Quarantine Diary Day 21: Last PCR, Last Snacks, Last Supper?
I never realized that the soup container fits center depression of the tray’s lid perfectly! Or if I did (back in 2020 at Jianguo HoteI where they used these containers too) I’d forgotten…
Anyway, today’s breakfast broke the daily formula just a little bit!
Instead of one of the pairs of mini pastries, there were three(!) thin slices of what kind of looked like baitanggao 白糖糕 steamed rice cake, but the edges looked like they were baked, and they were yellow. Kind of reminded me of a cross between 白糖糕 and butter mochi, which is baked! These were good, but the mouthfeel was a bit dry.
Back to regularly scheduled programming, the other bread item, which were the normal pair of mini pastries, were two meat baos. They had fat pieces in them, and the texture somehow made them taste a bit better than the low quality ones in Homeinn.
Starchy vegetable of the day: half a sweet potato with purple skin.
Egg of the day: plain hardboiled egg, which was surprisingly not overcooked with alarming grey edges. I ate it with salt and pepper from the Residence Inn.
Pickled vegetables of the day: these looked like gherkins, and were very salty. I only ate a couple pieces of these.
Congee of the day: this looked like pumpkin congee, but the pumpkin were in the form of the prettiest, thinnest wisps. How did they get that like that? Did someone cut them that way, or was it some kind of spaghetti squash like squash?
After breakfast, around 10:15am, I got my (hopefully) last PCR test while in quarantine. In all, they test day of arrival, and then days 4, 7, 10, 14, 16, and 21. This time there was only one nostril, the mouth swab was really a mouth swab, as in she swabbed the insides of my cheeks, not the back of my throat. And no object testing! Both swabs in the same vial of pink liquid.
Here’s one of the staff putting vials in their places.
Lunch today was a bit strange.
The strangest dish was this one. The celtuce pieces were nice and firm and crunchy, and had good flavor. But it was accompanied by those white pieces of plain meat sausage and reddish pieces of this slightly spicy slightly smoky hot dog-like sausage. I’ve never been a big fan of these Chinese highly processed sausages (somehow I do like American hot dogs and most German and Polish sausages), so after picking out the celtuce I left most of the sausage behind.
The simply cooked spinach was the bright spot of the lunch! These were nice, whole leaves.
This chicken was … interesting. See the texture? It’s kind of dried out. I wonder if this was some kind of dried and smoked chicken? It was tasty, but the red tinge around the edges was strange.
The fish was okay. No bones!
I finished the lunch off with strawberries and blueberries.
After a glorious, hour-long nap on my spare bed with the warm sun coming through the big window (it’s been very warm these days), I had the amazing Trader Joe’s Reduced Guilt potato chips. I poured a little into the bowl, then finished the bowl. Poured a little more in, finished that. Kept going until I finished the rest of the bag. These were so good! I deliberately saved opening this bag until the first days at the Tianlin Hotel, because I didn’t want to have them during the depressing days at the Homeinn. Since this should be my last full day in quarantine, and I was in the pleasant environment of the Tianlin Hotel, this seemed like a fitting time to finish the bag.
This picture is capturing the setting sun. I like the view in this southern part of Xuhui; I’d never been out here before, and I’m curious to find out what else is around here.
By the way, I thought it was so strange that the hotel that provided 6 shampoos and 5 bars of soap for this one week stay, didn’t provide any slippers. So I wore the second pair that Homeinn had provided us. Yesterday, I went looking around the room for the TV remote, and was surprised to open the drawer in the bedside table a stash of 7 pairs of slippers. It’s as if they expect us to wear a fresh pair of slippers for each day in quarantine!
Dinner came very early today, at around 5:30pm. Would this be my last supper here?
There were some very red prawns. I started with these, because I wanted to get the peeling done and out of the way first. I feel like I’ve had more shrimp and prawns more frequently during these last three weeks in quarantine, than at any other time in my life!
The celtuce (more celtuce!) with black fungus and carrot was good.
This pork dish with crispy, almost raw bell peppers and onions was very tasty. Everything was cut into such thin strips! The only downside was that there were still bits of bone in the bread and fried pork, so needed to be careful chewing.
Finally, there was this simple egg and tomato 番茄炒蛋 dish. It was neither dry, nor soupy, but just had a nice, smooth mouthfeel. It could have used more tomato flavor throughout, but was still good to eat with some rice.
I finished off dinner with more fruit.
A couple hours ago, I called the front desk and asked when I’d be leaving. He asked which room I was in, and seemed to do a lot of checking. Finally he came back and said I could leave at 7pm, but I needed to wait for them to call me first before leaving. I asked, so we finish dinner before going down? He said that they didn’t arrange dinner for us tomorrow night, but if I needed it I could call tomorrow morning. I don’t mind not having dinner in the hotel; I just don’t want to pay for what I don’t get!
I’ve just seen messages come through my WeChat group for people in this same hotel from my same flight. Seems like others have been told that they have been given times from 7:30pm, all the way until 10pm! So we’ll continue to be staggered for our departure.
