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2023-03-20
Disorientation: The Feeling I had on March 11th, 2020
What Happened on March 11th, 2020 -
2020-05-24
Fireside Chat Final Episode
The final episode of Fireside Chats! Students share their stories from quarantine. Thanks to Mr. Andrew Savage and his US History team for making this happen. -
April 2020
Cin 211
the daily life of Matthew Torres during the height of the pandemic -
2020-05-12
The Fireside Video Chat
Brooklyn high School of the Arts: "Our students are the best storytellers! Tune in this week to see "COVID-19 Fireside Chats". Stories from quarantine from Mr. Savage's US History class! Tonight, First Period! See the full video in the link below. You won't regret it!" -
2022-06-10
Lockdown Experience
What’s it like living in lockdown? Everyday felt like a cycle, especially online school. You wake up: -Turn your laptop on -Eat -Sleep - Defecate and repeat No leisure activities on the weekends, like we used to have. You're separated from socialisation, family, and friends. So you start to try new hobbies. Or instead, rot in your hobbit hole (bedroom). If I'm being real, I spent my lockdown in a big t-shirt and walking around in my underwear. Skateparks were closed so I skated in my driveway and neighbourhood. All my neighbours could hear was the slamming of my board, and ahhhh. I eventually switched to skating in my garage, and then just stopped skating as a whole. I tried writing screenplays, which were terrible. Lockdown was separation from people to people contact, boredom, weight gain, and extremely long screen time. I’m glad it’s over, but I definitely learned a little bit about myself. The fact that everyone else was in lockdown made it a lot more doable. -
2022-01-10
Journal from an NAU student
My journal is a week by week deptiction of my everyday life going to college during an pandemic -
2021-10-04
Before & After
This is a quick reflection on some aspects of how life is different now due to covid-19. -
2021-01-22
My Experience with COVID Symptoms
When COVID-19 had just started I had heard a lot of people had gotten sick, but no one that I had known. Fast forward a couple of months into the pandemic I get the news that my friend had gotten COVID when I had just seen her a couple of days ago. She has five siblings, one of them was a toddler, her older sister who had a one-year-old was staying with them, and she was pregnant for the second time. Thank god everyone ended up all right including the baby who had not even been born yet. Out of the 9 people that were living in their house at the time only two of them got it bad. The second oldest siblings along with her mom had body aches, a fever, a headache, lost their sense of taste, had a couch, stuffed nose, and couldn't get out of bed for a week. The rest of them only had a cough and a stuffed nose. Lucky they weren't infectious yet when we saw them so my family did not contract the virus from them. Another time this happened, my dad had a business meeting with his co-worker. Three days late his co-worker had tested positive for coronavirus. Once again our minds filled with worry. My grandma was staying with us at the time and because of her age, she was high risk so we sent her along with my uncle to a hotel nearby our house. We waited till we reached the five-day mark and my parents went and got tested. Luckily they tested negative and my grandma and uncle came back home and we celebrated the New Year all together with some negative COVID tests. -
2021-01-22
Symptoms
Pretty much the symptoms of having Covid vary. Some of them are simple coughing, no sense in smell nor taste, and sore throat. Some more severe symptoms include not being able to breathe clearly, nausea of vomiting, fever or chills, and many others. It honestly depends on your health state and if you have a strong immune system or not. -
2020-10-14
What I Wish I'd Known Seven Months Ago
I wrote this essay to help make sense of my feelings and experiences during the pandemic. -
2020-05-27
Dreaming Again
Ms. Lea Salonga launched a campaign, #LSdreamagain regarding the things we miss or dreams we crave while on lockdown. One of the things I miss is the brush of the wind on my face. Even before the pandemic, I am what you call a treehugger, so I crave hugs. Hugging my niece and nephew is one of the things I am looking forward to after this "period". Savouring the simple pleasures of life. -
2020-08-10
The life of a HCW testing positive for coronavirus
I wrote this article for my internship and I've always wanted to see it published given that it gives us a perspective of a health care worker that became a patient for coronavirus. In the months that the Philippines has been on lockdown and cases continue to rise up, it's very telling that those who are vulnerable to the virus still aren't secured and compensated for the work they have done so far. -
2020-08-15
Our youth is yours
Turning twelve is a toast to tweens. To the parents, it’s a wistful goodbye to childhood. Before the March 16, 2020 enhanced community quarantine, two mommy friends and I were happily hatching a surprise party for our tweens. Our kids were childhood friends who shared the same birth month. Secret Viber invites were sent to the parents of their classmates and to close family. Then the news of the Covid-19 pandemic took over the headlines. Metro Manila was going to be on lockdown. The viber chat was shutdown with the cancellation of the party. The chicken nuggets and fries celebration was shelved. Michelle, Mika and Maddie would mark their memorable 12th year on this earth witnessing a global pandemic that would rock the world. -
2020-07-27
Lockdown Clothing Project
We are two London-based fashion scholars – Lorraine Smith (aka Lori) and Jana Melkumova-Reynolds – who have always been curious about how others dress, and how this relates to identity. Recent social changes (due to the coronavirus pandemic) have increased that curiosity. How are people dressing when in lockdown and isolation situations? How is this different to the way they dressed before? Has it affected their sense of self? This project aims to shine a light on those changes and reveal some of the many and varied personal stories relating to fashion and dress in 2020. -
2020-03-16
COVID-19 Extracts from Personal Journal
Mid-March. Thinking about all the things that have previously worried me this year that now seem mild and hilarious: moving alone to Tasmania; starting my PhD at a new university and finally meeting my supervisors; turning 28 (haha, actually). Now: Global pandemic; getting really sick; my loved ones getting really sick; state borders closing and being unable to return home even if I want to; my loved ones getting sick and not being able to travel to see them; the economy is destroyed, again. Late-March. It is what it is. What a rollercoaster this year has been, and we're not yet three months in. I've been staying home in self-quarantine for a few weeks now. The days are distinct for twenty-four hours; in the mornings I can recall the previous mornings; the afternoons, the afternoons. Every day I wake around 10am, at some point I paint, make food, drink coffee, stand on the balcony and gaze at the view. At the dining table J plays Catan ("it's your turn"; maniacal laughter; the sound of sawing) while I read. B set up the gym in the spare room and is continually showing me exercises effortlessly, while I struggle on a single push up. We stack wood in the woodshed, B and I come up with names for movies replacing words with toilet paper in one of a million Facebook challenges to bubble up during a time when all we have is time, and after weeks of watching the PM’s announcements as a house, we have all gradually stopped paying attention to the news. What is happening in Tasmania? That's all we care about anymore. I call home and [my parents] are cheery, full of house-plans and routine amidst the uncertainty. Recently J and I were discussing how we have different word associations - prior to all this I saw virus as being inherently technological, a computer term; he saw it as a verb, something penetrating and spreading. He said he felt concerned that we all use the same term but we might all be meaning different things, so how can anyone authentically communicate? I feel that inherently at the moment. I have a wonderful Zoom call with D and D and they are jovial, laughing, but also patient and understanding with my PhD fog. (Sometimes I have to remind myself that I am doing one at all, and it zips back into consciousness with surprise: wait, you're doing it? Now? All you do is sit in your house.) University is at least some kind of consistency. I write to M and A, I paint zealous red gouache flowers on the envelopes, I run to the post box and hold my hand out in the air after touching the handle as though drenched with invisible miasma. J and I collect pine cones at the Domain. When strangers approach from a distance every part of me screams stay away! They seem to walk directly towards us, magnetised, a collision course, and it is always our job to duck and weave to avoid crashing. Crashing means ‘breathing near’. Mid-April. I ask J how many weeks it has been not leaving the house. "I don't know", he says."Four? Five?" We count backwards. I was free on my birthday; the last time I went out for anything was a week after that, Me Wah. J remembers. "At least you got to sit in a restaurant", he says. He remembers mine and B's conversation to the word. I sense his mind is doing backflips in the emptiness, while mine is hazy and soft, a kaleidoscope of dreaming and staring into the flickering flames of our fire, looking at the soft Ghibli rain over the city, staring into never-ending mugs of steaming tea. There’s no need to ever be fully awake. We watch movies B picks out on Netflix (Psychokinesis; A Quiet Place), sip homemade cherry liqueur. We share treats. Occasionally we leave the house in an anxious flurry. People either look nervously as we pass them in the aisle, or not at all; oblivious, they bang into other people, walk aggressively, lean too close. J is frustrated and rattled. "I'm really grumpy", he says, roaring his car into the street. B and I silently look for teddy bears in the windows of people's houses. In our neighbour’s window is a brightly painted sign, ‘Thank you health care workers!’ One particularly cagey afternoon (of golden sun licking the garden in early April, flecked summer shadows, all a warm 20 degrees) I walk. I walk around the Domain and lip sync to repetitive pop songs and take photos of the trees and a fat rainbow parrot, and I move into the dirt to avoid people, always watching, mapping trajectories and walking speed in space. I get home sunburnt and make a fluffy coffee, drink it in the sun on the deck while J pulls up our kale and spinach and gives it to me to munch, pops the heads of tiny caterpillars with his thumbnail. He leaves one for me to do and when I squish it green blood splashes like a poorly made film crime scene pool, obnoxiously overflowing. There are many places I could be during all this that would be worse than here. Mid-May. This is new. The pressure has completely released. I don’t feel on-edge for a millisecond, instead deeply slow and content and watchful. Given-up and exhausted. When I was deeply drunk I looked around my room tearfully (a clear theme these days) and touched my hand to the wall and thanked the spirits of this old house, whether they were listening or not, the echoes and shadows and fingerprints and DNA of those who came before, for having me, and for their care during this time. After the months I have spent within this house I can’t not anthropomorphize the walls. It was a wider gratitude - for the dappled sunlight on the plants on the ledge in the kitchen, for the depths of the crackling fire, watching it lick and munch at the dry logs, for the deep sea breeze coming up our street, for the view of the houses and the stone church and the pines and the mountain drifting beyond the clouds, for the thick fat roses persevering deep into the late autumn, for the brass-golden sun burning my skin lightly in the late afternoon, for everything delicate and rare and wonderful I have been contained with on this property. While coronavirus is rapidly disappearing in Tasmania (knock on wood, we say, tapping our knuckles on the table, and then on our own heads) the rest of the world is gripped in it. Domestic travel is looking possible by July, at the earliest - international not until 2023, so likely after my PhD is concluded. For now, the directive is clear: stay put and stay healthy and don’t spread. Inspired by the frontliners M is considering doing a two-year intensive nursing degree, so by the time we’re both finished perhaps the world will be opened and we can move around and see it. Who knows what the future will bring - and this year, more than any other, the year the word ‘unprecedented’ was thrown around frantically, this holds true. Late-May. Today was nice. I walked aimlessly around the city, bought a coffee from Two Folks and waited eagerly in the alley for it to be ready since only one person could stand in front of the register on the X-marked tape at any given time (the childish thrill of in-person commerce); bought soap from Lush and laughed with the girl with sky-blue ombre hair behind the plexiglass - “Thank you for keeping me in a job!”, she said. People on the street seemed ready to smile at the slightest glance. There is a relieved, selfish joy in the air. At night I drank a bottle of wine and watched It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and as I always have laughed at every dark moment, and things felt preciously safe in this tiny pocket of the world. -
2020-05-17
Social Distancing
This is a photo that a good friend of mine, Katie DiPietro took during a family session where she was required to stay 6ft away and give ten min session breaks for clean up. She called this pose the "social distancing pose"...as you can see my family thought it was very funny. This session was brilliant because for a short moment, we forgot all about the virus. The fear and worry went away and for half an hour, we could enjoy extra time as a family. -
04/22/2020
Mr Darcy's COVID greetings
This meme resonated with me because I'd noticed several other aspects of society that reverted to Austen-esque practices during COVID-19. Emails became more like letters; personal and sometimes lengthy. People really began to enjoy walks in pairs again. It forced us all to slow down and consider one another more. (For unit HUM404) Creator: Twitter user Hannah Long / @HannahGraceLong using a still from the BBC's 'Pride and Prejudice' miniseries. -
2020-05-09
Nothing to do
A personal account of the pandemic. -
2020-03-30
Reflection March 2020
A personal account of the pandemic. -
2020-04-24
The Life of a College Student During the Pandemic
his time that we are living it is uncertain and creates fear in a lot of us. -
04/19/2020
Journal Entry
Saturday 4th of April I was lucky to muster the motivation to rise from the Persian straw mat, with a yoga mat on top, my makeshift bed, at dawn. The usual sense of grogginess was absent despite the consumed quantities of alcohol the night before. It was the spirit of red wine, the viral of red liquid swimming in the aftermaths that remained in the back of my breath, and triggered a memory that was now the time to take advantage of the time. To walk the dogs, in the cool of dawn. The air was fresh, the streets were quiet. I walked to the city and back. Upon returning the motivation continued and I went into meditation, practicing the Kundalini technique ‘breath of fire’ I’d learnt during my travels to Thailand and my days at uni, going to yoga classes in my breaks. This set me up for a productive day. I watched two films with Jeremy, Ernest and Celest, an animation about a bear and a mouse, and an animated sci-fi, ‘The battle for Tera’, a futuristic film, set on an inhabited planet called Tera, where the humans and aliens came into conflict. Left over south Indian curry, ordered the night before, from the local ‘Saffron’ restaurant in Parap. Then an afternoon spent cleaning, and de-dusting the bedroom and re-arranging the furniture. Sunday 5th of April Up early again, walking the dogs to the city and back. Upon returning I was delighted to have breakfast and coffee prepare for me, which I eagerly took to the front porch and watched the dark clouds loom over with occasional thing and rain. I then returned to meditate, stretch and breath as I continue to practice the ‘breath of fire’. The rest of the day was a haze, until I decided to go for a run and exercise at the park nearby. A fairly uneventful day. As Covid19 takes hold of the community I spend more and more days inside, and thus the urge to write. It’s not only that, economic recession, social distancing are other measures bearing down upon us. News, media, the radio present us with a range of mixed messages, forecasts, warnings, pointing the finger, statistics and stay safe messages. It can be rather a lot to take in. Monday 6th of April The distaste on the tip of my tongue. 1.5 m social distancing, that’s the policy being implemented around the world as the global pandemic, covid19 spreads. But my own supervisor, a head of English at Palmerston seemed to fail to understand. Creeping closer, as if it was a game to get close. Look, I’m not one to take the high horse, but there better be a damn good explanation as to why she was purposefully, nauseatingly, distastefully inclining closer as we went over possible applications for online learning. Maybe she was obtuse, unknowingly breaching the rules, either way it was perverted. The rest of the day I spent plodding away, establishing online communication with students and coming to grips with the impact of covid19 and all its affiliating consequences. 7th of April The coronavirus, also known as covid19 looms on, with work limited to preparation, planning and online communication taking place of normal school day activities. Another early start, but also an early finish as the realization of working from home sets in, the workplace seems to become a place that once was. Still early days, and prepping to be in the best possible position in the scenario of a school wide lockdown takes priority. The small differences begin to accumulate, and life is certainly changing direction. Home by 11 and the rest of the day was spent on my laptop as my son scooted around on his Heely’s, as well as transitioning to online learning. A fairly uneventful day, with the radio news repeating the same issues over and over again, the dogs lazing on the cool floor and my robotic vacuum doing the rounds. 8th of April The day ended dancing in the quietened library room to music video’s showing choregraphed moves. It was a great way to let things go as tension builds up daily, making this relatively unbearable. I begin to question whether covid19 is not a front for something else that is going on in the world. A complete day off, spent at home with Jeremy, as I completed Task 1 of my masters degree. Whether it was building a Lego tower, learning online or watching him Heely around the house, spending time with Jeremy is food for my soul. 9th of April Today we erected the 8man tent in our backyard in anticipation of the Easter weekend. Government restrictions meant we would be doing very little over the long weekend. The tent was like a makeshift covid19 hospitalisation space, for anybody turning up with symptoms. The start of the day was keeping up to date with colleagues at school and then rushing home in the morning to ensure our home delivery of groceries would be put away before it was too late. Then I knuckled down and completed my unit outline for my flailing year 11 English class, a lot that have yet to be sparked by the thought of finishing high-school forever. I am at a low point with them, unable to switch their minds on, and turn their hormones off. The rest of the day was filled with snippets of covid19 newsbreaks and a dinner in the tent. Meatballs in sauce a la couscous! 10th of April I’ve just about had it. It’s not just the coronavirus, it’s the claustrophobia, the media and screen time, and most of all, it’s my god damn finances. The last point makes the situation a dire straits. They say 6 months, but that’s just the virus. The reality is, it’s unlikely the economy is going to recover. But, that’s enough. Today, Good Friday, was at home, making simple Easter crafts, reading short stories playing in the tent, trying to fix holes in a blow up mattress and not much else. Most of the day was spent thinking about lost things from the past. A weird strategy my brain uses to keep itself occupied. It’s quite annoying. Tomorrow, let’s see, better things could be on the horizon. -
2020-04-06
Not an Essay but not Quite and Treatise: A Disquisition on Fear and Incompetence in the Age of COVID-19, Based on a Moderate Amount of Input
Personal blog -
2020-03-15
Covid-19 /Shelter In poems
These are poems I've written about what lockdown has been like -- some humor, some grief -
onward
A Journal of the Plague Year
Personal Journal of Coronavirus, starting March 22 -
2020-04-15
Self Reflection
Self Reflection -
2020-04-10
week of april 6
Personal account of living during COVID-19. -
2020-03-20
I'M NEGATIVE: My personal story of being tested for COVID-19
Youtube Vlog of someone sharing their experience getting tested for Coronavirus.