Pot Roast

Spring made an appearance yesterday. I left my winter coat on the rack and found my hoodie and went for a walk along an urban river with Sabrina, Lydia, Elisa and our dog Kobe. The urban river is not very wild, not very deep, not very clean, and frankly not much of a river. But it's a lot cleaner, deeper, and wilder than five years ago. This is Beijing, after all.

Folks were out with their kids, their dogs, their parents, themselves. All had masks and nearly all wore the masks at least when passing by others. Elisa sped down the path on her bike and Kobe, off least at last, would sprint after her. Once satisfied Elisa was in his reach, Kobe would turn around and come towards us stopping about half way in between as if to say "cmon guys!".

While we've been free to come and go from our complex there hasn't been much incentive to do so for the past eight weeks. Hardly anything except markets are open. The kids pass their time on iPads and more recently with online classes given by their schools. Sabrina has even cooked and not just for Kobe.

Elisa has probably been the most bored since Aidan and Lydia have more in common. A Minecraft session amongst the three is a highlight. At least for me for I get to hear them laughing and enjoying each other. Lydia, like me, is not the most social person and doesn't mind "social distancing" at all. Aidan and Yang are on 14 day self quarantine since their return from Japan 12 days ago. They were made to sign a contract saying they would not go outside and were visited by community center members midway through the quarantine.  Next week I enter my sixth consecutive work from home week. Not commuting is nice. Naps are awesome. My actual work isn't motivating me a lot at the moment which isn't great when WFH.

I read virus updates constantly, much to my detriment. I've come to the realization that the real danger is if the health care systems gets overloaded. That the supplies of ventilators is discrete. That the people of Wuhun took a big hit for us. Their health care centers were overloaded and they were on lockdown and could not seek other options. So most of the infections and deaths occurred there. This  slowed the spread outside Hubei with the hope the curve will smooth out and even if infections are widespread it won't overwhelm our ability to deal with them.

After the walk I noticed a change in our neighborhood Starbucks. For the past month you could only order via an App and have it delivered or pick up. Now they let you come inside and place an order while standing behind a taped yellow line to keep social distance with barista. And with the mandatory temperature check and logging. You can sit down but must were a mask unless actively consuming.

China and especially Beijing are in good shape at the moment. I'm not sure where it goes from here, whether it will be seasonal, whether outbreaks now happening in other parts of the world will boomerang back to China. I do worry for the US where the alarm amongst some people is high but the concern and measures are not broad.

Well, it's time for dinner. I made my mom's pot roast.