Shanghai Hotel Quarantine Diary: Day 1
7:50am - I could hear the staff outside putting meals on our stools. I’m dreaming of a nice Chinese breakfast, with maybe some kind of congee or filled bun?
8:00am - Staff calls the room phone and says we can pick up the meals now. I’ve already picked mine up. Very disappointed to find a dry croissant, a dry dinner roll, a decent but plain muffin, a hard boiled egg. And a plain sugared yogurt with no spoon.
Along with the breakfast, they drop off the menu for next week. I realize that somehow I must have gotten a Western breakfast, because this breakfast matches the description of several of the breakfasts for next week. Was it by chance? Was it because they thought, since I had a US passport, that I might prefer the Western option? (If so, that would be pretty impressive service!)
8:55am - Staff calls out through the door, asking for my temperature. Thankfully I bought and brought an instant-read thermometer, because she came earlier than I expected (I was expecting 9am, though actually the check-in sheet the gave us said 8am). I could take the temperature right away, rather than waiting for the mercury thermometer that they provided.
9:50am - Staff comes in to collect trash and spray a bit of disinfecting in the more trafficked areas of the floor.
11:47am - I could hear the lunch being dropped off.
11:55am - Receive call on room phone, saying we can pick up our lunch. I realize now that the menu for next week is the same as the menu for this week, because this must be the “Indonesian fried rice.” The fried rice had shrimp and chicken. Side dishes were scrambled eggs, two different types of breakfast sausages (in general I dislike Chinese version of Western sausages, because they’re always overly processed and soft for me), cauliflower, and a very welcome mandarin orange. I’m not sure what made the fried rice “Indonesian,” but it was a bit spicy with little bits of red chili pepper.
I call the number listed on the menu to request Chinese meals from now on.
~4:00pm - afternoon temperature check.
5:00pm - Someone from the food department calls asking me for my menu selection for next week. I had originally just planned to select Chinese for all of the meals, but she explains that actually every day I can select Chinese or Western, one or the other for that entire day, and that from day to day I can switch. I say I need to consult the menu more then, and she said she would call back the next day.
6:00pm - They drop off dinner. So “Western” is more “International” cuisine, because dinner is black pepper beef tenderloin stir-fried udon noodles, a fried egg, roasted potatoes, and zucchini, with a side of mushroom soup. The udon was tasty, but there was very little beef. Overall, it was a very starchy meal, with 75% of the meal being noodles and potatoes. And the mushroom soup, while not bad in flavor, was basically all creamy liquid.
7:00pm - receive phone call informing me that my application for 7 days hotel quarantine + 7 days home quarantine was rejected, so I will do 14 days in the hotel.
