The Covid-19 Blog Post

Hi everyone! These are crazy times, and I know everyone is worried about everyone and everything in general, so I wanted to give a little update and assurance that I’m well and as safe as possible at present. If you don’t want to read it all, at least read these first two paragraphs! I’m still in Myanmar, but I’ve moved to Yangon and am living in an amazing AirBnB on a quiet street in a safe neigbourhood. We have a generator, lots of drinking water (and toilet paper, although we don’t need it thanks to bidets), and very easily accessible and well-stocked shops and markets near-by. All of the malls and shopping centers are now taking temperatures of all customers. Keeping a distance from people and avoiding touching surfaces is easy enough. We have even been able to buy masks and hand sanitizer in the past couple days. Many offices have closed, and bars and restaurants have been ordered to close too. I spend most of my time at home, leaving to get food or go for a bike ride on empty streets. I am far from the only foreigner who will be staying in Myanmar at this time, so we’re all here alone together.

The kitchen in my new place - so many appliances!

As for flights: I’ve been living in Myanmar since November 2017, in a city in the Southeast called Mawlamyine. For quite some time, I have known that the end of my contract there would come on March 15 2020, and I had made plans to travel to Canada in mid-April. I bought my ticket when prices were low at the end of February. It is a round-trip ticket, as I plan to return to Myanmar to work. Trying to change this ticket has proven impossible in the last week. I booked through a third party, and they have been absolutely swamped with calls and emails. I was on hold for an hour before I gave up and sent them an email, and now I wait for a reply. I looked at the option of cancelling that ticket completely and buying a new one, but the flight path options are not very appealing – layovers in China, where huge delays can be expected, or in the USA, where people are stocking up on BULLETS. The photos I’ve seen from American airports of everyone crammed into long lines and nobody wearing masks gets a big “NO THANKS” from me. So, all I can do is wait until the panic subsides a little and see what my options are. I’m alright with this, and I figure there are people out there, who were traveling around, and aren’t necessarily living or settled into these countries the way I am in Myanmar. I know LOTS of people (lots and lots), I know how things work here, I know where to get information and help if needed, and my visa lets me stay legally. So, why not free up the phone lines for people that are REALLY stranded? I promise, I am not “stranded”, I just have less freedom of mobility than usual.

The notice on the booking agent website!

I also think it would be nice to take you through a little timeline of my Covid-19 experience.

February

China started to really shut down at the end of January. Myanmar shares a HUGE, border with China, which many people cross over every day, often illegally, with limited checking or infrastructure. Many Chinese companies operate in Myanmar, or in partnership with Myanmar companies, and there must be thousands of Chinese nationals coming and going between Myanmar and China all the time on flights. I have been worried about a Covid-19 outbreak in Myanmar since the beginning of February. Thailand got its first few cases in February, and this was also worrisome, since this border is also huge, has many illegal crossings and limited infrastructure at the legal crossings. But life continued as normal, and Thailand managed to prevent an outbreak (in February at least), and if there were cases along the northern border areas, we didn’t hear about them. What did happen in February, was that everyone I knew got sick with an illness that we’ll probably never know for sure wasn’t Covid-19. It’s normal to get sick in Myanmar, and it’s normal not to go to the hospital to get it treated unless it gets REALLY bad. One by one, we went through the phases: sore throat, fever, fatigue, feeling “stoned” even without medicine, so much mucus and coughing. A couple of people also said it felt like “someone was sitting on their chest”, a symptom eerily similar to the difficulty in breathing linked to Covid19. Luckily, everyone recovered, and we told ourselves it must have just been a seasonal bug going around (weather changing from cool to hot). However, this theory is still brought up quite regularly in Myanmar, because if it was a cold it was a REALLY BAD COLD. Anyway, that was February, life carried on as normal, even though more and more countries saw outbreaks.

A photo of me from February, protecting colleagues from my bad cold or maybe Covid-19.

March

March 1^st is my birthday, and I was able to celebrate this in normalcy, and it was an amazing weekend. Still no sense of impending doom. We even went to karaoke like three times in the first 2 weeks in March! 

3 weeks ago but feel like 3 months ago! Times have changed!

However, sometime in March, things started to get really bad in Italy. In my mind, the virus is split between Before Italy and After Italy. After Italy, I think that’s when everyone (especially countries that hadn’t dealt with SARS) finally started to realize what the worst case scenario really was. Meanwhile, March 13^th I had my last day of work, facilitated a workshop on teaching sexual health in the villages and said goodbye to like 30-40 work colleagues over a huge meal. The opposite of social distancing lol. OOPS. March 14 -15 I was fully immersed in packing, selling things, and moving out of my apartment in Mawlamyine and into my AirBnB in Yangon. There was no time to think about anything else. On the evening of March 15, we went to the mall and got some pizza. My Plan A was to stay in Yangon these 4 weeks, do some consulting work, send lots of job applications, do some networking, maybe do some interviews. Plan A obviously crumbled immediately upon arrival.

Meanwhile, that same weekend, Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, gets on TV and says “It’s time for Canadians abroad to come home now”, and implies things are going to get BAD. In some ways, this is a good thing, and I’m glad the Canadian government tried to be proactive in this. For me, as an individual, this was very poor timing. On my first couple mornings in my new place, I was flooded with messages from family and friends asking what my plan was. I hadn’t even unpacked or recovered from the move I had just made, and I definitely didn’t have the mental space to process the panic. 

They stayed like this for 4-5 days

For Monday and Tuesday of last week, all I could do was read, watch, stress out, and sometimes remember to eat and drink water. I was paralyzed by anxiety. Wednesday I started to come to, and reached out to some friends in Yangon. Some are staying, some have already left, I’d say it’s about 50/50. Then I sat down and wrote out some pros and cons charts, one each for staying and leaving ASAP. Then I figured out my costs for each option. Well, the cons lists for BOTH options were much longer than the pros, and the costs are going to be pretty similar too. So, it didn’t help as much as it might have, but it did help me feel way more in control of the situation than I had been feeling, and this helped. On Thursday, with new, improved headspace, I made the phone call to the booking agent, gave up after 1 hour, sent an email, and decided not to stress about it ANYMORE. Whatever will be will be.

On Friday I was feeling pretty anxious. My anxiety has always taken physical forms – IBS, chest pain, jaw pain, tension headaches, you name it. So, on Friday my face was feeling hot and I was sure it was a fever. Luckily, my new housemates are super rational and suggested I go get a thermometer from down the street. And of course, my internal temperature was 100% perfect, nothing wrong with me at all. So now, when I start convincing myself I have a fever, I just pop the thermometer in my mouth, see that lovely 36.8 and relax. 

Stress Relief during a pandemic

Since Saturday I have been feeling immensely more normal and better, and I think I’m now ready to either get on a plane with like 24 hours notice or to stay in Myanmar until May or beyond holed up in this house.

UNTIL MAY!? Hope I didn’t scare you Canadian readers, but that is very likely the minimum amount of time it will take before the situation is more stable (but it WILL get more stable). Well I am confident some travel options will remain open to me (via Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan for example), many countries are closing their borders and many flights are being cancelled. It’s not a good time to move around right now, or to take a long haul flight to the other side of the world. That's why I don't mind staying put for now.

The Pros and Cons

I think you might be curious about my pros and cons list, so here’s a little sample

Option 1: Drop everything and fly to Canada ASAP

Pros	Cons
Don’t have to worry about visa	No health insurance for 3 months
Free rent in nice house	Bad English teaching hours (5-8am)
Can trust the government (mostly)	Change flight or get new one, could be expensive
Near nature and hiking	Food and transportation expensive
Home for planned trip (unless all of that gets cancelled)	Empty grocery stores
	Could get stuck in a layover country
	Bayfield not so exciting
	Might put mom at risk

*”Being near family” is not on the pros list because for at least 2 weeks I wouldn’t be able to have any contact with them anyway!

Option 2: Staying in Myanmar

Pros	Cons
Cheaper health insurance, provider covers Covid-19 related costs	Might have to extend current visa without leaving the country (expensive)
Better teaching hours	Might have to cancel Canada plans and trips
No lockdown yet	Pay rent
Might be better for work	Bad healthcare system
Have nice place to stay	Government misinforms
Good chance China will send aid and people if there’s an outbreak

 **Making pros and cons lists is hard when you don’t know ANYTHING and everything is uncertain. 

Daily Life

I also think my daily routine is mundane enough to convince you that I’m doing just fine.

7am-8am – Check messages, chat with family and friends in Canada, drink some tea, eat a banana, check email

8am-9am – yoga, shower, eat

9-12 (ish) – maybe go to the market to buy food (wear a mask, wash hands right after)

-       Do online work

-       Today I wrote this blog post

Lunch  - make at home

Afternoon until 4PM

-       Do some work, watch some Netflix or TV, read, eat early dinner,

4:30 – 7:30 PM – Teach online English classes to the Chinese kids

8PM – eat dinner, chat with housemates, watch a movie, read a book, go for short bike ride

My teaching schedule for this week - I'm not going broke

So to summarize: I’m safe, I’ve got everything I need to stay physically and mentally healthy, and I’ve got plans A, B, C, D, E and F ready to go depending on how the next few weeks unfold. I’m not alone, I’ve got a steady source of income, food and soap and I got my Spotify account working again. Unfortunately, the future is extremely uncertain for all of us, but I think in a few weeks from now we will know much more. So hang in there, stay sane and be grateful for the internet for letting us connect without passing germs to each other. Also guys, can this be the end of the handshake forever? Yes, right?

 

PS- In case you're wondering, little bro Robert's safe and healthy in Australia too, but if you ever have to pick between me and him for your zombie apocalypse team I'm definitely the better option just a friendly FYI