#StayAtHomeDiaries
Day7--Day 1 of week 2
Day7--Day 1 of week 2
Last Monday was Day 0. The pre-apocalyptic heaviness was palpable in the air. It was the afternoon before the "shelter-in-place" order was to take effect midnight onwards. As if time was about to run out. "Desperation shopping" is not my style. So I didn't go to the grocery store for toilet paper stockpiling. Eventually I just had to come back home. And then the sky broke down. Gravel sized hails came down to white out the greenery of the backyard lawn! Talk about dramatic catharsis!
Compare that with this Monday afternoon. Today I am celebrating my first true "Work-from-home-in-your-pajama day", as there were no video calls scheduled for the whole day. Had a mundanely productive day. Simulated the drive time routine of listening to audiobooks by pacing around in the backyard for 45 minutes with earphones on. Was not making progress with the audiobooks at all last week because of lack of actual commute time. At least now I can say that I took some steps to compensate for the lack of progress.
And oh yes, the crowning glory of my achievement today is remembering to haul the trash bins to the curb even before the meticulous next door neighbors hauled theirs! I am not running after the garbage truck two Tuesday mornings in a row. 
#StayAtHomeDiaries
Day 8--Day 2 of week 2
Today was exhausting. Had to tackle a lot of short-fuse work amidst intermittent broadband outages at home. Today was also the day when at one end of the age spectrum, the young climate icon Greta Thunberg said that she may have had COVID-19 and is now cured thanks to self-isolation, and on the other end, the legendary comic-book artist Albert Uderzo died at 92, and his family felt the need to release an official statement saying that his death had no relation with the coronavirus.
The one thing that has helped me calm myself down amidst this internal and external turbulence is sheer data, its visualization, and its use in mathematical modeling. I almost never check the stock market numbers and graphs. But now I have bookmarked Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center's dashboard, and check that multiple times a day. My eyes automatically go to the green number at the top right corner that indicates how many people have recovered, because those are the "empowered" human beings with immunity against this lethal virus. With the Bay area's numbers showing perceptible signs of containment, I remain hopeful that we will emerge stronger than ever with the added strength of immunity to the detrimental effects of this ubiquitous virus.
#DataInTheTimeOfCOVID
The one thing that has helped me calm myself down amidst this internal and external turbulence is sheer data, its visualization, and its use in mathematical modeling. I almost never check the stock market numbers and graphs. But now I have bookmarked Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center's dashboard, and check that multiple times a day. My eyes automatically go to the green number at the top right corner that indicates how many people have recovered, because those are the "empowered" human beings with immunity against this lethal virus. With the Bay area's numbers showing perceptible signs of containment, I remain hopeful that we will emerge stronger than ever with the added strength of immunity to the detrimental effects of this ubiquitous virus.
#DataInTheTimeOfCOVID
New York City is reeling as the epicenter of COVID in the US now. Broadway is closed. Thousands of people nationwide whose livelihood depends on performing arts are in crisis. In a press conference today President Trump had to defend his decision to donate $25 million stimulus for the Kennedy Center of Performing Arts in Washington DC to survive the coronavirus-related closure. "I’d [have loved] to see 'Romeo and Juliet' tonight," he said. "[But] you couldn't go there if you wanted to."
While the president has to wait to see Romeo and Juliet, I had the privilege of catching a glimpse of my teenage son discussing Romeo and Juliet with his classmates during his remote learning English class this morning. Kudos to his high school for resuming teaching via Zoom videoconferencing. He has chosen the downstairs nook as his study area, because we are using the upstairs rooms as our home offices. His gaming headset with an extended mouthpiece is now coming in handy for actual learning. He does not always approve of me taking his picture these days. But I had to take at least one paparazzi shot for archival's sake.
The students have to write their opinion on whether Romeo and Juliet is still relevant to teach in the 21st century. I remember my son said during one of our dog walks that he can't believe how stupid both Romeo and Juliet were. "Teenagers are way smarter these days. They don't do so many foolish things as Romeo and Juliet did." This was just before the pandemic became serious. I wonder if he has changed his opinion now that we see that the youngsters celebrating spring break in Florida disobeying the stay-at-home orders, and getting sick in hoards.
I guess some things don't change even when centuries change. Lovesick hearts break curfews and die.
#ShakespeareInTheTimeOfCOVID
While the president has to wait to see Romeo and Juliet, I had the privilege of catching a glimpse of my teenage son discussing Romeo and Juliet with his classmates during his remote learning English class this morning. Kudos to his high school for resuming teaching via Zoom videoconferencing. He has chosen the downstairs nook as his study area, because we are using the upstairs rooms as our home offices. His gaming headset with an extended mouthpiece is now coming in handy for actual learning. He does not always approve of me taking his picture these days. But I had to take at least one paparazzi shot for archival's sake.
The students have to write their opinion on whether Romeo and Juliet is still relevant to teach in the 21st century. I remember my son said during one of our dog walks that he can't believe how stupid both Romeo and Juliet were. "Teenagers are way smarter these days. They don't do so many foolish things as Romeo and Juliet did." This was just before the pandemic became serious. I wonder if he has changed his opinion now that we see that the youngsters celebrating spring break in Florida disobeying the stay-at-home orders, and getting sick in hoards.
I guess some things don't change even when centuries change. Lovesick hearts break curfews and die.
#ShakespeareInTheTimeOfCOVID
#StayAtHomeDiaries
Day 10--Day 4 of week 2
Day 10--Day 4 of week 2
US now has the dubious distinction of being the nation with the most COVID-19 cases, surpassing China and Italy. Almost sounds like a race to top the Olympics medal tally. Except the Olympics has been postponed by a whole year. I feel so bad for the athletes who have been training with the aim of achieving the peak performance just in the right time for the Olympics. But at the same time, I am also thankful that more laypeople are turning to physical exercise to deal with the restrictions of the shelter-in-place order.
I found myself doing stretches in my home office. Our poor doggy is literally tired of accompanying all of us to multiple walks during different times of the day. My son's school requires the students to submit a physical exercise log periodically. So he is running in the neighborhood. And with lighter academic load during this remote learning time, he has ample time to research on YouTube how to improve his stamina during running. Today, during running, he tried the "diaphragmatic breathing" technique that is mostly associated with yoga (pranayam). He came back super excited because he felt less tired even after running longer! Without even realizing, he has hybridized the Eastern technique of deep breathing with the Western concept of running for fitness. Another incidental way the coronavirus has made the world borderless.
I found myself doing stretches in my home office. Our poor doggy is literally tired of accompanying all of us to multiple walks during different times of the day. My son's school requires the students to submit a physical exercise log periodically. So he is running in the neighborhood. And with lighter academic load during this remote learning time, he has ample time to research on YouTube how to improve his stamina during running. Today, during running, he tried the "diaphragmatic breathing" technique that is mostly associated with yoga (pranayam). He came back super excited because he felt less tired even after running longer! Without even realizing, he has hybridized the Eastern technique of deep breathing with the Western concept of running for fitness. Another incidental way the coronavirus has made the world borderless.
#StayAtHomeDiaries
Day 11--Day 5 of week 2
Successfully finished the second week of work-from-home. The rhythm has more or less set in. Work-walk-work-walk sequence is working. And the best thing is that on the hobby front, I have graduated from learning emoji to learning "memoji"---all from my tennis friends! So no complaints, at least for today.
Many of my friends would get the not-so-subtle reference to the 2017 Bollywood movie, "Toilet: Ek Prem Katha" (English translation: "Toilet: A Love Story") (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet:_Ek_Prem_Katha) in the title of today's blog entry. In that movie, the husband made installing a toilet at their rural home his mission because the wife complained about the lack of proper sanitary bathroom in their traditional household. Well, in real life, when the lawyer wife complained about a single monitor not being as effective as the dual monitor setup at work for writing her patent applications, the Google engineer husband solves the problem by buying a giant widescreen gaming monitor online and installing it in the weekend so that the wife does not have any excuse to be less productive while working-from-home next week.
#StayAtHomeDiaries
Day 13--Day 7 of week 2
About 5 years back I first started seeing these little free libraries in front of people's houses in Palo Alto. They started appearing in Cupertino may be a year later. This one by the side of a trail that leads to the rail track from our house may be less than a year old. Not that I have always paid attention to what books are there inside the tiny library, but lately I have been paying attention, because I pass by the library every day during my walk with the dog in these "shelter-in-place" days. While the time is ripe to pick a good book and read, sadly I have not been seeing any change in the books for the past couple of days. I guess people are just afraid of touching books left in a public place. Today I felt genuinely sad for the books. Though I know from the data that the crisis is far from over, I so pray this whole thing to be over so that an eager reader can pick a book up or leave one in without the fear of contracting the virus! 
