act too funny in front of the first real humans I see after two weeks. Forgive me if I do.

Finally arrived Hong Kong - really

After two weeks of quarantine, Hong Kong greeted me with a marvellous sunny and mild day. I spent all of it walking, and had to learn that being looked up in a room for that time, makes me shaky on uneven ground. This was really a long journey to Hong Kong. I could have taken the train from Tilburg through Chengdu down here (in normal times).

Beyond midtime quarantine in Hong Kong

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.

My longest journey to Hong Kong

I heard from a dear old friend, that some of the ancient faculty contracts with The University of Hong Kong contained a 3 months “home leave”. It assumed the “foreign” professors would retreat to London during the time of dreadful humid heat in South China, by means of a Lockheed Super Constellation via India or a ship through the Suez Canal. Compared with that, I was quick. But it was still my longest journey to Hong Kong. Actually, I still have not really arrived.

It started with the modern Airbus 340-300, operated by Lufthansa. Due to technical problems we had to abort boarding. They could neither mend it that night nor swap planes because of the night flight restrictions in Frankfurt airport. This meant a 16-hour delay and a night in a rather rundown nearby facility called Steigenberger Airport Hotel. Next day, the crew’s Covid tests had expired and had to be retaken. And as it sometimes happens a few of them turned out to be invalid and had to be redone again. This delayed the take-off for another 2 hours.

Arriving in Hong Kong, I found the airport was converted into something like a very professional field laboratory. Arriving passengers first had to scan a QRC with their smartphones and submit online a health declaration to the Department of Health. In return, you download a personal QRC which is your key through the process gates ahead. Next, you will get an electronic wristband, which you link to an App on your smartphone, again via QRC. Then you receive a lab sampling kit, watch a video explaining how to take a deep throat saliva sample and submit it. Thereafter you will be assigned a numbered chair and table in the former departure hall, grouped by planes. It looks like the setting of a huge exam and reminded me of taking “Abitur” (A-levels). There you sit 6 - 8 hours with a bottle of water and a few biscuits, waiting for the result. If negative, you go into quarantine for 14 days. When you arrived at your quarantine venue, you have to activate your wristband using your smartphone. Over the quarantine period, the smartphone app will alert you at random intervals (during daytime) to scan your wrist band and confirm your location. 12 days after commencing this, you have to submit another saliva sample by courier to a lab and wait until you are re-confirmed negative. Then you are free to go. If you don’t have a permanent residence in Hong Kong, you are supposed to check into a government-approved quarantine hotel. In my case, I choose a place in Wanchai, where it is easy to live of “Foodpanda” (a food delivery service) from the local restaurants and grocery stores which also use that service. You are not supposed to leave your room at any time.

It is a nice hotel on Hennessy Road. The staff is doing everything to make the stay as comfortable as possible. You will be greeted by somebody in full protective gear, with mask, gloves, face shield and disinfectant. It’s a government requirement and we joked about that I never before felt so much like being a biohazard. All deliveries will be contact-free and put in front of your door immediately. Once a day, you have to submit your body temperature, which was 36.4 °C today for me. You are of course not allowed to receive any guests.

Being locked in a room for 2 weeks is not something you are looking forward to. And I can’t say yet, how I will cope with it, as I am just now on day 1 of 14. But I am having for work and entertainment my laptop, a paperback of Evelyn Waugh’s The loved One (which I received as a gift before leaving Germany), and my Kindle book reader. I am, just now, listening to Marie Lafôret “Manchester et Liverpool”, as I write this, and having an instant coffee with milk powder. Life is good.

For exercise, I have been looking at inmate’s forums in the “Darknet”, exchanging ideas on how to exercise and keep fit in prison cells under solitary confinement. You see, the dark internet is not as dark as some might imagine. Neither is quarantine. I guess most of you have been in a prison at some time in your life, at least at a young age. Otherwise, I would consider you as boring and uninspired.

I also have a few comments to those fellow passengers who complained during the exhausting trip. Firstly, it is better to change an aircraft than to fly intercontinental with a technical defect which is classified critical.

Secondly, it is better to have night flight restrictions at Frankfurt airport and not to swap planes at night - putting a bunch of people into a (bad) bed, instead of waking up thousands. One was yelling at ground staff: “Lufthansa, has thousands of planes on the ground now! And you can’t get us a working one! How incompetent! Corona! … blablabla!”. I really admire how they take this bullshit with a smile. I could never do their job but probably would have taken him to the men’s room for a “chat”.

Thirdly, invalid Covid-Tests have to be retaken and the lab process takes a certain time. Otherwise, why do we take them at all? I know: “Nothing is impossible!!!”. Well, sorry to tell you: it is. This comment came from a typical “corporate style” business class passenger, who probably does not even know how a virus works and thinks a DNA is an abbreviation like ASAP (As Soon As Possible), meaning “Do Not Answer” (DNA), or something, perhaps USA - who cares?

And sure, yes, it was long waiting for Covid test results on a plastic chair in Hong Kong International Airport. I agree the biscuits were bad. But again: it is what it is. Quick tests have no approval yet. And the reason is, that we don’t know how well they work. Not everything which is annoying is based on “incompetence”. No, it is here even based on competence. Seriously. Doing it “quick and dirty”, we leave to the 80 / 20 people. These are the ones doing 20 % of the task to get praise, then throw 80 % of the shit at the others to get the blame. That’s “American style”. We don’t do that in Hong Kong. Look at the infection numbers to see the difference.

Finally, one fellow complained about “personal data protection” and resisted to submit to “Big brother”. Well, first of all, Hong Kong is a “Small brother”. And then, Covid-19 is a contagious disease, spreading easily. It’s not only your private matter. You can have your heart attack just for yourself. But this one is different.

Room with a view on Hennessy Road.