KUALA LUMPUR, April 29 — It is almost 10am.
That’s when the quarantine officers will knock on the door of our hotel rooms. This is where we had been spending the mandatory 14 days of quarantine since returning to Malaysia.
They will escort us below to where the business centre and ballrooms are. Where jetlagged executives had held meetings, that is, before Covid-19.
Now they have been replaced by a series of counters to process quarantine guests being discharged from two weeks of monitored isolation: us. And when we are done, our quarantine will have ended.
Before any of this, however, there is the matter of breakfast. Today the knock on my door is earlier than usual (though there’s never any real “usual” — sarapan kuarantin arrives between 7am and 9am on most mornings).
It’s as though they intuited that this would be our last breakfast before leaving. On a number of WhatsApp chats with other quarantine guests, the most desired breakfast was the nasi lemak. Mostly for the sambal which was fiery enough to have come from a roadside gerai or some auntie’s kitchen. It had the flavour of freedom, something everyone sorely missed.
I would have been happy with anything; this is a quarantine during a pandemic, after all. It’s not a staycation though we are in a hotel.
As it turns out, it is my favourite of the various breakfasts: fried noodles with two or three slivers of fish cake, simple sweet corn and a hard-boiled egg. (I make my own Neslo.)
Fortified by the meal, it’s time to say, “Goodbye, room.” I’m prepared for a long wait to be discharged. It didn’t take more than an hour, surprisingly.
First counter, the Malaysia Civil Defence Force (APM), then the hotel to return my room card. Next the Ministry of Health (KKM) for my clean bill of health: coronavirus-free!
Finally the Royal Malaysia Police (PDRM) counter where I am handed a letter stating I have successfully completed my quarantine and am free to return home. For those of us who live beyond a 10-kilometre radius of the quarantine centre, this document is immensely helpful should one be stopped at a police roadblock on the way back.
Thanks to Pam Louis, the never-resting #ReachOut champion who had helped many Malaysians stranded in New Zealand, we knew to order a six-seater vehicle on our GrabCar app.
She had called up the Covid-19 hotline multiple times, before our flight home to Malaysia; the advice given was to “sit diagonally from each other, including from the driver, in a zigzag fashion, to maintain an acceptable social distance.”
Once we reach the lobby, there’s a final step before we are allowed to depart: our luggage and bags have to be disinfected one last time. It feels it was just yesterday when this first happened, or it feels like it’s been years. In reality, it has been two weeks since we arrived at KLIA.
A blip or an eternity: your mileage will vary, depending on how productive your quarantine has been... or not been.
During the ride home, I observe how roads in the city centre are emptier than it would normally be on a weekday. Yet far busier than I’d expect during the Movement Control Order (MCO): aren’t most folks supposed to be staying at home?
Home. Finally. Check the mailbox. Open the windows and air the rooms. Unpack luggage. Clean everything, especially the floors. Surely there must be a thick layer of dust after so long away?
Shockingly, any dirt found is minimal; I realise the construction projects that have been a bane on the lives of many residents in my neighbourhood, with their headache-inducing noise and incessant dust, must also have had to cease operations during the MCO.
Instead, I can hear the birds chirping out in the garden.
Time for groceries. Back in Auckland, where I had to shelter in place at a friend’s home, staying in the vacant backyard sleepout, I’d walk to the nearest supermarket as infrequently as possible. A long queue of customers stretched around the car park, everyone at least two metres apart.
At my neighbourhood supermarket, folks aren’t as adherent to the rules of social distancing. Aside from the requisite face masks, the fresh produce aisle is as crowded as it was before Covid-19. If, in Auckland, customers would wait with their trolleys for another to finish before entering an aisle, here it is basically a free-for-all.
Still, some measures are taken. I had my temperature scanned before being allowed to enter the supermarket. At checkout, lines are taped on the floor to indicate how customers ought to stand a metre apart.
Despite purchasing groceries, on the first day after quarantine, lunch is takeaway and dinner is food delivery. What a luxury this is!
During the lockdown in New Zealand, there was neither takeaway nor food delivery. You bought groceries and you prepared your own meals. That’s it.
Bedtime is a relief: to have my own bed, to fall asleep the moment my head is cradled by my pillow.
The next morning it feels like a luxury not to be woken up by a loud knock on my door. No regularly delivered breakfast either.
I recall how a lady in the quarantine discharge queue yesterday told her husband, “You’ll have to leave my food in a container outside my room, dear. I’m too used to that now.”
Instead we begin our day at our own pace. We have a kitchen we can walk into, a pantry we can access rather than assembling a mug of Neslo from sachets.
I grind coffee beans I bought yesterday, the mechanical grind a meditative mantra. Taking time to brew a whole pot of coffee because well, time is what we all have now on our hands, a particular gift of the MCO lockdown.
We still have some granola from our time stranded in New Zealand so we have that too. Isn’t it strange that our first breakfast after quarantine harkens back to that time in Auckland? Our life has bent and turned on itself, like an ouroboros, like Groundhog Day.
As we sip our coffee, we realise it’s coming to 10 in the morning. Almost 24 hours since our quarantine had ended.
Already our life is so different from before, once again. Yet so much remains startlingly, comfortingly, the same.
Covid-19, lockdown, MCO, quarantine — these are but external forces. Who we are is who we have always been, I realise. How we face a pandemic is how we would face anything in life.
For a complete list of ‘Life Under Quarantine’ and ‘Stranded in Auckland’ stories, visit https://lifeforbeginners.com/stranded/.
