A megaphone blares in the distance. I only catch snippets: "please...important...home...curfew." I can fill in the blanks. They're asking people to stay at home if they have nothing urgent to do outside. Curfew hours will be enforced. Whoever is behind the megaphone (or recording) is still polite. They're asking nicely. I wonder if they will sound more...brusque...tomorrow, just like the mayor's Facebook page that has slowly gotten sterner and sterner as the day progressed. Last time I checked a couple of hours ago, they've posted an update about apprehending a hundred people today for 'loitering' and will now be slapping people with a fine--PhP 500 (approximately US$10) on their second offense and PhP 1,000 (US$20) for a third offense. If you're wondering what happens to people who were caught for the FOURTH time, I'm wondering too.

My phone buzzes. It's a text message from a courier telling me that he has attempted to deliver my online purchase but that he wasn't allowed to pass through at the checkpoint that's 400 meters away from my house.
Please don't return it to the seller, I beg.
All packages are now being returned to sender, he replies.
Sigh. That was my ring light, one item in the long list of prerequisites I've convinced myself I would need to be able to make YouTube videos, which I was thinking I will finally have the time to do during this long lockdown. I feel so frustrated knowing that the ring light got within 400 meters of me then it was turned away. You know that scene in a movie when the actor has something almost within his grasp then it suddenly gets pulled away out of reach? It feels like that. Now I have another reason to procrastinate when it comes to making those YouTube videos.  

You may be wondering if I can go out. The answer is no. The barangays (the smallest unit of government in the Philippines, equal to a village or a district) are giving one quarantine pass to each household to allow only one member to go out and buy necessities. The person on my family's  quarantine pass would be my husband, not me, even though I always tell him his grocery shopping skills are not up to par. When I go to the supermarket, I check out the whole shelf to see which products offer the best value for money. He, in turn...picks out what amuses him or draws his fancy, which I think might characterize a typical male homo sapiens out on a grocery run. But I digress. 

Going back to this life under lockdown, my husband said the other day that I'm probably the type to enjoy it, seeing as I like my solitude and don't crave much for the company of others.  Am I enjoying this lockdown? Of course not. I may not be suffering from cabin fever as much as everybody else but I'm certainly anxious about being forced to stay indoors because of a serious health threat, and I am really concerned about the disastrous economic impact this lockdown will have on everybody else, including myself. I had been planning to hold a workshop on teaching English online but that has now been put on hold indefinitely. I don't really know when it will be possible to safely hold on-site gatherings and classes again. Just when I got inspired to network and reach out to other people, a pandemic comes and puts a stop to those plans.

Besides the impact of this pandemic on long-term goals, there's the impact on day-to-day life. Grocery runs have been utterly chaotic. Even though I can understand why the municipal government has imposed grocery schedules per area to prevent people from going out unnecessarily, it has actually kind of led to long queues just trying to get inside a supermarket. Because people can't shop for their needs everyday, it has led to a kind of stampede for a whole district every time it's their schedule to go out and buy--almost every household representative would be out there buying groceries. In addition to this, supermarkets are not allowed to just let everybody in. They limit how many people can go in at the same time. For example, only 100 people at a time are allowed to go in. The rest will have to wait outside in a queue. And when you get inside, some food items have already been sold out, such as particular cuts of chicken or pork, because our schedule is in the afternoon and the morning shoppers would already have carted away everything. Sigh. 

So we watch the news everyday. Or every hour. There is really no good news to be heard. We just keep seeing the numbers going up all around the world. And then we see more news about people asking for help because they are on the verge of starving. This is truly poverty at its most stark moments, and make no mistake, 21% of the population in the Philippines is living below the poverty line. That would be more than 21 million people from our population of more than 100 million. 

So at the end of the day, we still count our blessings. We are not sick and we are not starving. Sure, we have had to plan our meals in between grocery runs but we always have enough to tide us over till the next grocery day. It could be much worse. 

It is a few minutes after midnight as I am writing this, and what a day it was. Today we woke up to find that the whole of Luzon, the Philippines's biggest island, is under "Enhanced Community Quarantine" which basically means that the apocalypse has reached our doorsteps. Or at least it feels that way. Watching news updates all day looking at hysterical commuters who were stranded on the way to or from work certainly didn't help. Then there were interviews with daily wage earners who won't be able to work and were wondering how they could feed themselves if this continues for weeks or months. There was chaos at the airport with crowds of people trying to get out of the country before a total ban on flights will be put in place, but just one look at so many angry and crying faces means that many of them may fail to get out on time. 

What is "Enhanced Community Quarantine" anyway? For one, all forms of public transportation have now been suspended. No buses, no taxis, no trains, no jeepneys (those iconic square-nosed minibuses plying Philippine roads). People are being told to stay at home except when buying food or medicine, or unless they work for essential services such as health care, banks or government offices. Only one person per household is allowed to go for a grocery run, too. Those without cars have to coordinate with barangay officials regarding transportation to the city markets (a barangay is the smallest government unit in the Philippines which translates more or less to 'village' or 'district'). Well, at least that's what the guidelines say on paper.  In reality, I don't think my barangay even has its own car but I could be wrong, of course. 

Shops and establishments are closed except for grocery stores, pharmacies and shops providing basic needs and services. Private companies are being told to either cancel work, have employees work from home or arrange shuttle services and even accommodation for their employees.

Even though classes have been canceled since last week, the total lockdown has caught many people unprepared. It feels like we were already clunking along on a broken-down bus and then somebody turns off the engine while we're still in the middle of nowhere. Well, this literally happened to those who have had to walk ten hours or more to get home because they went to work one day and then there was suddenly no bus, no nothing, to ride home when they got off their shift. Despite the fact that we have been watching lockdowns unfold on foreign shores, it still feels unreal to suddenly be the one to experience it. It goes to show what one cannot really grasp a certain situation until one is in it.

But I'm not trying to blame anyone, especially the government, although obviously early warnings about a lockdown would certainly have helped. Knowing how scarce the country's resources are healthwise, I can understand that this is the government's only option--to forcibly limit the mobility of people, and consequently the virus, before we have a full-blown epidemic in our hands. Nip it in the bud before it becomes the uncontrollable monster that would eliminate us all.  

Yet even with this understanding, I find it hard to quell the panic that is rising at the back of my throat. We have about enough food to last us a week, maybe we can stretch it to a week and a half. Then what? Then one of us will have to do grocery runs. We may have to subsist on instant food such as noodles and canned goods if we can't buy fresh produce. We will have to ration food supplies and be extra careful not to waste any morsel. I should have planted the romaine lettuce seeds in the pots in my balcony weeks ago! I take a deep breath and try to ease the knot in my stomach.

Things are not all bad. It is actually at this time that I am most grateful for the fact that I work from home. I am blessed that everyday is still work as usual for me while many are worrying about getting nothing on the next payday. 

The thing is, I am a person who likes walking. A lot. Walking for me is the spark for free-flowing thought and it is something I need to do on a daily basis. Obviously, that won't be happening any time soon. This is just the first day of the lockdown. There are still four, long weeks ahead. And so here I am trying to find a place to roam and I have found myself opening this long-dormant and empty blog. I feel like I've just opened a long-unused gate and now I'm looking at wide, gray space. It's a good enough space to explore, no matter that it's just digital space. It will have to do. Now that I have nowhere to walk to, nowhere to run away to, and nowhere to escape, it is my fingers that will have to do the walking for me.

​And that's how the coronavirus has finally forced me to get back to writing. It has taken a crisis to make me write my first blog on this website. I am both elated and sad. ​