Lockdown Day 7: Glued to the Screen
This morning, I looked out the window and saw that neighbors had hung up their laundry (over the many wires running across our neighborhood). Hmmm, I think you need to step outside your door in order to do that?
The report from the Shanghai official source said that there were almost 20,000 new cases reported yesterday.
From the morning on, the volunteers in our entryway WeChat group told us that we needed to take a PCR test today. So my eyes were glued to the phone all morning. Hmm, okay, I made it through the morning with no call to go downstairs. At lunchtime, I wondered, would they call us now? I had put my frozen cod and shrimp chowder in my trusty Xiaomi personal-sized instant pot to reheat (I love the Xiaomi’s size and timer function - you set it by the day and time you want the cooking to end through the app, rather than needing to count out the hours like with most appliance timers). So my lunch was ready to eat. Should I eat it now? Or wait to take the test so I could relax with my meal? It’s so hard to plan one’s day with the call to take a test needing immediate action. But no estimated time.
I decided I’d only take out half of my meal from the Xiaomi, keeping the other half warm in the pot.
Well, I finished the second half since I hadn’t seen any messages on WeChat calling us down. Had one of the oranges I bought pre-lockdown.
I also checked on my scallion, which I started to grow. I know everyone has been doing this since 2020, and my mom did this in 2020 when I was back home, but this is the first time that I’ve done it myself. And needed to do, because I don’t expect to get any more scallion before lockdown ends. This is a fast grower, because it’s only been a couple days since I put the roots in water!
Today was quite warm, in the 80s, so I guess multiple people decided to do laundry today.
At around 3:30pm, one of the volunteers in my group informed us that we didn’t have to do a PCR after all. Huh? Maybe it’s because we had that antigen and PCR yesterday, I wonder.
Dinner today was about the same as yesterday - leftover curried vermicelli with freshly added bok choy, red pepper, and TVP. To save water, what I did was spread a thin layer of TVP in my skillet, poured in just enough water to get them wet, turned on the flame to heat up the water. Then turned it off to sit. I then added in the cold vermicelli to heat up with the residual heat, and also to absorb some of that water. Then after several minutes, I turned on the heat to proceed to heat everything up, then stir fry the vegetables in.
Besides being distracted all day looking out for the nonexistent call to get the PCR, I was also looking at the messages in one of the groups I joined, of people in my neighborhood who wanted to “group buy” groceries. A lot of people have been trying to order groceries through the normal online channels, getting up at 5am or 6am when you’re supposed to have the best chance to get something. Then they put in a whole bunch of items in the cart, and then see what’s in stock when they finally deliver. A colleague’s order ended up including only butter and tofu!
So because food providers have limited staff, because there are few drivers authorized to travel around Shanghai nowadays, and because of the restrictions in delivery to people’s homes, the most efficient method all around seems to be through group buying. So you get a whole bunch of people together at a single address to buy some pack of vegetables for example (usually there’s no choice within a bundle, to save on logistics complexity). Then the company delivers the whole lot in one go at the compound entrance.
Here’s an example for ordering a bundle of vegetables. One bundle, one price.
Here’s group buying of Coca-Cola products. It looks like their minimum is 50 cases per address.
I’m surprised by the amount of people who really have been craving Coca-Cola, based on the messages I see in my groups pining for, or seeking to barter for Coca-Cola! That actually then puts into context how my quarantine meals either included yogurt, iced tea, or Coca-Cola for dinner. I even left behind all of my bottles of Coke. I could have saved them and traded them for valuable goods during this lockdown!
Thankfully, I am not short on anything… yet. I did join the group buying group, because there’s a high likelihood that we’ll be locked in long enough for me to need to buy something!
