Livin' La Vida Lockdown Day 84 'new normal' beginnings - surreal is the new real
After 84 days I caught a Grab cab today - it was the most expensive one on offer so I treated myself to an 8 seater like a masked rock star, it cost a whole $3 and I took myself to a shopping mall. 84 days is a long time between cab rides. 84 days is a long time between anything really. I wore waterproof mascara for the first time in months just in case.
I soon realised I am not Bali tanned anymore and had to change the shade of make up I usually wear. After all this time I have basically become a rare Greek/ Serb mushroom that now meditates a lot.
I didn't really want to go shopping for any reason - except to buy a bao or 3 and some fresh dumplings from that shop downstairs that make it with the flaky pastry I like - maybe even get some new masks that were less boring and just see some humans doing normal things. Whatever normal may now look like.
I am not a mall girl as most know - I don't like to shop for crap I don't need and like to keep my buys local. Malls are not my go to no matter where I live. So I don't quite know how to describe how clean, sparkly, bright, lurid, sterile, half empty, fresh, glittery everything seemed after being in iso for so long. It was like the world was in complete 3D and had been scrubbed to within an inch of it's life, smelt a bit like Dettol and was way too bright and plasticy for my tastes. And it was just so clean and ordered you could eat off the floor. It kinda sucked - particularly when you are so used to the chaos of living in Asia. It was truly weird.
But it was my first day out - and like a grinning masked chimp given new freedom and a banana for the first time - I wandered and wondered.
What was soon apparent in 'the new normal' was what a colossal pain in the ass it was to go shopping. More than usual. I am not talking Xmas crowds shopping, Bali Galleria shopping, Bukit Bintang shopping, not Westfield the Deathstar at Easter shopping or DFO at Homebush shopping - this was 'the new normal shopping'.
From the moment you get out of the cab - adjust your mask - sanitise hands (again? FFS I have been doing this since late Jan) - walk to entry, greet the dude with the temp check, he sprays your hands with sanitiser, 'keep mask on ya?' you reply 'ya Pak' - 'please enter'. Then at every single shop - before you pass the barricades of tape - step on your square - behind your line - temp check, sanitiser, ID and sign in on a register or scan the code with an app. This was at every...single...bloody...store. No exceptions. Some even give you gloves.
Most entry points and exits are closed in the department stores - it is an up, down endless snakes and ladders to just find a way out - and all quite empty and a tad surreal. All the while remembering, you can not try on any clothes, shoes or use testers either...so you are buying blind.
But hairdressers opened today for the first time so people flocked to get groomed. There were queues - long, hairy, masked queues everywhere.
Restaurants normally heaving with people at lunchtime were kinda limping along. Everyone had to go through the same process to just walk through the door and sit down to eat. Some places have already shut down. Those open operated with the letter x stuck on every table. It was all very peculiar.
I suppose this is when life gets back to some form of normal. But if today was any indication we will all be living here in a masked up, sanitised, social distanced, semi-normal for quite a while longer.
I am just glad people in Penang know how to smile with their eyes. And that they engage slowly, kindly and with softness and understanding. It goes a long way to feeling less alien within all this.
So here is to the start of the RMCO in Malaysia and another chapter in the pandemic recovery of the world: June 10 - August 31. Here we go.
Peace
