Michael celebrated his 42nd (42nd!! We old) birthday ten days ago.
This man, who is a caring and dedicated father, and has been steadfastly soldiering through pretty horrific work conditions (his hours! the unrelenting pace!) for 14+ months as we endure and strive through this difficult, challenging and at times grueling pandemic.
A pandemic that takes away from us again, as Hong Kong seems poised to enter its fifth wave - a cluster at an expat-heavy and popular gym has wrecked Central, with whole floors of banks going into quarantine and entire law firms shutting in the past weeks. Vaccine rollout is finally in force in Hong Kong, with both Sinovac vaccines and Pfizer Biontech available now. They finally opened it up to all people aged 30 and above last week, which will hopefully get things moving. I logged on last week to register and there were still slots readily available, which goes a bit to show also how the community here is oddly hesitant to take the vaccine. I feel like the media and policy experts have botched the communication and delivery here big time. But overall the vaccine take-up is good in the city, and as usual it is a very efficient affair, with a dedicated website, your choice of the vaccine, an online booking and verification system showing all available slots at all vaccination centers throughout the city. We are opting for the BioNTech vaccine and when you book the first vaccine it automatically comes up with all of the available slots 21 days later, and you have to book both at the same time. Michael took his first shot this past Thursday, and I'm slated for mine on Tuesday.
We have postponed Michael's fancy French birthday dinner twice now, and it's to my immense regret that I think we are going to cancel our fancy Japanese date night dinner at the Mandarin next week. Even if Michael and I haven't been out on a date night together in months and we had both so been looking forward to it...
We have read about a couple of playgroups of 12-18 month olds and toddlers being sent into quarantine in government facilities, and shuddered at the horror and logistics, not to mention potential psychological trauma on the parents and kids. It's not worth the risk. I've been working from home this past week and it looks like will continue to do so for the rest of March. At least I have some lovely views in the evening and during the day. I love our apartment and am so happy we ended up moving here, even though we had no idea at the time that we would end up spending QUITE so much time here.
Before we went back to working from home, I went to lunch with a few corporate women associates and counsel from my office to celebrate International Women's Day, and in setting up the lunch and promoting this year's theme (#ChoosetoChallenge), I read a really thought-inspiring article about bravery - that it is the persistence and perseverance despite having fear. I had never given much thought to what it meant to be brave, and it occurs to me that our society may not do enough to encourage bravery (not fearlessness) in enough instances. The article I read arrested me with the point that fear is not gender-specific; everyone experiences it. But, likely as a result of cultural norms and social cues, boys tend to be motivated by fear, while girls often feel paralyzed by it. I thought that was fascinating. I've been thinking about ambition, and how that is often measured by external factors, which means it is so hard to separate from validation and ego. I've also been thinking about money, and what that really represents, and power, and what that really represents, and contentment, and what that really means, in the course of a life well lived.
Here I am in my office before things shut again.
Here are some pictures from... oh, all of March really.
We had a pretty great Saturday morning on the 6th when Lola went to ballet class, followed by a Gruffalo-themed cooking class (that is Gruffalo crumble being made right there) followed by a dim sum brunch with our good friends Liz and Aiden.
We followed that up on the 7th with a pretty awesome trip to the AIA observation wheel, where Lola was super excited to purchase a vanilla ice cream from the softee truck that played the exact same music as her toy truck at home. Ah, a fresh softee in a cone before you go on a carousel and a ferris wheel by the water - is there anything better?
Lola is brave now and goes by herself. I sat next to her, while Lyn and Siti sat with Al and Teo in the rocking clamshell chairs.
We waited in line for the ferris wheel, but sadly I was again separated from the boys because due to social distancing measures it was a maximum of four people per car.
We enjoyed it so much that we went again on the 13th.
I mentioned in my previous post that we've started eating dinner together - I'm happy to report that we've finally gotten everyone's schedules synched up more or less that we can do this every night, and it makes me so happy. The boys are now willing participants (Teo more and more so now that he has also discovered his love for chips) and it's just a really nice time when all of our schedules finally coincide together. The boys drink their milk, clamor for chips, Lola helps break up the chip pieces and distributes to her brothers, we all have conversation... it's lovely.
Our balcony garden has become a veritable masterpiece, constantly astounding us with its ability to bloom and prosper. I have never seen a strawberry plant bloom and grow like this before! And our lemon tree is also going wild. It's amazing. The kids love it, especially Al, and it makes me wish that we could have a bigger garden or outdoor space, but c'est la vie. Our auntie Julie has ten green thumbs.
This led to our first strawberry "harvest," a whopping ten berries!
No comments:
Post a Comment