Our typical day during COVID-19 pandemic

Our lives have changed as a result of COVID-19.

I learned the word ‘pandemic’ from Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, who announced in February that a coronavirus pandemic is inevitable. At that time, I had no clue what impact it will have on our daily routine. Since then, the situation has worsened as the infected cases skyrocketed and people started panic buying. At the time of writing, the Stage 3 restriction has been put into place in Australia.

Due to COVID-19, Ben and I have been working from home for some time. I started WFH from 24 March and Ben started 2 weeks earlier than me.

On a typical work-from-home day, I wake up at 8am. I used to wake up at 6.30am because I had to drive to the office early to find a parking slot (of which is very limited and on first come first serve basis). Now I can save about 2 hours in commuting every day which I think is the biggest benefit of working from home.

But there are downsides – we have to re-park our car in our area every 2 or 4 hours due to the parking time limit which is a bit annoying. We recently received a parking fine of AU$83 by breaching the time limit without intention.

Since we live in an apartment, we are not eligible to get a residential parking permit. We contacted the local council in our area to find out if the parking rules still apply during the Stage 3 restriction, and the answer is yes and there is nothing they can do. I find this very ironic as the purpose of the restriction is for people to stay home as much as possible to flatten the COVID-19 curve, so it kinds of defeat the purpose.

Anyway, it is an excuse for us to get some fresh air. Every day we order coffee through the Skip app while on the way to re-park our car, so we can avoid the queue and pick up the coffee straightaway. I can see many people still queueing for the coffee despite the pandemic – it proves the coffee culture is very strong here.

Oh yeah, we cannot use reusable cups anymore due to hygiene issues. And we can only do takeaway or delivery.

In terms of work, I work in a little space in our apartment with a small table and chair. I am very satisfied with it. Ben usually works from the couch. All my teammates are working from home so I use Skype quite often. My colleagues told me that they lost track of the day… as every day felt the same for them.

I started picking up cooking again since we cannot go out to eat… cooking Malaysian dishes makes me feel at home.

Sometimes I cook,
Sometimes Ben cook,
Sometimes we order UberEats and choose contactless delivery.

With a car, it is easy for us to do grocery shopping. But we would buy as much as possible to reduce the number of shopping trips. We had difficulty in finding toilet paper and other groceries in the past few weeks and luckily we do not have the problem now after supermarkets introduce limits. It is still very hard to find a mask – we bought disposable N95 masks for AU$5.50 each which is very expensive. No wonder not many people wear masks here.

All these have become our new routines…

Anyway, we are trying our best not to step out of our home unless necessary, including weekends.

Now I got stuck with Ben 24/7. Sometimes Ben got a bit depressed because he likes to socialise with people, so I have to spend some time to talk to him. Sometimes I feel that we have a lot of time to do whatever we want, but what else can we do at home?

But to be honest, our inconvenience is very minor (at least for now) compared to many people.

I feel very sorry for the people who lost their jobs, the small businesses who are struggling to survive and anyone who is negatively impacted by the virus. None of us wants this to happen…

The circumstances are changing every day.

We believe the COVID-19 will permanently change the work environment even after the crisis. This is because many people have started to work from home. Some traditional-minded bosses may be hesitant to let their employees work from home, but after this event perhaps they will think “it is not the end of the world, huh?”

It will forever change the behaviour of people, and I think this is not necessarily a bad thing. Things do change.

We will get through this 💪