School
I'm finally finished with grad school (in a year!!!). Still can't believe I survived through that with a full time job. It has absolutely been crazy and stretching my time management skills, although I would say it's not as bad as last semester (Aug-Dec) in terms of commute time thanks to Covid-19.In fact, I only went to school for the first 2 weeks of the semester before the school decided that students should do home-based learning in late Jan. It is quite funny that I never saw some of my project mates in person.
I'm not sure if almost an entire semester of home-based learning is the best use of my school fees. Granted, the content is there, but I guess in my mind, going back to school is always about the environment that school provides, not so much the content because let's face it, we can get content readily online these days (although not all are free).
So in that sense, I feel like I'm cheated of the school experience, but I guess even if I were to go school, interactions with others are also minimal. Ah well.
Work
Work-wise, I remember when the pandemic first started, I started being paranoid because my good friend will tell me to stay at home as it is a serious. This was in early February, and my team did not have the go ahead from superiors to work from home. I remember being very half-hearted about wearing a mask to work and home or even at work as masks were expensive and in short supply, and it was not recommended to reuse them.I remember being super thankful when it was announced that we have to work from home. This was in mid-March when New York was badly hit and I guess management finally took notice. We started off with a Team A - Team B rotation. But a few days into the 1st week, it was decided that everyone should work from home until further notice. We were not allowed to be in office unless we have permission from higher management to be. It
Travel
So I have not left Singapore this entire year. Originally, I had a trip planned for May (which is this period) to New Zealand. By March, my friends and I decided that with the huge outbreak in Europe, US and around the world, it's really not very socially responsible to be travelling. Moreover, NZ implemented a 14 days SHN for anyone entering the country although later it became a ban for any foreigners.Although I've purchased travel insurance that would cover for the disruption in the event of covid-19, unfortunately, I was not able to claim any of my losses because well, they were technically not losses.
All the airlines gave credit (which according to insurance rules, the money must be irrecoverable to be eligible for claim, and credit isn't irrecoverable). Accommodation that we couldn't get refund for promised a 1 year credit. On top of that, one of the car rental companies decided to charge us 10% for cancelling even though in their email to everyone they mentioned that it will be waived if the government bans travelling (they just said the tncs were revised and they will keep the 10% as credit on file, good for a year). In the end I was able to refund my insurance, and kept the losses to about $200. One thing though was that I prepaid for my friends for a number of things and in the end, my credit cards had positive balance and I still had to refund my friends in cash.
With all these in mind, I am very deterred to plan any more travelling for this year at least. If you are planning to take advantage of cheap air fares during this period, I will strongly discourage it. Not only is there a high risk of not being able to get onto the flight and go, you might even be stuck in the country and really, we need to continue practicing social distancing and curb the spread of covid-19.
Health
I'm thankful that everyone around me is well and healthy, although I did suffer from some illnesses here and there throughout this year. One of them was cough and flu in late Jan when the coronavirus was first reported to be in my country. Honestly, I was really paranoid that I might have caught it. I went to the GP twice, but both times I was refused for testing because I did not meet the criteria "having been to China in the past 14 days", "came in close contact with anyone who has been to China in the past 14 days", "displaying very severe breathing problems".I guess on hindsight, they were trying to prevent unnecessary testing at that can clog up our health system. However, when I was the one who was suffering from the flu and cough, I felt that it was unjust to turn me away from testing.
Anyway I also didn't understand why our government discouraged us to wear masks as at that time it was already known that people who appear well can be host for the virus. In any case, because I was sick, I wore masks in public and kept my distance as much as possible from my family for fear that if I really had Covid-19, at least I tried to prevent passing it to them. My friends explained to me that masks are in short supply and frontline workers need them more, hence we are discouraged to wear them.
Apart from this scare, I got my injury from brisk walking in inappropriate footwear, and had very severe eye strain possibly due to the fact that I was so busy with work and school I only slept for 5-6 hrs for 2 weeks and most of the time awake was spent looking at screens... The pain lasted for about a week and thankfully, it happened just last week as school was winding down, so I didn't have to stare at screens that much. But I had to take time off work because it's my nature of work to be looking at screens :/
I found that wearing my blue light filter glasses helped make my eyes more comfortable, and I suppose I should have just worn them from the beginning of this WFH.
During that one week of avoiding screens, I found out that I was super restless. Everything that I could think of to keep me occupied needed some form of screen. I felt miserable. I slept and slept. I broke my exercise habit because I couldn't follow the exercises on screen... Finally I settled for listening to online courses like coursera so I could still be learning and audio books.
It was also then that I realised I have regressed so much from how I was feeling and acting about 3 years ago. I used to be more present and now thoughts just keep flooding my mind and it was hard for me to be fully present in everything that I'm doing. Meditation did help calm down my mind, but the effects are not long-lasting... Then I realised that whatever that I was doing, I was just running away from myself. I needed to keep myself occupied because I just can't be alone with myself. That scares me a lot and I'm not sure why.. I guess I'll slowly figure that out.
