Wednesday, March 09, 2022

Quarantine Stories Part 17

Recently, while working from home, I noticed some movement outside my window along with a fluttering noise. I took a quick look and saw that there was a pigeon in my balcony. After it landed, it seemed to walk with a limp, leading me to think it was injured. I thought of feeding it with some bread but I was afraid that if I opened my balcony door, I would scare it off and it might aggravate its injury if it flew off. I kept looking at it every so often and each time I did, the pigeon would look back at me. I hoped that maybe I was establishing some level of trust with it so that when I did try to feed it, it wouldn't perceive me as a threat. After about 4 hours, I noticed fluttering movement outside my window again and when I looked, the pigeon was gone. Sadly, it left before I could feed it. Hopefully, it wasn't badly injured and that it would heal quickly.


I also replaced the tires of my car. I noticed that there one of my tires had what is called a sidewall bubble and when this happens, you need to replace it because if you don't, you run the risk of the tire exploding while you are driving your car. The best practice is that when you replace one tire, you replace all of them which is quite costly. But since I've had this car for many years now, it was just about the right time to get new tires. A friend of mine recommended Wheelhaus Marketing in Bangkal. I decided to take a leave and go on a Monday, hoping that there wouldn't be too many people there (when I arrived, I was the only customer so I got served immediately but another person arrived after I did). I normally get Yokohama tires but Wheelhaus didn't have the size that I needed for my car. I instead got Westlake, which another friend recommended. Once all my tires had been replaced, the service crew performed wheel alignment. Wheelhaus offers free follow-up checks for 6 months so maybe one of these days, I will go back for a tire and alignment check-up.


After the Omicron surge and my own bout with Covid, I got my booster shot. With less people contracting the virus and the hospitals finally reporting significantly less cases, my confidence to go out and meet up with people increased. So recently, I joined my friends for dinner at The Loggia by Margarita Fores to celebrate Anna's birthday. (I will write in more detail about this in my next post.) Our dinner slot was from 5pm to 7pm but I guess there weren't too many guests that night for the second seating so we actually stayed on until around 8pm. We then moved to Mitch's house so we could catch up more. After all, we all hadn't seen each other face to face in a really long time. It was maybe past 1am when I called it a night and left, making it the first time since the pandemic started that I got home at past midnight. It was a really amazing evening.

Shortly after that, I met up again with the same people, but this time under more unfortunate circumstances. Joyce's mom passed away so we all went to her mom's wake. While I had planned to stay there for only a short while, I ended up staying a lot longer because more of our high school friends arrived later in the evening and t turned into a bit of a mini high school reunion. This was actually the largest gathering I had been to since the pandemic started. I was unable to join my friends for their pagpag meal because I had a long day filled with errands and by the late evening, I was feeling really tired. (I was also a bit hungry so I passed by a Burger King on my way home. I tried their Plant-based Whopper and it was pretty good.) 

I started meeting up with people in late 2021 and I stopped doing it after the Omicron surge in January. Hopefully, Covid becomes a lot less dangerous and that it becomes more like the regular flu soon. I'm looking forward to getting to see more of my family and friends face-to-face in the near future.

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