Monday, March 15

I wasn't sure I was going to write a blog in quarantine, since, you know, NOTHING HAPPENS IN QUARANTINE, but now I'm resolved to it since it's something to do and we all need Something To Do.

My only concern is that writing this might just encourage me to Narrate everything that's happening in my head, which I already have a tendency to do, and which is not exactly Being in the Moment. But we'll just...observe what happens within me...

Anyway, I managed to stay awake until 6:30 last night. I took half an over-the-counter sleeping pill from Ruby and a melatonin in the hopes I'd stay asleep for a while, and then basically passed out. I woke up in the dark, very alert, what felt like a few hours later. I was a little surprised...I'd thought I would sleep for longer, with the exhaustion and the sleeping pill, and if I'd only slept for a few hours, it would be harder to adjust to Bangkok time...then I checked my phone and saw it was 5:00am. Ha!

I stayed in bed for a while, texting with Roman (who fell asleep at 2:00pm and woke up at midnight, poor thing) and trying to maybe sleep a little longer, until I eventually got up, made some ginger tea, showered and got dressed.

I was hoping I could see the sunrise (the lady in the “yoga for jetlag” video said watching sunrises and sunsets could help with jetlag) but I can't see the sun from my balcony, and it only went from pre-morning light to light.

I'm basically Monet, capturing light.

It feels smoggy outside...it smells like smoke and car exhaust and the sky is a flat gray. But there is a little garden at the street level that I somehow didn't notice when I first arrived.

Is that a metaphor? Overlooking the garden for the trash? Anyway, I don't feel any disappointment with this room now...it seems perfectly fine. I guess because I didn't wake up with expectations, whereas I did first arrive with them.

Breakfast didn't come until maybe 8:15am...I was getting a little impatient by the time it came—hungry and ready to get on with my day! Which is hilarious.

I ordered the Continental Breakfast: cornflakes with milk, a croissant, and toast. It came with fruit (papaya) and juice (flavored...sweet?), as always.

It was not very good, but also what I expected. Weird butter-like spread. I mostly just ordered it so I could put the milk in my minifridge and use it for tea.

But Roman got the Thai breakfast, which looked much more exciting.

Some kind of congee, perhaps? Is that cantaloupe?

I'd say I would order this one day, but I'm like one of those terribly uptight colonial-era Brits when it comes to breakfast. Just some toast and tea, please. Perhaps a bit of fruit. No, I can't take anything spicy! Fish sauce for breakfast, are you mad?

Boring, I know.

After breakfast, I spent a little time looking for ebooks from the library, since I'm getting through my books way too quickly. Since my sister is a fan of Stephen Graham Jones, I got Night of the Mannequins from the library, which is great but also so dark. It's actually figuring into a lot of my mental landscape right now, and I really feel like it should factor into the blog.

Like, this morning, I got up early, stood out on the balcony for a while, took a shower, and contemplated whether you could in fact kill someone if you stuck a straightened wire hanger up their nose and then jiggled it around.

I'm also reading Pema Chodren.

Ahem.

Then I meditated, worked on setting up this blog, did a vinyasa yoga Youtube class, and washed some clothes in the plastic tub the hotel provided, in the shower.

For lunch, I ordered Vegetarian “fried rice with 5 colors vegetables.”

I had expected something more vegetabley, but now I think maybe I should have known it would be a more ricey dice. Hopefully tomorrow's “fried mixed vegetable with jasmine rice” will be more of a stir-fry? We'll see.

Here's the menu, the documents that signify what takes up a great deal of my thought and attention here in quarantine...

After lunch, I read for a while, texted with Roman, and downloaded some TV shows onto the iPad. I'm trying to figure out how to watch something in the evenings, in spite of the fact that the WiFi is very slow.

Did I already mention that the WiFi is very slow? This is somewhat cramping my plans, and my ability to download books onto the Kindle.

Also, when I was 5 minutes from the end of a second yoga routine, the video stopped streaming and I couldn't get it resume, so I just had to make up an ending. Grrr.

What else did I do? Read some books, did a little writing, put my laundry rack out on the balcony to dry.

Dinner was pretty good—the menu calls it roasted pork with rice, and it was all kind of familiar, but not familiar enough that I could name it. Rice, a hard boiled egg, char siu, Chinese sausage, and raw cucumber and tomato slices. One green onion. It was served with a very tart fruity vinegar I can't place (but saved in case I meet some more raw vegetables that need it—quarantine has made me a magpie) and a slightly smoky, sweet, soy-based sauce. 

Then I read, watched some stuff, and went to bed.

The kind of sexy pics I take and send to Roman