For us, Singapore began as a refuge from the early chaos in China, but it became our refuge from the chaos in the States. I might have blocked our return to China in late March, but our central goal was still to avoid returning to the United States. Our jobs, and the continuation of them, relied upon being present in China promptly upon the reopening of that border, which we (naively, it turned out) expected within a few weeks. Our mental energy was focused on tracking the next opportunity to get there and continuing to be in Singapore until then.
We watched as the virus exploded across our homeland, and listened as politicians drummed up nationalism with the term “China Virus.” As China brought its own infection rate under control and sought to remove itself from the conversation around the origins of the contagion, it was easy to imagine that China might impose travel restrictions or bans on people coming from the U.S. We were pitching in the middle of a geopolitical storm. Considering the way COVID had changed things rapidly and unpredictably, we didn’t want to add another variable to our China return.
Plus, by mid-February it was clear the U.S. was struggling to contain the infection, whereas Singapore was doing a fairly effective job at the time. In addition, by March we considered it more dangerous to live in the U.S. under the virus than China. We expended increasing time and energy following the rumors and information about when China might open (the former being universally wrong, the latter being scarce and indefinite, and both changing constantly). By early May we began tracking options – if we had to leave Singapore – for how we could remain in Asia, and therefore relatively close to China.
Our lives leading up to the aborted return to China and the immediate aftermath were emotionally crowded: we learned the wedding was postponed, booked flights returning to China in response, moved those flights earlier, and then didn’t go. In that time, we bought quarantine survival supplies (chocolate and other food to get us through two weeks of questionable fare) and began to close out the current relationships with Heather, Jamie, and Jenelyn, both consciously and unconsciously. We celebrated Heidi’s birthday with them a few days early, because her official birthday would have occured under quarantine.
Then we added physically crowded to emotionally crowded. Covid cases were picking up in Singapore, so Heidi and I quit going to the mall on our daily work expeditions. Shortly after, the government closed coffee shops and other social venues. We worked from the apartment, sometimes with Heidi at the dining room table and other times with her perched on our bed. Our world was getting smaller.
On April 7 Singapore implemented their “Circuit Breaker” procedure to contain the virus, a partial lockdown that required people to stay home and closed all but essential services and activities. On April 21 the government tightened restrictions further, making the list of essential services shorter, and extended the length of the circuit breaker. On May 2 they began easing the restrictions, and by June 1 the Circuit Breaker ended with few cases being spread in the general community. (Most of Singapore’s cases at that time were in the migrant worker dormitories.)
With the Circuit Breaker, schools were closed, meaning Heather and Jamie were now working from home as well. Like Heidi, Heather was still quite busy. Like me, Jamie was not. Heidi now worked exclusively from our bed, and Heather mostly worked from a desk in her bedroom. I worked from the sofa, as did Jamie. Jenelyn cleaned and sewed. What had been a cozy but sufficient apartment for the five of us to live in became a slightly cramped office by day. It worked, but Heidi’s hips hurt from sitting on a bed all day and no one got all the quiet and privacy they wanted.
Our evening card games, a regular feature of the first months, mostly ceased during the circuit breaker. Maybe we had grown bored of the game. Maybe we’d grown weary of constant contact, or at least had enough contact throughout the day and didn’t need another hour after dinner. Certainly, all of us were out of the rhythms of our lives, and were living with a threat we couldn’t fully evaluate, much less control. The 1 month, 3 weeks, and 4 days of circuit breaker were among the most stressful of our time in Singapore. There were few emotional outbursts, but we could feel each other’s tension.
Thankfully, as previously described, we could take our daily walks, although during the tightest couple weeks of the circuit breaker we could only walk within the boundaries of our apartment complex, lap after quarter-mile lap around the perimeter of the buildings and past the empty pool, with little possibility of spotting monitor lizards, much less otters.
As time progressed, Heidi and I began to be concerned about dates around China opening, Singapore sending us away, and whether or not we could find an open way-point other than the U.S. For me, the mounting pressures of those questions where increased by my knowledge that we could already have been in China, finished with our quarantine, and not cramping Heather, Jamie, and Jenelyn’s lives.