02497: An Actual Holiday



Metro Manila Community Quarantine - Day 139

Today is marked as the public holiday for Eid al-Adha in the Philippines or Hari Raya Haji in Singapore, thus making this one of the rare holidays that Tobie and I share across our respective work schedules. Making things even better, this year the holiday fell on a Friday, so tomorrow we have the actual weekend to continue enjoying together. 

Our quarantine routine has consisted of Tobie handling the groceries on his own in order to minimize our exposure and to generally comply with government directives to minimize how many members of the household should step out for errands. Today we took a bit more of a risk and opted to go to the mall together. And I haven't been to SM Aura this entire quarantine period. 

We made a bit of an event out of it. We wore one of our couple's shirts, because we haven't really had a reason to wear them while just staying home in quarantine. We wore pants, which is a rarity in itself. And I told Tobie that I wanted to go around the mall first before actually working on the groceries. So we visited the toy store even though I had nothing that I was looking for or expecting to find. We tried to find me a USB hub to give my laptop more slots but didn't succeed there. We looked for possible combination coffeemakers with a built-in coffee grinder, but didn't find anyway. We even got to renew our SM Advantage card.

The actual grocery run was a simple affair, but a nice one. I've always enjoyed grocery shopping with Tobie since it's pretty much envisioning our menu for the week as we go through the aisles. And while we have developed our staple dishes throughout this quarantine period, there's always the chance we might get inspired to try something new based around a key ingredient. 

We didn't' stop there, though. Given we had been out long enough to hit the end of my intermittent fasting window, we opted to gamble even further by going over to our much-beloved Sariwon and had ourselves a nice little lunch. We had been ordering from them on a weekly business to help support thee restaurant, but of course, that means we haven't had the joy of the unlimited sides or actually having the food while it's still hot. It wasn't too terrible an experience as there were no other customers while we were there and the staff kept their distance unless we had specific requests. It was just nice to be out at a place we love so much - it felt pretty close to normal.

I'm glad that Tobie got me out of the Sietch today. I guess I have been cooped up for quite some time with all of my excursions limited to essential errands. So a simpler day out, even without too many frills, was something I had really needed. I doubt that we'll make a habit of this given the continuing threat of COVID-19 and the lack of reassurances this administration is able to provide.

But today was a good day. We all need good days. 

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