Quarantine Easter

This coincides with my dad’s 1st year death anniversary, his babang-luksa.  Many plans for this day but COVID19 happened. 

26 Days since start of the Enhanced Community Quarantine for Luzon. And it has been 19 days since I have actually went out of the house. I went out for an hour just to buy medicines at Mercury Drug in Wilson. 

Work from home arrangement could be a lot busier. With Viber, SMS, FB messenger, Email, MS Teams, I am virtually connected to the office 16 hours a day. I can be in multiple meetings and chats. I am expected to reply to messages almost instantaneously. 

I have put some semblance of order and regularity in my workweek. I wake up at 6-615am. I do some morning abs workout before taking a shower. I log on at all my Viber groups by 8am (or a little before it). But never earlier (unless there are emergencies). 

I work out after 5pm, usually at the roofdeck so I could have some outdoor breeze. I have started to use all the workout equipment I have always had lying around. MWF strength training using elastic bands, dumbbells and going for high reps. TThS left for cardio burn stuff, from simple calisthenics routines to some HIIT programs. But this changed during Holy Week. I was off the whole week (company VL). Workouts became mornings, finishing by 930 to 10am, fasted workouts. 

Afternoons I spend usually at the roofdeck (pictured) where I get my summer breeze and golden hour view. At one point, I actually climbed all the way the rooftop just to appreciate the sunset and see smog-free Metro Manila. A buwis-buhay shot.

Quarantine weekends have been spent on home projects. 1st 2 weeks saw me and the help cleaning and beautifying the few ‘garden spaces around the house. Holy Week gave me more time to work on cleanup of the storage. Ugh. So much junk and trash accumulated throughout the years. But it also yielded precious items like old photos in albums and picture frames, some books, and lots of memories.

Today was the first time the family got to use Zoom meetings. Since we “attended” the Easter Vigil celebrations last night, we had the morning to finally do that video conferencing app. It was great seeing my siblings, my nephews and nieces interact with my mom and us based here in San Juan City. We tried to do some communal singing. But with differing internet speeds, that was a flop. But we got to share old photos using Zoom. And we got updated on how everyone was doing. It looked like we were all still free from COVID19. 

 No more grieving for Tatay. It has been a year. He is in a peaceful place now. I dreamt about him last week. His message: “I am always around. Haven’t you wondered who has been carrying you?” Strange yet comforting, he is probably looking out for us. And telling us to just hang on, kapit lang as something good will still come out of this. We just have to keep the faith.