A long way yet to go

It’s the 2nd week of the government imposed Movement Control Order. The Covid-19 cases are increasing exponentially worldwide, and Malaysia recorded it’s first few deaths too. The situation is definitely getting scarier, and is not helped by the fact that some people choose to flagrantly flout the MCO and still be outside unnecessarily. Honestly, what is their deal?? It’s also hard on those of us who have to fight tooth and nail to keep our parents isolated, indoors. Goodness knows they could be the stubbornest bunch of all. Anyways, here’s how things have been going on my end

Day 8 – Wednesday 25th March

Spent the morning discussing various work related things on Whatsapp and then waited for the PM’s announcement around lunch time.

The government announced that the MCO would be extended til 14th April. Although I was expecting this, and was happy as it was absolutely the right thing to do, I also couldn’t help but feel deflated. I think for the first week, the novelty of being at home with my family kept me in a kind of happy bubble. “2 weeks wasn’t that long anyway, right? Things would be back to normal in no time.” But the announcement definitely popped that bubble. And although my spirits are a bit dampened, I’m okay. I can’t imagine what people who are alone feel like. The ones who are far from their families. The ones who are not as fortunate as we are to have comfortable homes, stable income, sufficient food and enough entertainment to preoccupy us during these hard times. What kind of feels like a weird extended vacation at home for us, might feel like a prison sentence to others. May Allah help us all.

Shafiq’s shipment of plants came today, so we’ve added those to our little plant corner, which we’re still figuring out. Hope these babies thrive and don’t die on us!

Made sup daging today. well, tried to anyway. I simmered the beef for what seemed like ages and it just refused to soften. Also my ratio was wayyyy off – it was more like potato and carrot soup with bits of beef in. Plus I made way too much. we ended up freezing more than half of it. Oh well. Live and learn.

Day 9 – Thursday 26th March

Had a work meeting around 2pm so Shafiq made a quick lunch of nuggets and fried chicken for us. Got a decent amount of work in during the day. Shafiq went to the store to look for a few items, and asked if I wanted to go out and get some sun, as it had been more than a week since I last stepped out the front door. So I went for a tiny drive around the housing compound  in the late afternoon sun. Spent a good 15 minuted just sat in the car parked in our parking space listening to a random talkshow on the radio and pretending like everything was normal. It was much needed. Even the short walk from our car to the apartment I took reeeaaaaly slowly savoring the outdoors.

Came back and found Shafiq reorganising the store room, which he had been planning on doing for a few days now. So we spent the entire evening clearing out old boxes and sorting through junk. It felt good to get that off the list, and to have a more organised and trimmed down storage corner. Dinner was butter chicken and rice which Shafiq made. Really miss spicier food tho! Having kids with us and being too lazy to make 2 separate menus means we eat whatever the kids can eat, which means no cili. Alhamdulillah ala kulli hal.

Shafiq has been telling me to pick a PS4 game for myself so after a few days of research i narrowed it down to three. My criteria was quite simple – no violence/gore/etc2, nothing scary, and simple-ish gameplay. Also I like puzzles and adventure so I veered mostly in that direction. The three that I narrowed down were Journey, The Talos Principle, and The Witness. Shafiq wasn’t too keen on Journey – he said it looked boring. The Talos Principle he didn’t have much to comment on, but he did seem intrigued by The Witness. So we were all set to buy it but then saw it was for like RM170. Change of plans lol. Journey was only RM55. Since it was my first game I didn’t want to spend a lot of money and afterwards maybe discover that I didn’t like it, or the controls were too hard etc. So journey it was. But since it was already midnight, banking was offline so in the end tak beli pun zzzz.

Day 10 – Friday 27th March

Kids woke up early, as usual, and after breakfast of cereal and apples dipped in yogurt I showered the kids and did a morning workout. I clicked on a random low-impact cardio workout on youtube from TheBodyProject, and I have to say I quite like the instructor. He is relaxed and has just the right amount of humility mixed with encouragement. Managed to do the full video which I was quite proud of! Lunch was paratha made into roti tampal coutesy of Shafiq. Heated up the leftover soup I made from the other day and added more beef to it. I din’t want the beef to take forever to cook and still be liat, so i googled how to tenderize beef and tried velveting it using baking soda. Worked a treat! The revamped soup was good, although a bit too salty for my tastebuds.

Day 11 – Saturday 28th March

Kind of a lazy Saturday. Slept in (well, as much as the kids let me) and had a breakfast of peanut butter and honey sandwiches. Was feeing very lethargic in the first half of the day, not sure if it was because I slept a bit late last night, or because I didn’t do my morning workout? Anyway. Spent a lot of the morning lying on the sofa. Shafiq has been craving nasi kandar/ kari mamak for a while so we decided to order lunch and dinner. I don’t know what I was expecting but the kari kambing was not what I had in mind – obviously it was kari mamak not kari melayu haha. I planned on washing all the curtains today, but like I said, lazy saturday, so I haven’t done that yet. Maybe tomorrow. Started playing Journey – I quite like it, the graphics are beautiful and the physics are quite realistic, but I’m not so sure about the gameplay. It seems a little simplistic, like there’s always something helping you out. I don’t know tho, I’ve only played up to chapter 3. We’ll see how it goes.

Day 12 – Sunday 29 March

Finally got around to washing the curtains today, and hemmed them as well since they were too long. Accidentally hemmed one pair too short but oh well. Felt like eating cucur so I looked up a recipe, but after mixing everything, the batter seemed so thick. so i added more and more water but when I tried frying them, they basically turned into one big flat mess. So I had to add flour and more fish powder, basically doubling the recipe. Way too much cucur so we had those for lunch. hopefully will get around to cleaning the balconies today or tomorrow. But not sure about tomorrow since I plan on fasting. We’ll see how that goes too, inshaAllah

Movement Control Order

2020 has been some kind of crazy…I can’t even remember everything thats happened in between the Influenza A epidemic, forest fires, political circus happening, and everything else before. But Covid-19 is a whole other level.

Pre-MCO

Shafiq had a string of back to back weekend jobs coming up so we decided to take a small family vacation to Terengganu, since Mak, Abang, and Kakak’s families would also all be there for a wedding. But due to the Covid-19 situation, we decided to skip the wedding and just hit the beach. We planned on staying til Monday but I took and extra day off of work because I didn’t want to be tired and exhausted coming in post-holiday. But after seeing the news about how bad the health situation was in KL, we decided why not just stay that extra day in Terengganu, since at the time, there were zero reported cases there (as opposed to hundreds in KL/Selangor). Decided to stay at a secluded place 20mins outside of Dungun, where we were  definitely socially distanced from everyone.

 

On our last day in Terengganu, news broke that starting on the 18th of March, the government would impose a movement control order to actively force people into social distancing. I totally agreed with the call, and as we made our way back to KL we stopped at a few small grocery stores to stock up on supplies. No, we did NOT panic buy, but it was funny – since we rarely cook at home, I was peering into other people’s shopping baskets and trolleys in case I missed out anything. But most of the things they bought didn’t really apply to me. Eg, cili boh, tepung, gula, belacan etc. I properly fail at malay cooking. dah try nasi goreng, sup daging. semua rasa kurang. Loaded up on pasta and tomatoes and cheese and the like.

In response to the situation also, as it turned out, all of the strings of clients and jobs Shafiq had lined up for the next few months unfortunately, were all postponed or cancelled. Allahu musta’an 

First few days

Since we had been away from the office since last week, we decided we would both pop into work today to get everything we needed to continue working from home. Packed up the kids around noon and headed off to Setapak. The roads were pretty much clear but not empty. At first I thought of hauling my PC back home but I decided against it. The hackintosh seems pretty fragile anyway. Spent a couple of hours copying files and then headed back home, and the rest of the day was just discussing work stuff and then prepping for dinner, which was paratha with scrambled eggs and sausages. Rojak kind of english breakfast lol.

Even though we had gotten a lot of groceries on the way back, we were still missing quite a lot of fresh produce like chicken and beef. So the next day Shafiq headed over to Giant to finish grocery shopping. I felt very nervous – like he was going off into a battlezone, which when you think of it, he kind of was. 

Kid-mania

The kids seem very happy to be at home with both parents around – though keeping up with them is a challenge to say the least. Even though we are both used to having kids around at work, at home there was us and only us to layan their every request. At least at work there are other people who they can kacau, lol! 

Being at home reminded me of the time when I was a haughty “mom”, before I had kids. I was that person who said things like “my kid will have very limited screen time. I will definitely homeschool them. They will eat healthy homecooked food everyday.” HA HA HA. Jokes on me. I do still harbor big ambitions, but I also know that I have not nearly enough patience and dedication to pull that off. So I’ll try with whatever I can whenever I can, even if that just means a staccato 10 minute struggle with keeping eesa focused through phonics or fine motor skills or math. Or if it means an hour coaxing him to eat, just eat, for the love of God, whatever is on the table.

A lot of the days are spent entertaining the kids, because they need A LOT of entertaining. The amount of times I hear Ummi, ummi nak minum/nak makan/lapar/jom main/ummi sini la/come here/nak ni/tak nak ni is endless. And for some reason, no matter how late I let them sleep they still wake up at 7.30-8am, and pounce on me of course. Abah dia gets to sleep in, easy.

Interpersonal relations

Although it’s wonderful having time with family, it can also drive you a little bit crazy to say the least. As an introvert, being constantly surrounded by people can eat away at your soul and sanity. I was kind of scared we would get on each others nerves too much, but so far alhamdulillah it’s been ok. Not smooth sailing and definitely a lot of deep breathing moments, but ok. We know to spend time on our own in corners of the house so we each get our me-time away from everyone else. Hopefully it gets smoother along the way.

Home and living

On day 5 we were feeling kind of restless I guess, so Shafiq took it unto himself to reorganise the living room layout. We finally hung up the big mirror in the entryway, and hung up the frame that had been in a box for ages. The new layout is much cosier, I think, and defines the living room area a lot better.

One of the things that remains the same whether we’re working at the office or working from home is the eternal conundrum of what to eat. The only difference is, at home, we’re wondering what to cook every day. I’m not big on cooking, especially complex Malay cooking. So far, our menu has been pretty basic, from what I can remember:

  • Day 1 – Paratha with scrambled eggs
  • Day 2 – Breakfast – Cereal + Apples. Grilled cheese with sardine – Lunch – Dinner – Nasi + Ayam masak merah
  • Day 3 – Breakfast – Cereal. Lunch – Spaghetti goreng, Dinner – Nasi putih, kicap, telur mata
  • Day 4 – Breakfast – Pancakes, Lunch & Dinner – Nasi Goreng
  • Day 5 – Breakfast – Cereal + Apples. Lunch Nuggets, wedges and fried chicken, Dinner Sup daging
  • Day 6 – Breakfast – Cereal & bananas. Lunch – peanut butter and honey sandwich

Gratitude

The abrupt slowed down pace of life has been a blessing. It has given time for introspection, for scooping up loose pieces of our lives, and for thinking about the future.

Things I am thankful for, among others, in no particular order and off the top of my head, 

  • praying more jamaah
  • cuddles with my babies
  • taking care of our home
  • not rushing
  • creative and physical energy 

Next week we plan on cleaning the store room and Eesa’s room. We’ll see what else pops up out of this cabin fever. Til then, May Allah protect us all.

Image via @sunnahscene