It has been five years since my last posting in this forum. I don't normally write and post anything that my friends can find in Google search and read about. This trip is unique and this incarceration is voluntary in some way. I am writing a short journal entry each day in isolation. It is probably worth writing and sharing, and thus the restart of my blogpost.
I am in Taipei, Taiwan right now and I am in a quarantine hotel. The purpose of the quarantine is to isolate me and see if any Covid-19 viruses will manifest themselves in this period. I do feel like I am a human Petri Dish during this pandemic.
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Day 0 - Thursday, January 20, 2022 - Friday, January 21, 2022
Leaving for Taipei from San Francisco - UA871 - early arrival by one hour one Friday evening Taiwan time. First time ever that I had only one suitcase and one backpack. I cheated a bit by having a sturdy handbag to hold vitamins/candies due to excess weight (53.6 pounds).
At SFO, quite a few people got stuck in filling out the required Health Declaration Form/Certificate at the web site https://hqhq.mohw.gov.tw/. The interface was indeed confusing and I went through possibly all click combinations and it took me more than one hour.
On the inflight movie screen panel, I picked French as my language as part of my recent endeavor to learn the language. I watched "Mourir Peut Attendre" (No Time to Die) by Daniel Craig. It was a good 007 movie. The breakfast on this flight was a warm sandwich bun with cheese and ham. It was much better than anything they had to offer in my recollection.
On arrival, there was a fast PCR test for all arriving passengers. It was completed within an hour.
From my quarantine hotel room (1111) on the 11th floor, there are poke stops nearby, but there are no Pokémon gyms reachable.
Day 1 - Saturday, January 22, 2022
Jet lag adjustment is the usual routine, and hopefully it can be done in one week. I started to do some Pokémon clean-up work last year this time in Taiwan.
I also continued my French learning, i.e., finished up the dictation lesson on "Le secret de la robe rose" from my life-time Babbel membership. They recently don't allow you to do "copy-n-paste" on some screens. I had to screenshot them into .png files and used a free OCR tool to convert to French. What a bummer.
Day 2 - Sunday, January 23, 2022
I was advised not to put my mobile phone (with my local number on Airplane Mode while it is powered on. The authorities need the phone signal to track my location through the cell towers. Someone might have tried to out-smart the authorities, and thus this special instruction was given by my daily contact. My daily contact was the assistant to Li (里) chief. The Taiwanese government subdivides the city/county (市/縣) into District (區/鄉/鎮) and then Li (里) and then Lin (鄰). The Li chief is actually a paid bureaucrat that manages his/her dominion related to public affairs.
The local TV channels include CNN and that is my source of international news. I used the radio.net app to tune in to BBC World Service.
I started to read "The Gay Genius - Biography of Su Tungpo 蘇東坡" in Chinese. I did not realize that this person I knew of was that talented, versatile, open-minded, and prolific in many fields. He was indeed fascinating to me. I got the idea from a Youtube channel called EYArt.
Day 3 - Monday, January 24, 2022
Waking up to my biological clock and grabbing my iPhone to see that it was 4:07 am. It was not a surprise. I should have been able to predict that :-). I now practiced the morning shower routine that my children did when they grew up in the US. Well, it was invigorating for sure.
I did my first antigen self-test today. It was negative all right. It was not too difficult to do, but it did require one to read the instructions carefully. I think a basic exposure of high-school level biology/chemistry lab experience is required. I was amazed at what is required of a modern-day functional citizen these days.
I missed the daily swim a lot. Not being able to do meaningful exercises in a hotel room is not good physically and mentally.
Day 4 - Tuesday, January 25, 2022
Finally, I decided to extend my quarantine hotel stay by another week. Originally the plan called for my second 7-day quarantine to be in a home setting. The auntie place has a second bedroom and a second shower stall, but the exact detail of the requirement is a "suite", that is, the shower/bath needs to be enclosed in a bedroom. My buddy friend Donald had that setting, but I was not allowed to change the location after it was submitted a few days ago.
Now, with this in mind, I felt like more and more that I am a petri dish. The purpose of this quarantine was to isolate me and see if any Covid-19 viruses would manifest themselves in this petri dish in 14 days.
I did my first clothing wash last night since I could not hold out for two weeks without washing clothes, especially the underwear.
I continued my Youtube stanfordonline channel's machine learning lectures. I kept this as part of my to-do list among other activities to keep busy and entertained.
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References:
- The Gay Genius - Biography of Su Tungpo, by Lin Yutang
1 comment:
Truly self-motivated!
Hope to meet when Uncle can go around.
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