Quarantine Day 4 & 5
Ok, so quarantine is officially crappy. I mean, this hotel room is pretty small. Probably no bigger than your average NYC hotel room, which, is pretty small. The hotel, well, it might have been nice once. Their website makes them look pretty nice and they have a bunch of properties, but I am guessing that in the time that it has been occupied by the Chinese CDC for centralized quarantine, it has not got much love. Which is not to say that it isn’t perfectly acceptable, but I have also been in nicer Holiday Inns. Of course, where you end up for centralized quarantine is totally random based on where there is space when you arrive, so, my buddy who landed a few hours after me seems to have won the game as he wound up in a Hampton Inn (by Hilton) for his quarantine, so quite a bit nicer.
It is just tough to really be able to move around in such a small space without tripping over everything. I have enough clear space in the entry by the bathroom to do some pushups, and I have a lane from the door to the window that I pace in. I read three chapters of my book wile pacing last night. After the first few minutes it became quite mindless to read and walk and not trip over my bags. I think if I move the desk chair out of the way next time it will be easier.
Above is my room. It is a wide angle photo, so things like the bed look a little bigger than they really are. It is just a standard king. So, yeah, walking from where this photo was taken from to the door and back. Many, many times. Oh, and the other fun thing on the room tour is that glass window in the top left, that is the back side of the shower. Just a goofy thing.
The daily routine is pretty simple here. Wake up around 7AM, though despite the fact that I am not actually going to work every day, I seem to still wake up before the alarm. Around 7:20AM the CDC comes around to do the morning temperature checks. Then by 8:00AM they deliver breakfast. I assume it is a somewhat typical Chinese breakfast. Below is a photo of today’s breakfast:
Every meal comes with a soup. For the most part they are decent. This morning was an odd one: some kind of egg-drop but the broth was kinda fruity. I didn’t really dig it, though many of the other soups have been fine. Breakfast seems to always come with either yogurt or milk. Love yogurt with a straw… There is always a packet of what appears to be spicy peppers, google translate was no help with that, and I haven’t actually tried whatever it is. There is also always the fried bread (on top of the soup) and a boiled egg. Everything else varies. Sometimes dumplings sometimes whatever I got today, which is a bread product and the, maybe, fried mochi? I don’t really know what the sticks were, but they tasted fine.
For lunch yesterday, I got something I didn’t expect, which was a tray that looked like something you might get at a Chinese restaurant in the States. I mean, it had chicken wings and a fried chicken that was pretty reminiscent of “General Tso’s.” I was quite surprised really. To be fair though, a lot of the food here (in quarantine) tastes basically the same, nothing special.
Today is the weekend, whatever that means when you are stuck in quarantine. I suppose It means that maybe I don’t have to think about work. Sure. The question of what to do with myself is still ever-present. Facetime with Ruth and Ellie, and probably shave and shower. Throw in a little pacing, reading, more exercise, start out the window at the highway and apparently a chicken farm (according to google maps).
Leave a Reply