In the Clubhouse app, chat room moderators have been using the term “room reset” periodically.
What does it mean? When the discussion veers off the main topic or whenever there is some unwelcomed distraction, the moderator will call time out and ask for a room reset, to bring everyone back to the same page again, to re-emphasize proper chat etiquette.
And just like that, S’pore and US had done a room reset this week. But both were on opposite sides and spectrum of Covid expectations. The rest of the world had also gone through a certain form of room reset in the last few weeks too and we move to the next phase of this virus journey.
Biden just announced that CDC had issued new guidelines that there is no need to wear masks outside anymore for those that are fully vaccinated. This is perhaps a smart strategy to push the remaining population to get the shots to achieve herd immunity before the July Independence day deadline. The anti-mask 1st amendment rights Covidiots now technically have a way out. Get the vaccine, stupid! For the Anti-Vaxers, well you can continue to wear your masks and be ostracized by the rest of society, Dumbo! If facts cannot convince you, then social moral suasion and making you a pariah might do the trick.
Kids from 12 years old upwards can now also take the vaccine and capacity has been ramped up to accommodate more people in the coming months as demand had been steadily dropping. The US and the UK have been at the forefront of the vaccination strategy to get its citizen out of the Covid cycle, even as newer variants (6k and counting) have been popping up all over the world.
The situation in India is still not looking good and the case count remains dangerously high. 44 other countries including S’pore have begun to record this strain in their countries. The Modi government has retreated into its own shell of denial with no plans of trying to get out of this quagmire.
S’pore had seen a relentless surge in cases over the last 2 weeks with many new clusters and unlinked cases popping up everywhere, especially on the east side (now henceforth named the new East Coast Plan…). After many days of investigation, it has decided to do a room reset and start a mini lockdown of sorts for the next month.
From tomorrow, group gatherings will be restricted to 2 persons from 5 and all dine-in activities will stop. Unlike the stricter Circuit Breaker (CB) last year, this will be more of fine-tuning of activities to try to break the virus cycle and arrest the spread. All gyms will be closed and group activities minimized and households can only have 2 unique visitors per day.
There were some panic supermarket groceries buying as usual last night after the announcements were made. Guess most have not tried out online shopping of groceries yet. Live will still go on as we have mostly conditioned ourselves over the last year to survive in the new normal.
The rest of the world is now moving at different speeds and strategies against the virus and the disparities are getting wider. While all of us are in a better place now than a year ago with more knowledge of the virus and a vaccine solution, new problems seem to creep up as we move to the next phase of trying to achieve normalization.
I had 2 calls with our Myanmar overseas lenders this week. Things do not look good there. With Covid and now the coup, it is death by a thousand cuts. The military is not moving an inch towards negotiation after the failed ASEAN attempt, encouraged by the 7 years old Thailand military coup which happened in 2014 and still showing no signs of free elections. As long as China supports Myanmar, they really do not need the blessings of outsiders.
The protesting young population looks to the 2019 Hong Kong riots as a template to escalate the confrontations. They have started to join the rebels up north to take up arms and training to fight back. Killings continue and the outlook looks bleak for an outsider like me looking in. I am resigned to the fact that my engagement with the country might come to a halt soon as things go beyond anyone’s control and that I cannot provide any value add to the company anymore.
One of my 2021 resolutions is to read 15 books this year. I have been into books about the chef and food porn show star Anthony Bourdain recently. We will be reaching the 3rd anniversary of his suicide soon and there is a new book out on his travel shows (World Travel – An Irrelevant Guide) that summarize his visits to interesting places around the world. I am also reading this book about his various interviews (The Last Interview and Other Conversations) at the same time. A documentary (Roadrunner) about his life will also be coming out soon, I heard.
On a more positive note, I started the new Data Science module of my IBM AI course this week. We were blessed with a highly talented young man as our trainer and were taught so much just in our one and only day of Zoom online class on Tues. I am excitedly looking forward to this module as it reminds me of a similar course I took in 2018 for my specialist diploma in Business Analytics. This is more in-depth now and much has changed in the last few years with technological advancements. The trainer also strongly encourages us to learn about Python programming to better appreciate data analysis concepts.
Even the recently completed Cloud Computing module had gotten me very excited about the huge possibilities of Cloud as I got to know more about it. It is much more secure than I had imagined and with the start of 5G services, this will be a paradigm shift to greater things. Amazon’s AWS is the leader in this field and I will revisit this again as a 2021 goal when my course finishes in Aug.
There are still so many uncertainties brought about by the Covid situation as we adapt to it month by month. Human adaptability is a strength that all of us have. We continue to count our blessings in this brave new world.
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