In Times of Corona

Night falls upon the city of Kitakyushu.

I have still not got over the fact that I had to cancel my extra-long awaited trip to Seoul. I had it all planned down to the minute and all went down the drain the moment Japan decided to place anyone coming from the peninsula in government designated areas for quarantine. I can live with self-quarantine but the images of Diamond Princess horror show is a bit too fresh to ignore. 

It's not that nothing positive has come out of all this. Hygene has improved significantly even in a country where everyone was already OCD in the first place. In fact, you would not want to be anywhere else. Japan is the final frontier for Covid-19. The final battle shall take place here...because the whole damn place is just so clean. Although we might have to shed some tears for all the lives lost in the battle of The Toilet Papers. 

The place you DONT want to be right now is Italy. 9000+ cases overtaking even all the gallient effort by the shady Shincheonji church in Korea spearhead by their spirited, mask wearing Mr. Kim. I did meet him once when I and a group of other Nepalese were forced into a van, taken to some similarly shady area, had to pretend that we had just arrived from Nepal and further forced to perform for the great leader, the christian savior who led the battle against Covid and...lost. Terribly. 

Stupid church. 

I find it humbling though, with all that's going on, with all the claims of impending pandemic, people are still finding ways to use humor. My chinese friend remarked that people are so bored in Beijing, so locked up, so isolated into their own apartments that there's a really good chance we will see a spike in babies in next 9 months. There's clearly a limit to how much housework one can possibly do. 

Having have had done a 14 day self quarantine myself after arriving from Italy last month, I do see the physical and mental limits of staying indoors. That made me re-think, even sympathize and emphathize with my grandpa's perils. He wakes up early, does his prayers, reads the newspapers, walks around the house and quickly runs out of things he can do. I thought he had the best job ever; do nothing. But then, I was doing the same with the added benifit of using the internet and all I wanted to do was to GET OUT. 

His sudden dissapearance from home is now justified. If not, even encouraged.