Lockdown Day 10: Connecting with neighbors, and continuing the lockdown roller coaster
24,943 cases - almost 25,000.
This morning started with family Zoom calls, always keeping my eye on message notifications to see when our rescheduled-from-yesterday PCR tests would happen.
I fixed a quick breakfast after the call - my last piece of banana bread split in two, with some chocolate chips on top (the banana bread itself was just barely sweet), and my last piece of maple milk toast. While the maple milk bread didn’t turn out as fluffy as I hoped, I actually really liked the very chewy, dense texture. And it really did taste of maple, which a lot of “maple” recipes don’t.
The last few times our entryway did PCR tests, the group leaders would tell us that we must go in our individually assigned groups, to reduce congestion. They reinforced this every time, only when it came time to actually do the test, the entryway leader would say, “Everyone come down now!” Today, one of the volunteers said that we must go only in order of floors. Like before, she said we must remain patient and stay inside.
And yet, once again the entryway leader sent a message to everyone, “The whole building, come down!”
Sigh.
And this time they set up the testing table right outside the door, so we were all lined up in the stairs and hallway. And me holding my huge bag of trash.
Eventually they did move the table away from the front door. It’s funny to be in the Chinese WeChat groups, because I can learn certain slang. For example, the people dressed in the white hazmat suits are called “大白“ literally big white. And the WeChat translate function translates it as “Baymax’!!
After the test, I prepared lunch before and after my gym’s workout of the day.
I decided to follow the advice of my entryway group yesterday, and prepared the celtuce leaves by salting first, and then making it into a rice dish which is very typical Shanghaiese. First though, because the leaves were in the same bag as very dirty potatoes and an unsealed bag of chicken leaking chicken juice, I tried washing my vegetables with my dish detergent. Yes! Some people do this, and if you look at the bottle of my dish detergent, it actually says right on there - that it’s for washing dishes AND fruits and vegetables. That’s why you can see some bubbles in the water.
Of course, I made sure to rinse many many times.
Then I cooked some brown rice with a tiny piece of Chinese preserved ham (kind of like Spanish jámon).
And then I added in the vegetables, finely chopped before salting them, and cooked the rice for a bit longer. I might have gone a bit too far, because the color isn’t as green as I would like, but it was a nice dish.
Another carb-cum-vegetable side dish was my Thanksgiving stuffing. It really tastes as good today as it did on Thanksgiving. I just love this recipe.
I completed this meal with a drumstick seasoned with sage, thyme, rosemary, and salt, and a crispy piece of skin. And to drink, I had a San Pellegrino sparkling lemon soda, which my friend who lives in the building gave me a while back when she came over to eat. Was that for Thanksgiving even? How appropriate!
While my dishes were cooking or heating, I took the time to mop all of my floors. Since my ayi hasn’t been able to come the last few weeks, it's up to me to keep things tidy. I even mopped the balcony floor, like she does. So after a pretty intense workout and the house cleaning, it felt nice to just sit down and enjoy the really warm (and windy) day outside. With my view of a singular palm tree.
Just an afternoon check on my scallion - it seemingly has shot up right before my eyes, now reaching beyond the lip of the glass!
Online my groups were saying that today the neighborhood committee would be distributing more food - “staple food” as people call things like rice and noodles (主食). And I saw people driving around carts with big bags of stuff.
We got two bags of noodles! Very thin ones, like vermicelli.
I said hi to my neighbor across the way when she was downstairs looking up at me on my balcony, and later on when she was back in her usual position in the second floor window, she saw that I also had my two yellow packages of noodles, and she said, “You also got these! Leave them out for the breeze to blow on them a bit,” referring to her two packages taking the place of her vegetables on the window sill. I had just that idea! I actually wiped them down with a disinfecting wipe, and wanted to leave them outside to dry. I figure that’s the reason why she puts things out, to kind of air clean them.
This afternoon I also made a loaf of non-knead whole wheat bread. It looked okay in the pan.
But it didn’t seem to rise any more in the oven! I hope it’s not too dense. I shall find out later…
While the bread was in the oven, I went downstairs because a neighbor said he had just been gifted a whole crate of avocados, and he was offering them up to the community for free. He said he was from San Diego, which was a super coincidence!
While outside, I saw a surprising amount of people out and about.
I feel so lucky to get my three avocado! Now I’ll have to think about how best to use them…
Originally for dinner, I was thinking of making something with the cabbage. But I realized that I was simply exhausted. Exhausted by all of the cleaning and cooking. Exhausted by trying to keep up with the messages around food supplies and policy. So I decided to make something much simpler (for me) - the classic tomato and egg scramble. Following the general recipe of 小高姐 Sister Gao from YouTube. A method my mom and I used several times in San Diego, in 2020. It was just comforting to make, since I had the recipe in my head already, and comforting to eat.
Expecting that I might be getting my shipment of fruit soon, through the mini-app that’s connected to the 居委会 neighborhood committee, I went for one of my last three remaining pieces of fresh fruit, and mandarin orange.
I was about to get some work done this evening, but then suddenly I saw a message come through our entryway group at around 9:50pm, saying that beyond our current lockdown order, all of the doors would be sealed shut. Sealed with a paper pasted from door sill to the door. So that if you opened the door, you would break the seal. Like a tamper-precent lawyer. I feel like from the 2+2+?? days to the current lockdown, every time I feel like we are “locked down” already, only an even stricter “lockdown” would come rearing its head later.
I spent time reading the messages. And then sometime later, I see some posts saying that it was the shortest extreme lockdown, ever. Apparently the policy has been reversed? So here I am. Happy that I finally can have form some kind of connection with my neighbors. Whether it’s getting cooking tips from them or just saying hi. On the other hand, I’m exhausted by having to do all of the taking care of the home on my own, cook all of my meals, and most exhausted of all by keeping track of the policies and always being watchful for messages about testing, and other COVID-control measures, all while working.