So just how do I fill my days, locked as I am into a small hotel room? A week in, I think I can reliably answer.
Well, meal times provide structure, and it's something to look forward to, even if they're like as not to disappoint—perhaps this time you'll get lucky. Also, someone comes by to take your temperature in the afternoons, and though the entire interaction is maybe 10 seconds, it's seeing somebody that isn't through binoculars, even if they're head-to-toe in Tyvek and PPE. This temperature we enter into a mandatory government app on our phones, and we take our own temperatures in the morning, for a total of two readings a day (Laura does this just once a day and it's entirely on the honor system, with no fleeting visitors.)
I usually wake up between 6 and 7, and listen to NPR for a couple hours. I do my morning grooming and take my pills, put on the tea kettle, and make up the bed. (Coffee here is in a pour-over filter pack, but it doesn't work either with the flimsy Dixie cups they gave me or the rice pots I save from meals to make my tea in.) I poke around on the internet and catch up on Gudetama Tap. Eventually I put on music—opera last week, but '20s jazz today—and read. One source of fun is an internet nanny cam Laura's sister Rachel has allowed to be put in her house, trained on our hamster. For once, with the 14-hour time difference, he's on the same schedule as us humans.
After lunch, more internetting and reading. I may put on NHK World, which is one of the few TV channels in English, or stream France24, in French, for a challenge. Yesterday I had a nap, but I try to avoid them so I sleep better at night. Today I did a little light laundry in the sink, and of course I'm writing this now. Next I will probably read, or gaze out the window, until dinner. Laura and I will chat a few times a day over Google Hangouts, though her internet connection doesn't seem great for video calls. Could be the particular protocol, as she seems to use Zoom fine.
I don't have the greatest view, but it's better than Laura's view of an interior courtyard. I am above a marina drydock, with all manner of boats put up for the winter or repair. Beyond that is a channel, which runs under a major highway overpass, and has a lock. The bit of the harbor I can see is frozen over, but the channel is clear and frequently features ducks. The channel is blighted by industrial infrastructure. Beyond the highway, Seoul can be glimpsed in the haze. Sometimes high in the sky I can see dueling seagulls. I have small birdwatching binoculars, and I watch the boat yard workers, usually the same 2-3 guys, as they go about their business. Sunday I had a treat, when ordinary people walked down the access road towards the hotel, or visited the boat yard, maybe to shop for their first boat. Here was the people watching I had hoped for. It was the first time I'd seen any women, apart from the occasional temperature-taker under three yards of Tyvek. Yesterday I saw a cat, possibly in search of li'l smokies.
Yesterday was a sport event. It was a windy day—the afternoon particularly clear, with a good view of Seoul—and somehow, one of the orange biohazard bags they give us for our meal waste, had gotten loose outside, and it was engaged in aerial acrobats, riding the eddies and currents and vents and what-not, tumbling and gliding, even coming close to my window on the 11th floor. It was sheer delight to see this stupid bag gamboling on the wind. Then the wind took it around the side of the building never to be seen again. But while it lasted, it was glorious fun.
(Addendum: Were I able to get on top of the building, I could see with the binoculars into North Korea, which is about 20 km away, albeit just barely. You can tell where the DPRK starts from where the trees end, having been all cut down for fuel.)
After dinner, I have a routine of eating one See's bonbon, followed by a sip of (scotch) whisky, which is technically contraband in quarantine, but it adds a little civilization to my captivity. I'll read a bit, and maybe take a shower, if I didn't earlier. A bit before bed, after I do my nighttime bathroom routine, I will watch an episode of Frasier on CBS All Access, using a VPN, to get around region restrictions. A bit more reading and then lights out around 10.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
I will mention a bit of intrigue here on the 11th floor. Smoking in quarantine is forbidden—the literature threatens a fine and imprisonment and deportation—but a neighbor keeps getting in and out of his room at all hours to go smoke up on the roof, I think. What's definitely worse than smoking is leaving your room. When he comes back, the hallway is filled with the scent of stale smoke, as though this chain-smoker never washes and moves in a Pigpen-esque cloud of his own miasma. It of course travels under my door, and all I can do to fight it is spritz a cheap Avon cologne I brought. Every time I hear his door slam, I just know my world is about to smell like an ashtray in continuous, unwashed use since 1963. I haven't quite worked up the nerve to blow him in to the desk, but I'm on the verge of it (will today be the day?). At home I'd merely tut-tut such behavior, but here, cooped up, it's become a mild obsession. It's unchristian of me, but I keep hoping he will step off the roof during one of his late-night sorties.
(Update: I finally called the desk, and they said they'd check on it. A little more noncommittal than I'd hoped for, but maybe they'll come through. If they properly understood. Updated update: haven't heard or smelled peep since I called, so something happened.)
One of the phenomena I find interesting is what I call "prison inventiveness," though doubtless professional psychologists have a word for it. But what you brought into quarantine is all you have, apart from meals. You begin to save any bit of packaging that has potential use. I have a bundle of chopsticks, rice pots turned tea mugs, fruit cups turned drinking glasses, a burgeoning rubber band ball. When LEDs on all the switches were keeping me awake, I peeled apart my luggage routing sticker, cut it up, and covered all the lights. This provides a measure of satisfaction in my own ingenuity, until I think about the parallels with making do in prison. This whole experience has given me just a tiny taste of what it must be like to be a prisoner—less the gangs and constant danger of assault, sexual or otherwise.
So yes, the mental health toll is real, and I wouldn't do this again or recommend it to anyone else, but here we are, and thankfully nearly over the hump. Thank you for all the check-ins, e-mails, notes, social media comments, etc., that help maintain my sanity a little. It's very much appreciated.
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