It has been 5 months since I started my weekly blog tracking of Covid19 and here we are in week 20. The world has become unrecognizable since then as everyone grapple with one turmoil after another which had turned all our lives upside down.
Who would have thought that the world had to come to a stop for a few months? If you had told me that last Dec, I would say that you are crazy. Full lockdown and wear masks everywhere? Madness!
I remembered the moment I had my “OH, SHIT!” reaction very clearly… It was our last overseas vacation in Feb. We were on a mountain top overlooking Wellington, New Zealand. The guide pointed to the port and said that all activities have come to a halt. They could not cut any more wooden logs from the forest because there is no space left in the harbour to store them. None of the ships could transport them overseas as all were full of cargo with nowhere to go. The whole supply chain had stopped dead in its tracks. And that was slowly happening in every port around the world.
And here we are 5 months later. We now know how to handle Covid19 much better but yet the overall situation has not improved. Cases are still rising exponentially in many western countries and people are still stupidly fighting for their rights to not wear masks. Too much bad news all the time and little or no uplifting news. Super depressing…
This week though, there seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel. We started the week with the great news that there is some advancement in the development of Covid19 vaccines. Moderna is one such company that announced a successful phase 2 and moving into the final phase 3 by the end of the month. Another group in Oxford, UK had also announced successful vaccine trials at the same time. There is market talk too that China is also racing ahead on this effort. Many are optimistic that a successful vaccine would be found very soon.
Once that is done, it will still take a few months to ramp up production to produce the millions and billions of doses required for the world’s population. Bloomberg is tracking at least 140+ Covid19 initiatives happening around the world now. With the intense concentration of effort on a single subject, I believe that we should see some positive results soon.
The other positive outcome of this virus was the acceleration of the digitalization of eCommerce, epayments and etracking. China has been using QR codes successfully for almost everything over the last 6 years while the world refuses to adapt to it and continue to stick to physical cash. The virus has forced everyone to jump on this bandwagon asap.
Physical cash is dirty and may contain the virus. Handshakes are deemed toxic and any physical contact is taboo nowadays. Contact tracing is critical and we have to use QR codes to log into each location we visited as a national initiative to have a central record of our whereabouts. Everyone should be an expert on using QR codes by now. There is an infinite number of QR permutations that can be generated, so one can be created for everything.
Like China, the next stage of QR code usage will be cashless payments as one can use the mobile phone for all our daily activities. eWallet adoption will be a no brainer. Banks are already offering free instantaneous and real-time remittance services. Fintechs like YouTrip’s eWallet product will now get its turn to shine. The technology has always been here but it has taken the virus to push us all off the cliff to adapt to it.
On my personal front, it has been a week of individual wellness program of sorts for me. I had donated blood to the national Bloodbank for more than 25 times over my life since the first time during my army days. I had to stop for the last 2 years because of my monthly business trips to Yangon. Because of a malaria incident, I can only donate after 4 months after my last Yangon trip. Thanks to the virus and the lockdown period, the 4 months waiting period was completed.
I finally donated blood again on Tues after an absence of more than 2.5 years. The positive upside of donating is that the body will be pushed to re-generate and produce new blood as a pint of it has to be replaced. The next few days created a sharpness and clarity of mind for me – probably due to the production of new blood within my system LOL!
I had also decided to try my first chiropractic session this week after seeing so many alignment and bones cracking videos on FB and youtube. I wanted to address my back pains that may be due to old age and bad posturing. I discovered that there were many trial packages available for me to try before I commit to a package with a chiropractor. I also wanted to see if my wife’s company’s health package covers this too.
Did my first session on Wed at a place near my home. The doctor did a detailed analysis of my spine weaknesses and bad posture habits. It seems that my left side bears most of the bodyweight most of the time which had caused an unevenness of the loading on my spine in general. He recommended a spine X-ray which I took on Thurs and we will review it again next week. Also managed to do my first foot reflexology session after 5 months on Thurs and slept like a baby that night.
Finally, I had to spend a bomb again for my car expenses. The current car had served me well for the last 10 years and I had to get a new Certificate of Entitlement (COE) to allow me to keep it for another 10 years. As I had maintained it well and it is much cheaper than replacing it with another car, I decided to pay for a new 10 years COE. The expiry date of the old COE is today and I renewed it online on Wed. Together with the cost of a new annual car insurance and road tax, I spent a total of SGD 35,000 this week. It is a big hit for a semi-retired person like me to take but thankfully, I had a consultancy job last year which provided me with some income.
I predict that we will be in a better place in another 3 months as we learn more about Covid19 and how to conquer it. A vaccine should be found before year-end and we can try to return to the world we once knew less than 6 months ago.
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