Memories of SARS

Just feel like typing some more. Well, hmmm… What to write about… Oh, how about the time of the SARS epidemic? Lol… I booked a flight back home a bit later than I should. Originally I wasn't even planning to go home, and since one of my friends was also planning to stay, she was from Hong Kong, and at the time, Hong Kong was one of the danger zones, we thought it'd be fun to be stuck in Beijing together. Originally I had nowhere to go anyway, but later, I was given a chance to go back home (long story), so I booked a flight. I haven't been home for more than a year and a half.

My Hong Kong friend also decided she will go back home then. So there I was excited that I was going home, when one day, my brother calls me and says mom called him and told me not to go home. I was like, “why?” he was like, “you'll be quarantined if they know your flight came from Beijing. Quarantined for two weeks in a far away, dirty hospital.” Of course I didn't believe him, I had no reason not to, but I always question a lot of things that come from my brother. I guess it's from the experience of getting fooled too many times growing up together. Did I call my mom to get a confirmation? I forgot but yah, so it's true, there were quarantined rules and I was asked to refund my ticket and stay in Beijing alone!

During that time I was living with two other roommates (not the ones in my other story), they went home earlier (ooh, I just remembered another story that happened when they left, of me getting locked out by accident, later on that) and so there I was all alone at home, I couldn't even go to school, coz they weren't letting students in or out of the campus! I remember, Beijing was like a ghost town! Nobody roamed the streets, not even beggars! For once, there it was guaranteed you'll find a whole bench to sit on in subways and busses, and you can bet nobody wanted to be near anybody else so “space” was finally available on a regular basis. Wow!

My mom called several times, telling me not to go to boxed-up areas such as the supermarket and the likes. I just said agreed but of course how am I going to survive if I don't buy food. It was like, die from encounter with a SARS contaminated person or die from starvation. I figured I had more chances of dying from starvation, being that eating was a daily problem. I just tried to buy as much food as I could carry back home in one-go. With no friends, no school, nobody at all, do you know how I kept myself sane? Do you know what kept me busy and who kept me company? I kept myself busy by coming up with a daily schedule of reading, drawing, and watching English travel shows on tv. Yes, my television was my best friend then. I remember living in that place, it was a pretty nice place by the way, not the old, dark, cheap place I later moved into, but oh wow, so far from the school, paying for the electricity actually meant buying the electricity in advance with a card.

One night while watching Kevin Costner's“Dragonfly”I had a black-out. I was there alone in the dark, and thinking“huh!”I looked out the window and found my neighbouring buildings with their lights all bright and shiny. I stepped out of my house and found my next door neighbour complaining too. Great, so maybe I'm not the only one, maybe it's just our building after all. We call a building staff to have a look at the problem. Turns out, my next door neighbour was just a victim---MY victim. My electricity wasn't enough to support watching dvd, and it bounced my neighbours electrical box as well. Lol… So she gets her electricity back on, and I go back to my dark dungeon. I had nothing better to do but read a book with a flash light on at 9pm!