It’s Saturday and I had few errands to do – one of it was to change the Astro card for my mum’s decoder. I stopped by to fill in gas for my car and wanted to buy a cup of coffee.
I quickly realized how things has changed. There was a machine that would automatically take your temperature. Next you would need to fill in your name, contact number and your temperature into a log book.
At the Astro service centre, it was another experience. Everyone had to line up outside as only 3 customers are allowed to be in the premise at one time. The usual temperature check applies – this time by a security guard, followed by registration into a log book.
Afterwards, I went to Giant to buy some stuff for my mum’s kitchen. This time around I registered myself using a QR code which led to a tracer portal. It made life a bit easier to get through the gate.
However, it doesn’t change the fact there’s additional steps required to perform errands these days. Still getting to use it.
I used to be one of those people who hangs out for hours till late nights (more of till early mornings) for teh tarik sessions. It was a routine of mine for many years.
We used to have a large group of friends regularly getting together (literally everyday at one point in my life) – at days probably up to 30 people in one sitting from various walks of life. Started with childhood friends, college friends, grew to friends of friends and the network just grew. On certain nights I would hang out with my brother’s friends – despite him being away studying in Melbourne.
Don’t remember how I end up being around so many different people.
Those were good fun days.
As I grew older the frequency became lesser – much much lesser, and in much smaller groups. I haven’t seen most of those folks for ages.
These days, most of my hanging out sessions are spent with the closer group of brothers that has been working and growing with me over the past 10 to 15 years or so.
MCO changed that routine entirely – haven’t had those teh tarik sessions for ages.
The other day, just before Eid, I managed to have a cup of Milo with a good friend who stays around Bukit Jelutong. Close to a year back he retired from BNM. From time to time, he would randomly call for a cup of tea. Now he is probably my most frequent teh tarik session partner. A nice guy I personally enjoy hanging out despite the difference in age.
But everything has been different, the mamak shops closes much earlier – by 10pm the doors are all close. Before, the session would have only started at 10pm. Hence, getting together with people became more difficult.
Today, actually had a teh tarik session at 3pm with 3 of my closest brothers. They’ve been through quite a lot with me throughout the years. Hanging out silly with them helps relieve a lot of pressure.
The short session today was pretty fun and particularly helpful considering I had quite a draining day yesterday.
But the experiences today did make me realize life has changed a lot with COVID-19, more than any of us expected. It also made me realized there’s a lot in life that we had taken for granted before.
So – message for the day, as much as we can, take some time in the day to be thankful – for anything to everything, even if you can only pinpoint to a small one for the day. We never know what’s coming our way in days to come.