One month later. Is there a light at the end of this lockdown tunnel? So far the future appears grim and bleak with no end in sight. It looks increasingly likely that this MCO would carry on well until the fasting month and who knows after Eid as well.
The family is coping well. We've been ordering a lot of our shopping online, mostly knicks and knacks and non-perishable items. Hana had been nagging me to buy stationeries and her advance birthday present since the start of the month. Thankfully most of the items we ordered we delivered within the stipulated delivery time. I am still waiting for my Mammut Flap Wallet from Spain to arrive which has been 3 weeks and counting. In this day and age, I expected this delay for international shipment but it started to feel too long.
For groceries item though, we've been shopping some from our local grocers store but mostly from Tesco in Bandar Seri Putra. There is only so much you can buy from the local grocer before they run out of stock of things that you want hence the need to visit the nearest hypermart. Tesco had been practising their social distancing very seriously causing an hour long queue just to get into their stores. Yes they do offer advanced ordering service via WhatsApp where you can order in advance and then only come to visit when they have finished picking up your groceries at the store. You skip the ridiculously long queue and just proceed to pay at the counter with your groceries in tow. But this is only for food items. For other stuff, you cannot order in advance and have to queue up like everybody else. I suspect they only let around 10 people between the aisles at a time hence the long queue. Which made me almost give up of going to Tesco altogether unless I really have to or very early in the morning to avoid the queue.
So far I haven't encountered any roadblocks around Bangi up until section 1 and home. There was one impromptu roadblock in Batu 5 recently on the way back from Tesco but they let me through when I told them I was shopping for groceries. Many of my favourite restaurants and eateries are closed though this lockdown season. Wong Solo is open although they taste nothing like my favourite Ayam Gepuk which is curiously closed this time for some reason. I tried to order from Grab or Food Panda but looking at their ludicrous delivery charge, I would rather drive and buy them myself. Not only they mark up the food price from the regular menu, they also charge minimum of 16 ringgit onwards for delivery. You must be really well off if you can afford to buy from them regularly.
There is only so much gaming and TV and movies that you can watch these days before getting tired of them. I have picked up a little bit of gardening last week, clearing the little patch of land that we have on our front porch which was littered with a myriad of plants that my mother planted since we moved here. They're not really an eyesore or anything, it's just that they are planted rather haphazardly without any design in mind. I'd like to build a proper garden patch like in Stardew Valley with rows of vegetables and fruits that we can actually harvest and eat. So far I've germinated some chillies, bird pepper, tomato, celery, honey dew, lime and bell pepper seeds. They are all flourishing nicely except for the lime and bell pepper seeds which I haven't looked at in the store. Everything I learned about gardening so far I learned from YouTube and some advice from my mother via text so although I'm pretty confident, I have no idea if they would live well and bear fruit. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
My wife had started to venture into baking. She made a few lovely cakes so far and they actually taste good. Needless to say, since she’s home most of the time and the kids are hungry all the time, she had to cook a lot and I consequently have to eat more than usual so there goes my diet plan.
As I said before, work had not really let slowed down even in this lockdown period. We are in the midst of replacing our firewall when the lockdown started and the boss demanded that we proceed with the project as usual. So while other departments are probably lounging easily at home, my division is constantly busting our brains to finish this project on schedule. That apart from the regular support tickets that we've been receiving every other day. If there's anybody who's deserving of bonus and raise this year, it's us.
If you're on social media these past few weeks, you will realize how fucked up this backdoor government have been doing in running the country. More like running the country to the ground. The health minister is the butt of jokes and their MPs and excos had been running around flouting the MCO rules and proudly exhibiting their transgressions on social media for all to see. I had to skip my regular running and cycling routing for fear of being caught outside. Thousands of people are actually being arrested and prisoned for breaking the MCO and here we have some government clowns openly flouting the rule with no care in the world. Despite the home ministry assurance about investigation and shit, I doubt they will get anything worse than a slap in the wrist and a few thousand ringgit fine. Seems like there are two sets of rule in this country, one for government-linked goons and one for the rest of us.
People are losing jobs, income and businesses and folks are being arrested and locked up due to the MCO. There is definitely not enough being done to help the needy and public in general with those one off handouts. Oil prices are dropping which mean the economy is going to suffer badly. The ministers are incompetent and becoming the butt of jokes in the country and internationally. If people are still supporting these clowns after all those shenanigans and fuck ups then we probably deserve all the bad things that are happening to us. But along with half decent ordinary Malaysians who didn't vote for them don't deserve this so fuck you UMNO, BN, PAS, Bersatu and GPS. I want this government to fail and fail bad because they don't have the mandate or the ability to manage this country. They're just a bunch of opportunistic, self-centred politicians who don't care about governing the country let alone the people. They want the title, position and the handsome pay but none of the responsibilities and commitment.
And that is my one month MCO report thus far.
