What's Up Al ? 遊記隨筆 生活點滴

The thought of being house-bound and grounded for 6 months seemed unbearable not that long ago, but we managed to get through this period without much effort as there were just so many to-do-things on the so many to-do-lists to catch up with. To start with the last thing first - Community Testing ! The government (bless them) arranged technical personnels and test tents from Motherland (bless them too) and all we had to do was to reserve ourselves a time slot on the Internet, at a very convenient location about 15 minutes' drive from home and before you could say Voilà, 5 minutes of taking sample (poking nose and deep throat probing), we received our results 2 days later - Negative ! Wasn't that just marvelous as these past two weeks I had been getting headaches, sneezing and coughing non-stop in the mornings, so the test came just in time to clear the suspicions ! About 1.8 million fellow citizens were tested with over 40 cases of asymptomatic cases found !

Just for our own record on how we "quarantined" ourselves these past six months - we bought a new TV (the snow flakes and the double ghosting did it) and a new boiler (water wasn't boiled when it came out the shower head did it). We also witnessed in our back garden, at least three species of local birdies building nests, laying eggs and feeding their young and it was a wonderful sight to see the hatched and grown finally took off but yet remaining close to our house and their parents ! Yes, we gave a hand in the process in scaring off those rather predatory large eagles ... And now onto a completely new topic, TV soaps - we had not been great fans of locally produced TV dramas and as a result we hardly knew the names of the oodles of TV starlets and up-and-coming Di Neros, Jolies or Chow Yun Fats ... ; we had found these dramas a waste of time and often the themes were not very interesting. But all that changed somewhat during these few months as we managed to pick out the ones we found funny and comical (to name a few : 機場特警,降魔的,殺手,迷網,反黑路人甲) and what we found more interesting than the dramas themselves, was that the same actors and actresses kept turning up again and again in different soaps and in different period costumes !

To keep body and mind in good shape, we did quick compressed shopping in town (like repeatedly performing 100 M sprints from the car and brought back kilos of rice and veg), power walks in the surrounding neighbourhood (face masks voluntary most of the time) and I re-captured my half-hearted enthusiasm in the game of GO chess (圍棋) by playing against real players around the world on the Internet (my goodness they're good !) and also against AI software and I even found a software which helped me perform case scenarios and diagnosis. Mandy on the other hand, found a new singing teacher who's married to a French national and currently living in the city. Mandy was taught in her first and so far only lesson (they left for France for their Summer break) a new singing technique akin to a cat meowing and screaming at the same time - time to turn on the air-con to drown out the noise in case our neighbours thought I was strangling a feline friend ... 

Fingers crossed and the Health Code (Electronic Health Certification QR Code held on a personal mobile phone) would be available soon and we could get our travelling boots on again to go exploring all over China. And happy Mid-Autumn Festival, have a famous Mooncake !

Making a quick escape from the choking atmosphere of home - mindless grabs of toilet rolls and rice, impossibility of finding and buying face masks as well as the very real threat of contracting yet-unknown organisms from Nature ! A chilly morning flight took us away from all these miseries and landed us in a landmark condominium in Naklua, north of Pattaya where we only saw masks far and few between, an inviting pool and long beach walks awaited us and at last, we could gently ease our tense and nervous muscles. Surprise, surprise, our landlord was another Russian, Ilia and he was mega-helpful in finding us a rice cooker and settled us in real good. We walked in the welcoming fresh air and sunny weather to Terminal 21 for a hearty Pad-Thai and shopped enough for a few days so we could just sit back, read, watch some Talent and enjoy our Ballantine's ! We saw many street signs as well as notices and even a video in the supermarket, pledging support for the fight against the now infamous virus (Wuhan Add Oil 武漢 加油 !). We spent a day at the famous Sanctuary Of Truth, a majestic wooden temple by the sea (with fashionable construction helmet a must-wear), just some 30 minutes' walk away; oddly enough, on the way there in the middle of Naklua village, we passed through an orthodox Russian church (!) with its beautiful domes; else we just enjoyed our beach walks and the beautiful and large pool and did lots of exercises. 
At the same time, as we followed the news around the world, there was an un-settling feeling slowly creeping through at the back of our mind - infected cases around the world began to increase multi-folds and governments not heeding to good isolation practices and still allowed football matches, large scale rallies on the International Women's Day, Mardi Gras in New Orleans to take place and these countries eventually being swamped with a tidal wave of patients whilst the situations in China and Hong Kong stablised. There was disbelief in the air as we scanned the news everyday and we felt incredulous as we saw events un-raveling in the world like watching a train crashing in slow motion ! After a good old debate between ourselves, we decided to stick with our plan to go home and would not prolong our stay - turned out to be the wise move to make as we witnessed our world slowly turned on its head with much head scratching as we scrutinised and digested the daily reported data and information. We were lost for words and head spinning at the un-thinkable potential fallout as we boarded the flight home ... Anyway, enjoy a few photos from our trip below.

Relaxing for a week or so in our neighbouring city of Shenzhen - first to spend some quality time to really get to know this city with an incredible upbringing and secondly to attend the many Lunar New Year of The Rat festivals taking place all over the city. Shenzhen had come a long long way from that farm land to the present day Silicon Valley of China, leading the pack in the Greater Bay Area with its high tech companies and the many incubating hopefuls of tomorrow's Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba etc. We based ourselves around the conveniently located Tao Yuan (桃園) Metro station in the Nan Shan (南山) District. We explored the Lian Hua Shan Garden Park (蓮花山公園) with its delightful lakes and manicured lawns; we also spent most of the day in Sea World where we were surprised to find many expats living their lives, riding mopeds, cycling in flippers and shorts in this balmy weather and taking their visiting parents to the local German bar and Turkish taverns ! 
The highlight of our trip was the Lantern Festival (彩燈會) at the Shenzhen Bay Park (深圳灣公園); we arrived at around 7 p.m. after a day's sight seeing and we took a well-deserved tea break at Chegongmiao Temple (車公廟) beforehand. The magical light shows and amazing wizardry the organisers arranged the colorful fixtures and tunnels full of brightly lit lanterns (electrical of course) were just mesmerising ! Over New Year's Eve and Day, we fenced ourselves in, in the comfortable apartment and watched oodles of newly released movies (The Joker, The Irishman etc.), sharing our sojourn was the delightful companion of a bottle of Ballantine's Scotch; ah, welcome to the Year Of The Rat, cheers ! But little did we know, the creeping anxiety of a new virus was slowly overshadowing our stay and we headed back home a few days earlier than expected, just to be on the safe side. Nevermind, we would be back in this comfortable, modern and functional city in no time !