We were lucky that our quarantine time was reduced from 3 weeks to 2 weeks on the day we landed at Changi Airport, Singapore. It reduced the duration of the ordeal of confinement, but not the magnitude.
Confinement
The biggest ordeal of quarantine is the confinement to a hotel room, under Singapore's strict rule, one can not leave the designated hotel room.
No space to move around or exercise, no fresh air but recycled air from air condition. This limited space, makes excise difficult if not impossible, which in turn compound the hardship from jet-lag.
Not enough physical activities make jet-lag effect worse. I was really sleepy around 8 or 9pm after trying to stay up all day long. Early sleep did not help, because I woke up at 1am or 2am, and had hard time to fall asleep again. This is a normal symptom of a typical jet-lag. The issue is that the quarantine makes the jet-lag effect last much longer. I still have jet-lag after 10 days!
The confinement makes the daily life monotone, leading to boredom.....making me feel lethargic!
Media
The main news outlets, at least from the channels on the hotel TV, include CNA, BBC, ABC (Australia), Sky news, CCTV ….. I hoped that watching news, know what's happening around the world would help to break the lethargy.
No matter what channels I turned to, it was covid news upon covid news, non-stop, and bad news all the time. Major outbreak at a locality ….. it is news, but a few new cases here, a few new cases there, are those news worthy? It is mind numbing! it is depressing!!
It reminds me of the weather forecast or weather news when there is severe thunder storm or tornado in Texas, all major news channels report on it, non stop, and stop reporting anything else. The weatherman or weatherwomen just repeating themselves every 5 to 10 minutes for hours on the end!! Except the first 10 to 5 minutes, it has no value. I stop watching it after the first 15 minutes, what is annoying is that the stations stop all the regular programs.
Talking about people's mental health during pandemic, news media's insatiable, nonstop coverage of negative covid news is a main factor!
Food
We paid thousands of dollars for the quarantine at a nice (government designated) hotel, the food on the menu looked good, if you just look at the ingredients, fruit, vegetable, fishes, chickens, salmons,.... and there is good variations as well.
Overall the food is bland, not appetizing...The dishes I hate on the menu include scrambled eggs, boiled vegetables, chickens and salmon because of the way they were cooked or flavored. Note that eggs, vegetable, chickens and Salmon are actually my favorite food if I cook them myself! Many dishes have a mild soy sauce flavor which becomes nauseating when I have that flavor dish the second or third time.
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| looked decent but tasteless |
Nicholas, our in-house chef, who is sensitive to how food is cooked. He simply would not eat many dishes even when he was very hungry! We have to find alternates.
If there were a microwave and some condiments, we would have made many of the hated dishes edible, maybe even delicious.
However, as an outdoor man, the most suffocating ordeal is the feel of being jailed and NO freedom.
This experience just makes me cherish my freedom so much more
Note - the quarantine is especially strict for people from US, which is considered a high risk country, regardless of covid vaccination status , covid PCR test results.. We are all fully vaccinated, and have negative PCR tests before arrival at US, and upon arrival at Singapore.
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