9 days 3 hours and 49 minutes to go - single digits! Today was a little quieter than yesterday but still had 3 great catch ups with family and friends while I got my 10,000 steps in. I attempted to mop the floor - it felt fairly ineffective on rough concrete - but hey it’s the thought that counts right? Also managed to get in a workout, paint my toenails, catch up on an old blog post, sort my google drive out, watch some Tiger King and check in on the latest news from the hospital. So all in all another day passed pretty easily, hoping it stays this easy as long as possible.

I chatted for a bit to my dad’s cousin’s son this morning who is doing 14 days government required quarantine in a hotel in Auckland (New Zealand) having arrived recently from the U.K. He’s been keeping a pretty detailed (and funny) Facebook story of his days in there. Today included 2 excellent lip-sync performances: firstly Celine Dion by a cardboard box and Bananas in Pajamas performed by… 2 bananas. He can’t work from lock down so I guess this is part of his stay-sane method. I also got to jealously salivate over his delicious looking juices, croissants, macadamia and chocolate-chip cookie, fresh green salad, and the killer… chicken burrito with sour cream and tomato jam. It was interesting to chat to him, at one point we realised if someone looked at our conversation out of context they might have thought we were both in jail: “how long til you get out”, “are you allowed out of your room”, “yea but only with police supervision” (that one was him not me - they can go for a walk but there are literally police watching them) “what’s the food like” etc. etc. Strange times indeed.

I actually ate some of the breakfast for the first time today though - the two pan fried buns - I didn’t eat the funny smelling Siu Mai or preserved vegetables. Lunch was legitimately yummy which was very exciting, chicken pieces in a soy kinda sauce and fish and capsicum in sweet and sour sauce (with rice and veges as usual). Dinner included one of those funny coloured egg things in a nasty looking sauce and it kind of put me off so I had instant noodles and muesli bars instead.

Latest update from the patient - he still feels totally fine apart from a few aches from lying in bed too much, so he is making sure to do a bit more stretching and exercises in the little bit of space he has in the room. He was downloading video game number 3 (GTA) when I chatted to him and starting to run out of snacks. He thinks we might have to roll him out of there with all he is eating while he is mainly lying down! Latest test results showed the same low virus count as previously. As far as we know it would still need two negative tests to get him out of there.

Update - huh - after I published this I just noticed that this news website linked to my FAQs on April 2nd - that’s kinda crazy!