Given the expected surge of Omicron cases into Feb, strict restrictions have been in place since the beginning of 2022 which limited the annual CNY celebrations this week.
All households are limited to just 5 unique visitors a day. Reunion dinners have to be called off or adjusted to work around this requirement. It was tighter than the 2021 CNY where we were allowed 8 – that was just before Delta hit us last year. Now we have Omicron occurring before CNY and version 2.0 is just around the corner.
Though the Omicron hospitalization and mortality rate is the lowest of all the variants to date, the rapid rise of positive cases have really shocked everyone even as we had assumed that the vaccines would have made the current situation much better than the last 2 years.
As we rolled into the 3rd year of Covid, virus fatigue has really affected our mental well being. A number of countries like Denmark and the UK have started to say that it’s enough and that Covid restrictions should stop. With a high vaccination rate (plus booster shots), they have decided to roll the dice and stop all Covid prevention processes like mask-wearing and social distancing measures from this week.
Many countries are also taking baby steps to reopen as the general consensus is that we must now treat the virus as an endemic virus like the seasonal flu. We should not be afraid of Covid anymore. With more data collected and newer medications available to treat it, we should cross the finishing line like what Tamiflu did to the H1N1 years ago.
The Covid shock to the world and the broken global supply chain should start to recover. It has caused a global shutdown to happen 2 years ago and forced us to go into a new normal. This one-in-a-hundred years event has shown that we have the human resilience to adapt accordingly. We pivoted and accelerated the adoption of technology to survive this new world order as the old ways of doing things just don’t work anymore.
Back to the muted CNY celebrations. We had 4 wonderful and intimate CNY dinners this week with a smaller group of family and friends due to the Omicron restrictions. It resulted in a longer interaction time filled with conversations over good food and drinks rather than the usual annual rush of visiting as many relatives as possible CNY pace.
Monday evening was our annual reunion dinner held on the eve of CNY with my parents and in-laws. We had a 3-course meal that included the required Loh Hei, followed by a soup and then steamboat. Too much food as usual, plus sides of CNY titbits and goodies before the meal and deserts after, sprinkled with bottles of vino in between.
Day 1 of CNY (Tue) was for visitations to my parents and in-law’s place to wish them a prosperous and healthy year ahead. We also popped by my wife’s grandmom’s home too. The evening was spent having dinner with my niece’s family and nephew whom we have not seen for a while. It was refreshing to see that her baby girl had grown up and is almost 5 years old now. So bubbly and full of life with the innocence of youth. She is so inquisitive of her surroundings as everything was a new exploration and adventure for her.
The 2nd day of CNY was just dinner with our usual group of good friends we have known since our uni days. We have grown up together since graduation, to getting married and starting our families while watching the kids grow up to be young adults now. The logistics were tricky as we had to split the group into 3 locations. Each household was for a different “segment” consisting of the men, the women and the children. We did a short video call to link the 3 groups when we had the Loh Hei.
Finally, on Fri last evening, my wife invited her close cousins over for dinner. We managed to polish off a lot of sake (one 1.8 L and 2 other regular 720 ml bottles) with Peranakan food and a lot of CNY titbits. We watched the opening ceremony of the China winter Olympics as well as some old family videos.
All in all, a very good week of family and friends gathering. The pace was slower but more meaningful as it was not rushed due to the Omicron restrictions. It was an adaptation into the 2nd CNY celebration in the midst of the virus and hopefully, we do not have to go into a 3rd one in 2023 to have big and noisy gatherings again.
The stock markets did a nice pullback last Friday into Monday with strong earning results from Apple and then Amazon later into the week. They are still off from all-time highs and ended Jan in the red. Inflation hawks are still worried about the possibility of faster rate hikes and whether the strong revenue results can be sustained as we revert back to a more normal situation.
Cryptos look like they are also stabilizing and forming a base here. I am waiting at the sidelines to buy more. For stocks, I am undecided if we can see more correction but volatility looks like it is here to stay. While I prefer to stay invested, I am slowly eating into my cash to buy some at lower prices.
The tough ones are Chinese names that have been whacked down by their government. No one seems to know who they will be targeting next. Some have been forced to divest or to delist and have dropped more than 50 to 80% already. There is still long term potential even as China is looking inwards as it has a critical onshore mass to support while giving the middle finger to America. But how long will they continue to punish their star new tech companies?
My macroeconomics view is that the world will start to open up again and that we are nearing the Covid finishing line soon. Supply chains will resume back to before again and inflation concerns are overhyped and could be transient. The global economy fell off a cliff in 2020 and there should be more upside and recovery as we head into 2022.
As such, I prefer to remain invested in selective companies that will benefit from this recovery. I am too tech focused at the moment and may need to fine tune my portfolio. Dips should continue to be opportunities to buy. This also applies to the top cryptos and promising ones with a strong utility function. I just need to stomach the expected greater volatility and sit tight. 2022 certainly started off with a big bang indeed!!!
Leave a Reply