Quarantine Diary Day 10: Twosday, 22.2.22!
Today’s a special day: February 2, 2022, or 22.2.22! Or written another way, 22/02/2022. Twosday!
The day started off quite early. It was Day 10, time for the third in-hotel PCR test. They say they will come at 6:00, but that’s the time they start on the floor. They usually get to my door around 6:30 like today. Even though, I woke up by 5:35 or so, because I wanted to get dressed before they came, and I could already hear them outside preparing and chatting. So it’s always quite an early morning on PCR test days.
This time, the doctor really went deep, and then did a side-to-side motion that I’d never experienced before, like knocking on the sides of my nasal passages. Then did the same with that thin, sharp Q-tip in my throat. My WeChat flight group at this hotel commented that this doctor was particularly harsh as well. It’s good to have some online camaraderie, when we’re all isolated.
Despite the COVID test in the morning, the breakfast wasn’t too delayed.
Maybe in celebration of Twosday, and maybe to celebrate the completion of yet another PCR test, the chef seemed to give a bit more variety within each meal.
We’d seen corn, sausage, and the ever-present hard-boiled egg many times before.
But we’d never encountered sliced bread from a Pullman loaf. And it was warmed up! I don’t want to think what the ingredients were to make them so soft in the bag, though.
We also had 南瓜 pumpkin congee - this was special! The pumpkin lent a sweet taste.
I made a sandwich out of the bread, the sausage, the egg, and the pack of pickled mustard tuber that was probably meant for the congee. Not bad!
Lunch also had a nice variety. There was a stewed dish, stir-fried vegetables (without gloppy sauce), and a fried dish. And the daily lunch fruit was an orange.
One of the stir-fried vegetable was celtuce and carrot. This was the only dish I didn’t add additional seasoning to.
The cabbage and pork, I enhanced with some red pepper flakes.
The stewed beef (quite tender) probably already had some pepper in it, but I think it needed much more pepper.
And the fried pork (I think it was) greatly benefited from healthy lashings of Tabasco sauce. Thank goodness for condiments and seasonings!
While getting lunch, one of the bands of the N95 the hotel provided snapped. I asked customer service to give me a new mask through WeChat. I got one together with the dinner delivery.
Dinner also showed similar variety. Today we had iced tea accompany the meal (saving this again for another afternoon to drink).
The most boring dish today was wintermelon and 木耳 black tree fungus.
The curried chicken and potatoes was pretty good, the chicken tender, but it could have used a lot more curry flavor. For the first time, I added salt to a dish to bring out more flavor.
Given how common scrambles are in Chinese cuisine, surprisingly today was the first day we got a scramble - with yellow chives.
And two small meatballs, in a kind of sweetish sauce. This was also a nice change from the small pieces of meat with lots of bones, that we’ve gotten.
All in all, a decent day in the food department!
Though I’d already gotten a replacement mask with dinner, after I put my trash out for 7pm collection, I got a knock on the door. Another replacement 3M N95 mask! And because I’d never opened my door after putting out my trash for the day, I could see a little bit why I keep hearing so much rustling of bags when they collect trash - rustling that lasts a lot longer than I would expect. Basically, it seems as if they spray down each trash bag with disinfectant, and then they put those trash bags inside other bags.
