DAY 27: Community Quarantine

    SENAKULO- This is my first time to wake up on a good Friday morning with no drumbeats, no costumed crucifixion characters, no horses and chariots and no crowd in Ricarte Street.

    Last Good Friday at this early hour, the street was already teeming with people especially children eagerly waiting for the start of the passion of Christ. Barabbas, who used to chase children and scare the hell out of me when I was young, would already be in his chains snarling at by-standers and grabbing children, but not today.  

   Not even a pabasa to be heard.

   BONSAI- I did bonsai maintenance yesterday. I cultivated the soil to check if the roots still have space to grow into and I guess I still have two to three years before repotting and root trimming.

   After cultivating the soil, I put a crude pot extension and added soil to snuff out weeds and for the roots to have more, space, nutrients and to  prevent dehydration especially since the sun has been beating down hard on plant leaves, burning them. Once the soil got settled and weeds started to grow, the extension will be unnecessary.

   FISH- This is the first time we will be eating fish since the start of the lockdown. It's mostly veges, and fruits. 

   I don't know why. Hmmmm....

  TWICE A DAY- I was surprised when a covid task force volunteer ask for my name and put it on the list. I thought I would be given the 5-8k application form or maybe for a relief goods distribution, but I was wrong. I was told that from now on our q-pass would be checked at the gates and we would only be allowed to go out twice a day, in the morning and in the afternoon. They put score after the names.

    This is ok for me but again this is a bit too late. This should have been done in the first weeks of the lockdown. It seems that for every extension an additional precaution is added. 

   Why not tightened the noose from the start, the result would have been different.

   Anyway, this is the first time we have experienced a pandemic and we are groping in the dark with the government caught unprepared. 

   After covid19, experts and lawmakers will have formulated laws and  protocols to address another pandemic and other health related crisis on a national and global level.

   The late  Senator Santiago tried to but nobody took it seriously.