I have so far settled into a routine in quarantine. Wake up at 4-6AM, have a light breakfast (coffee with fruit), walk for at least an hour, and then have the breakfast that the hotel has prepared at 8AM.

The rest of my morning walk is often interrupted by mom and dad’s phone call. By the time I’m done with my morning walk, I’ve put in 6-8k steps (about 3-4 miles). This whole time I’m consuming all sorts of news articles on my phone, while listening to Pandora with my new headphones (thanks Juin).

COVID is bad everywhere but in Taiwan. There’s been no community spread here since 4/12/2020. All the reported cases right now belong to those imported by travelers. Most are brought in by Indonesian migrant workers, so the government has put a freeze on Indonesians entering the country. These cases are quickly tracked by the health department, and people quarantined if necessary. There were cases of flight attendants defying the quarantine rules after returning from their international routes, and they were promptly fired. Imagine that happening in the US? Nope. That’s why life goes on here as if there’s no pandemic, while the rest of the world is on pause.

The highlight of my day is of course lunch/dinner.

This alone makes quarantine palatable. Lunch is followed by another hour of walking to reach over 12k steps (we’d recently sign up for ACA, and one of the perks was that they’d pay us $1 a day if we hit a certain number of steps per day).

Tomorrow’s lunch has already been lined up. Can’t wait.

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