DAY 26: Community Quarantine

      LOZARTAN: I haven't ridden on my motorcycle since the lockdown began. It needed exercise to circulate the fuel and oil.

    I rode to downtown Taytay to stock up on lozartan for my blood pressure. My BP has normalized since I lost weight and reached my ideal BMI. I tried weaning off the tablets but my blood pressure shot up to 140/90. I guess I need to reach 110/70 before I could do that, slowly of course. 

   There was an article floating around facebook that said lozartan may help resist NCOV 19. I am not an expert with medicine so I don't know if it is true or not, but it's a highly technical article which is hieroglyphics to me, but I sure hope it does help.

   SOCIAL UNDISTANCING- I had a look around the poblacion and saw people lined up going into the old public market, drug stores, and groceries and it's already late in the morning, around 9 or so.

   Though there were police and covid task force personnels who reminded Taytayenos about social distancing, it seemed that the people were not taking them seriously.

    Riders were still being flagged down for riding in tandem but the back rider simply got off, walked past the check point, then rode again. 

     It's the people who are not following the lock down procedures inspite of the LGUs efforts to enforce. Unless vehicles are impounded or arrests are made, the lockdown will just be a suggestion to the community.

    ALCOHOL-  I noticed a small grocery store where there were few people lining up. I tried my luck.    

    There few customers because the shelves were empty and the merchandisers were just beginning to fill them up. 

    I had a look around and was surprised to see that there were bottles of alcohol, fresh from the boxes and recently shelved. Two bottle per customer limit per customer, the sign said. I bought two. I saw two girls, siblings, bend the rule by pretending that they are from different households. They got away with buying four bottles. Clever.

     CIRCADIAN EXHILATION- I have been sleeping late and waking up late. My biological clock has been getting off a little each day. Unnoticeable until I noticed it. 

    I am reminded of the sci-fi short story "Exhalation" by Ted Chiang. It's about a race of mechanical beings who lives on air pressure. Their body's mechanistic metabolism is based on air pressure and they are immortal unless killed off or by suicide. 

  One day they noticed that their clock are getting faster and they cannot explain it. Time is moving faster by an hour a year this, and by their calculations it is progressing at a slow but steady rate. Theories were formulated to explain and even downplay the phenomenon.

     The protagonist, unsatisfied with the theories,  has his own theory and to prove his this he operated on his own brain, examined each components, how they function, etc. 

     He came to the conclusion that the clocks or time is not getting faster. It is their brain that is getting slower. 

     Thhe air pressure is balancing out in their world. Without pressure, there's no energy, no motive force to power them up. They are dying a very slow and steady death. They have about a millenium until it all ends.

    They got busy preventing it. Every machine imaginable was invented to create air pressure and they did create pocket pressures but in general these machines only ate up more pressure than they can produce. These machines are ultimately speeding up the process. They cannot stop the deficit. 

    It is inevitable. Everything will come to an equal pressure where the ability to do work cease.

    It is a good illustration of the second law of thermodynamics and  entropy. 

   Good read.