During Singapore’s coronavirus lockdown in April and May, we could leave the house for “exercise in the neighborhood.” Lucky us: our neighborhood includes the seashore and a beach, so we made the most of it.
The beach was mostly empty, some of the time:
But we weren’t the only one with this bright idea. Plenty of other kids were there, including sometimes a schoolmate or two. We tried to keep the kids distanced, but kids will be kids.
We went to the beach several times a week — get some fresh air, tire Nyan out a bit. Sadly, the beach was getting too crowded, so after only about two weeks, we showed up one day to find this horror:
The park’s walking paths stayed open so we could still go for walks, but the sand area and in fact all the grassy parts of the park were sealed off and closed. And lockdown got a little bit worse.
In early April, what everyone had feared would happen, happened: the coronavirus started getting out of hand in Singapore, so the government put everyone on a sort of soft lockdown. They didn’t call it a lockdown, and we weren’t exactly restricted to our homes. But everyone was to work or learn from home, and leave home pretty much only to buy food or to exercise in their immediate neighborhood. No socializing, no movies, no bars, no school, no offices. Just… lockdown. (Or, to use the term employed by the local government: Circuit Breaker, or CB – i.e., breaking the circuit of the virus going from person to person.)
Not gonna lie: it wasn’t easy at first, as everyone around the world can relate to! Eventually we found somewhat of a rhythm. But for two long months, we didn’t do a whole lot! Let’s take a look at what litle we did manage to do in that time.
Nyan read! A lot. As always.
Nyan also started reading Game of Thrones on Daddy’s kindle. We indulged him, briefly, just to hear him read. But we didn’t let that continue. The boy is still just a little young for that one…
There was plenty of time to play with toys too.
Screen time too: zoom calls with friends, watching youtube, even a little online chess. We tried to keep the screen time to a minimum.
We also got in the habit of watching a movie most evenings. Not every evening, but several times a week. We watched all of the cartoon series Avatar: the Last Airbender, and most of the Studio Ghibli films.
And yeah, we slept a lot. And Daddy took a lot of pictures of Nyan sleeping. Because there wasn’t much else to do!
In upcoming posts we’ll look at a few other things we did, like going to the park and getting exercise. Stay tuned.
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