Good news at last

  I will admit that the last two weeks of staying at home, staying socially isolated and continuing to lead such a constrained life has been taking it's toll. I have found it increasingly hard to stay motivated, keep cheerful and even be positive. Feeling homesick has come and gone over the past 6 years years but has been strong recently, homesick for life as it was before Coronavirus, homesick for the UK and in particular homesick for my family.

This week Papa T and I should have been in the UK catching up with everyone and looking forward to a family sailing holiday in Croatia next week with our children and their partners. Sadly those plans were cancelled weeks ago and most upsettingly we have no idea as to when we will be able to see our families next as the ability to travel to and fro between the UK and Singapore is nigh impossible at the moment. Even if we could get a flight to the UK we would have to serve 2 weeks quarantine there before actually seeing anyone. Then to return to Singapore we would have to apply for permission from the government to re-enter. At the moment few applications are being granted. We have friends (who usually live in Singapore) that returned to the UK in March and have been applying to return here for weeks but without luck.  The difficulties don't stop even when permission has been granted as on re-entering Singapore we would have to serve 2 weeks in a 'quarantine facility' i.e. hotel were we would literally have to stay inside

the room for 14 days.

With these restrictions and the time scale involved it looks unlikely that we will be able to travel to the UK, or anywhere else really, for a long while yet.

🌈 🌈 🌈 🌈 🌈 🌈 🌈 🌈 🌈

One of the measures to combat the spread of Covid 19 that has been the norm for several weeks now is that everyone has to 'check in' and check out of everywhere we go, the shopping mall, each individual shop, the Botanic gardens and other nature parks, hospitals and hairdressers-everywhere, except our own homes.

Scanning the QR code on a phone opens up a form, once completed (name, identity number & phone number) and confirmation received I can check into the mall

As I walk down the corridor in the mall my temperature is automatically scanned and checked by the security person sitting at the end, I show the confirmation pass on my phone and I'm in. I then go through the same process for each shop I enter, at the moment there's only a choice of the supermarket, pharmacy and café but when the other shops are re opened it will include all of them.

When I've exiting each place I then have to 'check-out' and finally check out of the mall.

              

The purpose of this Safe Entry system is to prevent and control the transmission of Covid-19 through contact tracing and identification of infection clusters. Singapore has been very effective in tracking down contacts of coronavirus and implementing quarantine and the numbers of new daily cases has started to slow.

The news of other countries unlocking and restrictions easing so that people are able to meet with their friends and family again, is good to hear and I'm really pleased for my own friends and family, but I can't help but feel envious too. As one friend said "we feel socially starved". To see one other person, a friend standing in front of me not on a screen, being able to go for a walk or have a meal together and to be able to chat is something both Papa T and I have been longing for but with Singapore continuing to have 3-500 new coronavirus cases confirmed daily it seemed that a date for Phase 2 was still a long way off being announced.

But then to our, and I think, everyone's utter amazement on Monday evening it was announced, Phase 2 is to commence this Friday, 19th June and even more amazing is the extent of the easing of restrictions. We will be able to not only see one friend but up to 4, as we "can get together socially in groups of up to 5 and households can receive up to five visitors at any one time"! 

There's even more to look forward to as "most business, social activities, retail and food and beverage outlets, including dining in will be allowed (with tables of up to 5)". We will be able to eat out with friends again! 

Public spaces, parks, stadiums, swimming complex, tennis courts, fitness studios are also reopening. 

Strict social distancing will continue, here in Singapore 1 meter is the rule, and numbers of people entering a shop will be limited depending on the shop size and we have to continue to wear a face mask whenever outside our own homes. 

This news was so unexpected but oh so welcome. My, and I think many of my friends moods have lifted hugely. The buzz of excitement is palpable, everyone is smiling and talking ( on the phone of course) about who and when and where they will meet up, bubbles of 5, are being worked out and plans made. 

I find myself delighted at the thought of meeting up, going out for a meal, resuming playing mahjong and more but I also feel rather a bit nervous. I can only liken my feelings as to that of an animal that has been kept in a cage for a long time but when the cage door is opened, the animal stays inside the cage looking out of the open door thinking 'it looks a bit scary out there'!

 Papa T and I have agreed to take things slowly. So far I have made arrangements to meet up with just 1 friend for a walk on Friday and then in the evening I have booked an outside table at the Italian restaurant just down the road from us. I don't feel ready yet to meet groups of friends, eat inside a restaurant or go to a shopping Mall but I'm sure that time will come. 

A rainbow generally indicates the storm is passing and better weather is coming, it has been a very appropriate symbol during this time. The 'weather' outlook for this week is an improving one, with a bit more time the sun will be high in the sky again🤞

🌈  🌈  🌈  🌈   🌈  🌈

It's a virtual life

Monday 15th June-

 Phase 1 of Singapore's staged easing of restrictions, called Safe Reopening has been in action for the past 2 weeks, but as mentioned in my last post Papa T and I have not experienced any difference in our current lifestyle as we don't have school aged children or grandparents living here. 

 So as well as Papa T's work commitments we have tried to continue keep ourselves busy. Many of the things are done 'virtually'; I do my yoga session with the aid of YouTube, chat to friends and family on Zoom, FaceTime or other social media, I've attended webinars, including a very informative one about otters in Singapore, do fitness training with members of the Trekking Club I belong to on Zoom and for the last 10 weeks we have been joining our friend's at The Black Lion, an imaginary, virtual pub, every Saturday night for a pub quiz. It's a strange existence, leading a virtual life and occasionally I wonder if we still exist!

We have carried on been getting some of the long standing jobs done including saving our old slides into a digital format. 

 We started this process using an old slide projector that could take a whole tray of slides, projecting each image one by one onto a wall and photographing it. We enjoyed viewing the slide together, reminiscing and deciding if it was worthy of keeping digitally. I would then download the images on the laptop, edited them, put in chronological order and saved them. A big task as we have over 15 boxes each with 300 slides in each dating from 1982 but along the way we have come across some treasures and almost forgotten memories.

Annoyingly the slide projector broke down and as everything in Singapore is currently closed there is no hope of finding someone to repair it for some time, so I have resorted to using a small slide viewer that copies one slide at a time, as it's so small only 1 of us can see it at a time. This has slowed up progress enormously and we are only just over half way through all the boxes, somewhere in 1989! 

We have also been sorting through all sorts of papers and things that we have kept over the years. I came across my payslips from when I was nursing, I have kept the first payslip from the various stages of my career as a nurse, as a Student nurse(take home pay of £137.87) a newly qualified State Registered Nurse (£419.77), as a student Health Visitor (£353.36)  and then as a recently qualified Health Visitor (£368.68)

I've still been trying to keep active which is hard as we have to spent so much more time indoors than previously. We continue to walk together most morning's for about 40 minutes before Papa T heads to his 'home office' to start work, I sometimes carry on walking and often this is in the nearby Botanic Gardens or the streets in our neighbourhood which I'm getting to know intimately.

It was a particularly beautiful day the other day and on my walk around the Botanics I couldn't resist taking some more photographs of the wildlife and beauty there, I absolutely love seeing monitor lizards, this one was in no hurry to move

It is noticeable that there are many more insects and butterflies fluttering around the pre-lockdown times

The lake and its surrounding planting in the Learning Forest area, which has been open for just over 3 years is looking quite mature now. The suspended walkway over the lake is currently closed "to allow for Social Distancing"  

I had the immense pleasure of watching this family of otters come out of the water, roll around in the leaves under the trees and then sit by the lake, it looked like they were discussing who should dive in first, none of them seemed that keen preferring to laze in the sun. Having listened to the webinar about this family I now know they are one of four families of Asian Short Coated Otters in Singapore and are known as the Zouk 7, named after a famous local night club which is in the area they first lived in before "Otter wars" displaced them to the Botanic Gardens.

Last weekend we had another bike ride to the CBD and Marina Bay area, this time we had a mission. We were going to try and find the exact location that my father had stood when he took some photographs on his stopover in Singapore in 1952. He was a young naval doctor at the time. 

On the internet I found a Singapore city street map area dated 1954 and then worked out the location on a contemporary street map

It was another particularly lovely day with beautiful clouds high in the sky

When we got to the CBD area it was quite hard finding the exact same spot and angle to take a photo and of course many of the buildings and some of the streets no longer exist or are changed beyond recognition, for instance what is now called Raffles Place bears no resemblance to the very same area in 1952

2020

1952

But some buildings are still there, tucked in amongst the new

Some of the old buildings look pretty much the same as when my father saw them and it was quite emotional to think that my father had stood on (or very close to ) this same spot nearly 70 years ago and admired this beautiful building as I do today

There are not too many positive things about this current time but one must be the fact that we could cycle safely and peacefully around the city with nearly empty streets. When Singapore returns to 'business' and the offices, restaurants and museums are reopened these streets will be packed again and far too busy for us to contemplate cycling down them

My plan is to make a document that has the new photograph next to the old one, I think it will be fascinating to see the difference that nearly 70 years has made. Once I've done this I'll share it here.

It has been very hard to stay motivated at times and as the days and weeks pass finding something to brighten the day gets harder, I am aware that this is not just for me but for many of my friends. A few weeks ago I had the idea that I hoped might cheer us up and reconnect us as 'walking buddies'. We can no longer meet up and all have to walk alone, I asked everyone to take a photo of themselves and send it to me and then made this collage of us. It took quite a while to do but was worth the effort plus everyone seemed to enjoy it and in the future it will be interesting to look back on this and remember that we had to walk alone wearing a face mask and remind us to enjoy 

I had another idea two weeks ago and invited the walkers to join me in a challenge to see how many kilometres we could collectively walk in a week. I invited everyone who wanted to take part to map their walks using one of the apps available, post it on our WhatsApp group chat and at the end of the week we would tot up how far we had walked. We walked 266kms which is the same distance as the Camino de Santiago Primitivo route, an ancient pilgrim's trail from Oviedo to Santiago de Compostela.

    

Fired up for another challenge I then suggested we tackle, virtually of course, the Offa's Dyke Path. At 285kms I thought it would take us about a week but as more members of the group joined in we completed this, collectively, within 3 days!

Everyone was up for another challenge so we are now working on walking 1014kms from Minehead to Poole along the South West Coast Path, well in our heads that's where we are as we pound the streets and parks of hot and steamy Singapore.  We started our big walk 5 days ago, everyone's been very keen and walking hard, some have shared lovely photos of parts of this route and one person shared a photo of himself when a child on holiday after catching a fish in Coverack. Papa T and I ate some scones I made, with clotted cream and strawberry jam yesterday, we could almost imagine we were in Devon enjoying a cream tea. 

Last night after totting up everyone's individual walks we have collectively reached over half way along the trail. We are currently just outside Falmouth and tomorrow we will catch the ferry over to St Mawes to resume our walk. 

Oh my goodness I really am leading a virtual life! This madness is hopefully temporary and normal life will return in some format, won't it?