After more than three months, I finally went to my office today. The motivation was to avail the conference room big screen facility for an important client call. But I cannot deny that I was curious to test out if I am more productive at an office setting than at home. It was a weird experience to fill out a questionnaire about my level of healthiness in order to unblock access to my own office computer, and to roam around in the mostly-empty office wearing a mask! But the IT person/office facility manager was sure glad to have some human presence in the office.
The other unique thing that happened today was that I experienced my very first "video visit" with my doctor using an app. It was nothing serious, but wanted my doctor to check a slight swelling that I noticed around my ankle recently. I was curious to know whether it was a tennis/hiking injury that I overlooked. I was impressed by the efficacy of the app. I could send pictures of the ankle to the doctor ahead of the scheduled appointment and then we talked about the possible causes and a course of action to treat the swelling. My doctor has a 16-month-old baby at home. So she is glad at the opportunity to work from home. But she did notice that I was calling from my office and joked, "If I had an office as lovely as yours, then I would go there every day!" 🙂
It was really nice to be able to mix up all these social interactions to make the day more interesting than the typical stay-at-home-all-day-every-day routine. While the historic cultural and social changes are happening all around us, forcing us to process powerful stimulii one after another, the normalcy of sharing the mundane human experiences with fellow professionals was very very comforting.
The other unique thing that happened today was that I experienced my very first "video visit" with my doctor using an app. It was nothing serious, but wanted my doctor to check a slight swelling that I noticed around my ankle recently. I was curious to know whether it was a tennis/hiking injury that I overlooked. I was impressed by the efficacy of the app. I could send pictures of the ankle to the doctor ahead of the scheduled appointment and then we talked about the possible causes and a course of action to treat the swelling. My doctor has a 16-month-old baby at home. So she is glad at the opportunity to work from home. But she did notice that I was calling from my office and joked, "If I had an office as lovely as yours, then I would go there every day!" 🙂
It was really nice to be able to mix up all these social interactions to make the day more interesting than the typical stay-at-home-all-day-every-day routine. While the historic cultural and social changes are happening all around us, forcing us to process powerful stimulii one after another, the normalcy of sharing the mundane human experiences with fellow professionals was very very comforting.
#Day95sinceSIP
COVID-19:The Great Equalizer—or the Grade Equalizer? Every student’s grades look the same! My son is loving this.
#Day98sinceSIP
Call me a dinosaur, but i never knew that finally setting up an IP phone at home (to replicate the office set up) would make me this happy! I am choosing to just accept the fact that going regularly to office is still a distant dream. Instead, employers are increasingly willing to invest in equivalent office equipment to be delivered to your home so that you are as productive from home as you are from the office.
#Day99sinceSIP
The day started with heart-breaking news for all tennis fans: ace tennis star Novak Djokovic has been tested positive for COVID-19 after the charity tennis tournament that he organized in Croatia. He took the risk to give the tennis pros and the fans of the world hope that things are going to come back to normalcy, but it massively backfired.
As we all know, things that are the most dear to us are also our greatest weaknesses. I do not doubt Djokovic's heart was in the right place, but he probably should have been stricter in terms of enforcing safety protocols.
Well, we are all wiser in hindsight. All I can say is that I get why Novak and other players wanted to play. When I play, I forget that we are living through the most stressful episode of our lifetime. Pandemic, social isolation, racial tension, travel embargo, health crisis in family in India--everything gets blurred and you focus on that yellow projectile with 2.70 inch diameter coming at you--sometimes with a wicked spin--that you want to hit back to the other side of the net. Nothing cleanses your mind better! And when you add the unbridled joy of shared laughter, the happy sweat of burned calories, and the nostalgic ache of tired muscle to the equation, then it is a total win--even though nobody counted points or cared to remember who won the game, set or the match!
#100Days--June 24, 2020
Today marks the 100th day since the shelter-in-place took effect on March 17. Sadly, today is also the day Governor Newsom had to explicitly point finger at Californians for not behaving responsibly enough as number of new COVID cases spiked to record high of 7,149 new cases yesterday (https://www.sfchronicle.com/…/Newsom-pleads-with-California…). I guess there is no choice but to embrace the fact that we need to learn to co-exist with COVID. It is part of the ecosystem now. There will be many more dubious 100-day milestones for us to cross. As they say, it's a marathon, not a sprint. So let's just keep looking for our "happy" hour in the quarantine bingo that we are all playing now--willingly or not willingly.
