02CB2: Signal Noise

Friday Flight

Metro Manila Community Quarantine - Day 1182

It's a bit weird to come home to an empty Sietch, especially after getting used to the pandemic lockdown life and Tobie and I always being together. It's even weirder to arrive home and not get replies to your messages because one or the other person is on a flight and unable to access the internet. I concede that I can seem like a hyperconnected person who doesn't sleep much and thus almost always appears to be online on this or that platform. 

And that was the situation today - Tobie and I had just missed one another at the airport. Our timing had been rather appropriate for a comedy of errors as I still saw Tobie's Facebook Messenger as being "Active" when I turned on my phone immediately after landing but then my messages went unread since he had actually shifted to airplane mode around then. But it's okay, we prepared ourselves for not being able to talk until he landed for his layover. But the chance of at least a quick "I love you" right as his flight was preparing to take off would have been kind of perfect in another way. 

So now I'm back home at the Sietch but our positions have been reversed and now it's Tobie who is in another country. The big difference is the fact that there's a significant time zone disparity, so keeping in touch will need a bit more effort in order to align things just right. We're not exactly unfamiliar with this sort of set up given I used to work US BPO hours while he had regular daytime hours, so our SMS and instant messaging exchanges often looked like digital dead drops between espionage ages. It has just been a while since I last had to send a steady stream of messages and not get more timely replies. 

I actually have a pretty full weekend ahead, so we'll see how things go. I just hope that I don't leave the Sietch without my keys or some other stupid mistake like that. With Tobie overseas, it means I won't have a backup option in case of emergencies.

Oh the things I think about during times like this. 

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