Dispatches by Adrian Conoza

In my first Dispatch from Home, I wrote that ' Quarantine Necessitates Routin e '. So far, as I wrestled with the adjustments and inconveniences in the past months, I was able to get into a routine, which could be simplified into starting up, breakfast, doing work/or anything I got interested to do (after watching reruns of Game KNB? on Jeepney TV), lunch, continuing my work/recereation, dinner, watching Shark Tank on Techstorm and a vlog on YouTube, then folding up to rest. Each day has been passing by quickly enough, and this makes me realize that I should really be making most of my time. One of the best way for me to do this, I concluded, is to have an early wake up. I've managed to fix my wake up from a very late 8 or 9 to a decent 7 or 7:30. But my dream wake up is 6:00. I could wake up at 6, but GETTING UP is so hard to do often. Why 6? For one thing, my parents are rarely awake at those times. I find it great to be an early bird. But more primarily, so that I coul...

There are a few notes on the desktop screen, among them a quote from Queen Elizabeth's message on this crisis. I really find it comforting. A lot of headlines these past few weeks: Wimbledon cancelled. UAAP 83 cancelled. Testing expanded to the vulnerable in the population. Increasing number in recoveries and deaths. And more recoveries as of this writing! Boris Johnson admitted to ICU. And finally recovering! But the most saddening news for me so far, the Enhanced Community Quarantine extended. Why the most saddening if for the betterment of our community? That and more are what I have reflected on in the most recent weeks of the now-extended quarantine. More groceries Just a week after I bought groceries for the family and some medications for my mother, I was once again given the task to buy prescribed meds and do the groceries that I think would be enough for the supposedly last two weeks of the quarantine. Of course, learning from my previous trip to ...

Increasing number of cases. The folly of a government official. The first positive case from a head-of-state. The postponement of the Summer Olympics. These are few of the headlines that shook our world as the battle to curb the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues.  Likewise, this pandemic has affected every individual in many ways. With most of us experiencing some sort of 'house arrest', I got more observations in a quarantined life that suddenly altered my schedule, activities, and even attitude toward things.  Time for TV It was more evident a week after the quarantine kicked off that I'm getting a 'reunion' with a medium I've grown up with (along with radio) before I got to enter the World Wide Web in the middle of Grade 5—television.  Years before the flat screen, I remember how my day went on going from one channel to another out of around 10 channels in free-to-air. My days would start with the TV on the mornings show by either ABS-...

I've been mostly writing Dispatches from my home. But this time, when the coronavirus disease (or COVID-19) caused an enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) in Luzon in order to curb the spread of the disease, hence "flatten the curve", I find it fit to chronicle how life has been since I'm confined at home. Here is my first quarantine dispatch from home. ---  Prior to the quarantine, I was expecting to go to the office on a Tuesday. But come Monday afternoon, CNN Philippines reported that according to the presidential spokesman the President will announced an Enhanced Community Quarantine over Luzon. At around minutes before 8pm, the President finally confirmed it—Luzon's on ECQ. Life won't be the same again. Not just for me, but for everyone. As I thought it over how life will go on for the next days until, hopefully, at the end of this quarantine the curve is flattened, I realized a few things.