{"id":2628,"date":"2020-07-13T11:19:40","date_gmt":"2020-07-13T03:19:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.brack.sg\/?p=2628"},"modified":"2020-07-13T11:25:45","modified_gmt":"2020-07-13T03:25:45","slug":"day-up-of-lockdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brack.sg\/index.php\/2020\/07\/13\/day-up-of-lockdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Day ):@#u!?P of Lockdown"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

COVID Companions is a series of creative pieces featuring snippets of life during COVID-19, with a special focus on the other individuals or creatures who are keeping us company during quarantine, lockdown, \u2018circuit breaker\u2019, or whatever your equivalent might be. <\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Listen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thriving in lockdown depends on one thing, and\none thing only: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How much do you like yourself?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I, for one, love my own company. Thankfully, I\nam already my own best friend and absolute, all-round favourite number one\nperson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But you can\u2019t power through a lockdown on just\nnarcissism and megalomania. Eventually, you’ll want out of the circular thoughts,\npower fantasies, and playlist of regrets. So, where to find healthy distraction\nin a pandemic?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, I did just reduce the idea of \u201ccompanionship\u201d to \u201cdistraction\u201d. What does this say about me? Another conversation, for another time. For now, these are the companions I am grateful for\u2026 none human nor even alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. \u201cDream Home\u201d Pinterest Board<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a decade-long\nresistance, I\u2019m finally on board (haha) with Pinterest. Now I collect,\norganise, and superimpose myself on other people\u2019s photo references of a dream\nhome. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note! There is a\nright way and wrong way to Pinterest. A catalogue of model interiors makes for\na poor emotional crutch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reject the overhead\nwide-angle shots of living rooms, with fireplaces and monsteras<\/em>. Shun\nthe panoramic views of artfully wild backyards, nestling wood-fired pizza\novens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What you want is\nthe close up. The shot that looks into a corner– where textures, light, and\nplanes collide. The glimpse– of a sunny kitchen through an open doorway. The\nblurry photo of a child running barefoot across a hardwood floor, even if\nyou\u2019re opposed to both children and hardwood floors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A pandemic Pinterest board is a collection of feelings, not practicalities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. +7 kg<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

People outside the\nmetric system call this the \u201cQuarantine 15\u201d. I call it my Phase 2 expansion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be honest, I had\na head start on this 7 kg even before quarantine began. After half a year of\ndespairing at the rising number, I\u2019ve finally embraced the weight gain that\ncomes with middle age. Not lightly (pun intended) but lockdown has a way of\nstripping away the usual excuses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I used to say:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe\nfirst +3kg was because I switched to a desk job.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis\nnext +3kg is because of all the hawker food around the office.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But working from\nhome means I can exercise during lunch hour. It means I can cook my own healthy\nmeals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have done\nneither! My work-from-home diet is Doritos! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My own lies have\nbeen exposed. I can no longer tell myself that my perfect body is 8-10 business\ndays away, if only conditions were more ideal. The only thing left to do is\njust exercise to feel good, don\u2019t look at the scale, and focus my efforts on\nthe endless battle with portion control. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is actually quite nice to finally fill out a pair of shorts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Better lungs<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The timing is\nironic and almost disrespectful (given the nature of the virus :P). For half my\nlife, I smoked a pack a day… and suddenly I don\u2019t at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t\nintentional. My last cigarette happened right before lockdown (April 2nd?) and\nI just never bought another pack. I\u2019d like to say that I\u2019ve quit, but these are\nlaboratory conditions. See how I feel when I have to return to social life,\noffice life, and its attendant anxieties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the meantime, I am enjoying the company of more oxygen, better skin, money saved, and less crap to carry around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. A new language\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ah, the quarantine clich\u00e9:\n\u201cUse this time to better yourself– learn a new language!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The implication:\nLearning a new language is a worthwhile use of time, because it can be parlayed\ninto some kind of advancement. The endeavor itself signals virtue; the actual\nbenefits remain vague, while being waved about emphatically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For me, learning a new language is like playing\na game. All the tiny vocabulary victories, and mini grammar milestones,\ndelivering dopamine hits that reality cruelly withholds. \u3084\u3063\u305f\uff01<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do I have a reason\nto learn Japanese? Not really. Is this a useful skill? In the hands of someone\nelse, sure. Will I monetise this new knowledge? Unlikely!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it\u2019s nice\nknowing that I have something that I keep doing just because I want to. Just\nbecause it\u2019s fun. Nobody asked me to do it, nobody cares that I do it, nobody\u2019s\ndoing it with me, and sure as shit nobody\u2019s paying me for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have I bettered\nmyself? I do feel better\u2026 so… I guess I have?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know how I\u2019ll look back on this corona\ntime. I hope that the things that have happened here somehow end up mattering\nin the big scheme of things. I think most people feel the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am grateful for the time I\u2019ve had and\ncontinue to have, the access to information that makes the time count, and the\nexperience to make sense of it all, this time around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This might be my first pandemic, but it\u2019s not my first lockdown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Yoon Wong<\/strong> is a sometimes-copywriter, art-sympathizer, and filthy weeb.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

COVID Companions is a series of creative pieces featuring snippets of life during COVID-19, with a special focus on the other individuals or creatures who are keeping us company during quarantine, lockdown, \u2018circuit breaker\u2019, or whatever your equivalent might be.  Listen. Thriving in lockdown depends on one thing, and one thing only: How much do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2630,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[531],"tags":[526,525,528],"class_list":["post-2628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-covid-companions","tag-covid19","tag-covidcompanions","tag-lockdown"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brack.sg\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brack.sg\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brack.sg\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brack.sg\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brack.sg\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2628"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.brack.sg\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2632,"href":"https:\/\/www.brack.sg\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2628\/revisions\/2632"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brack.sg\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brack.sg\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brack.sg\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brack.sg\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}