02468: Strained Social Queues

Sleeping Black and White Cat

Metro Manila Community Quarantine - Day 92

I woke up this morning pretty surprised at my dream - or at least the bits I can remember. I'm not big on remembering my dreams, but when it involves one of those alternate realities where one thing was changed and it created a radically different world, you kind of pay attention. And then my dream self was actively trying to figure out how to change things back when I discover that my grandmother who had passed away over 20 years go is somehow alive in this reality, it's pretty weird. But throw in the fact that today is both her birthday and death anniversary...yeah kinda creepy. Maybe I shouldn't skip my nightly apple cider vinegar dose.

My Nike Training Club app workout for the day got borked because it retconned my entire week of workouts into recovery days, so that left me with lots of options for physical activity. Tobie argued that I really should do more low impact walking instead of my default indoor jogging since the app's adjustments were clearly because it was compensating for all my other step activity outside the planned workouts. So he pushed me out of the Sietch to walk around BGC, which I turned into an opportunity to audit which stores are open on High Street for future reference. I generated a good 10,000 steps following High Street's one-way routing scheme and managed to avoid buying anything.

By sheer chance, I also got to meet a social media friend for the first time in person today. He was in the area with his mom and I swung by to give a socially distant wave hello. We even managed a photo together without getting too close or even touching each other, which is a weird achievement in itself. In hindsight, I realize he's the first non-family member I've met in person in months and it felt weird to not be able to hug or even just beso without now feeling the discomfort that this pandemic has imprinted on all of us. It was nice to finally meet him in person, but at the same time, it was a sad reminder of what we can't do while COVID-19 remains to be a health threat. And I do miss interacting with friends more directly. 

We had our Pendragon RPG session today and it was pretty fun. It's one of our key opportunities to interact with friends and we begin and end every game session with non-gaming chat as we catch up on everyone's stories and share our frustrations. They're the same conversations that would happen around the gaming table were we gaming in person. But it's not quite the same experience because digital communication can only go so far. But we do our best to get by.

We're starting our 14th week and quarantine and it's not yet clear what's going to happen beyond tomorrow when this particular General Community Quarantine (GCQ) is scheduled to end. There's a lot of rumors that things are going to be rolled back to a more stringent level of quarantine while I feel like it's more like we're going to stay where we are now in order to continue to give businesses a chance to operate. This may not be the best public health decision to make in order to quell the continued spread of COVID-19. But it may be the most viable compromise given our economic realities.

I just remind myself that we're all in this together and we will get through these difficult times together. Sure our leaders could do a better job, but given that then we need to be able to rely on one another for that sort of emotional support in order to get through this. 

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