Quarantine Tales: Day 1

I’m back in Taipei after a highly successful MINEXPO 2021 and a blissful long weekend visiting some old haunts in San Francisco. Watching some live blues at The Saloon was the highlight but soaking in some of the Beat Generation spirit at the fabled City Lights bookstore and the nearby Vesuvio came very close to it.

It was wonderful to see that City Lights has survived the ravages of the pandemic and the retail apocalypse. With its fun yet serious vibe, it’s by far my favorite bookstore in the world. I would definitely recommend visiting the store if you’re ever in San Francisco. If you only read books in electronic formats these days, do what I did and buy a T shirt.

My return to Taipei means enduring 14 days in quarantine before I can go home. Since I did quarantine before earlier in the year, I’m reasonably relaxed about the prospect of spending two weeks confined in a hotel room — not that I’m particularly looking forward to it of course.

As I learned from my previous stay, the best way to get through quarantine is to write down my work and personal goals for the day as soon as I wake up every morning and make sure I stick to them. Without clear objectives, it can be all too easy to let the time drift away by binge watching TV shows on Netflix or Amazon Prime.

It can be all too easy as well to add a few unwelcome pounds as well if you order food from outside to supplement the meals provided by the hotel. To prevent that from happening, I’ve set myself a strict hotel food only rule. Let’s see if I can stick to it!

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival by the way.