Beyond midtime quarantine in Hong Kong
Another 6 days of 14 to stay in quarantine. It is not dull, but I do start missing to move around. Gymnastics is not the same as being outside or at least running up a staircase. But all this is not allowed. All I can do is open the window for a bit. Joints and muscles seem to ache more when you don’t use them. Nothing serious, just uncomfortable. Otherwise, I go with my days quite disciplined. I slept in the first day, as a result of jetlag and the hilarious journey. But the rest of the time, I am preparing material in the morning and then read in the afternoon. In the evenings, I listen to audiobooks. Now, it is Mikhail Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita. Before it was Max Frisch’s Homo Faber and Montauk. Audiobooks I find a good way to recapture on the common literature body. But I would feel strange to listen to a book, I never read before. I also tried some American nonfiction. Even though the books may be good, narrators with American accents talk very straight into your face. Then I tried a female American narrator, and it was like listening to Amy Coney Barrett’s pressing voice.
I am now down to one meal a day and rarely get hungry. Even I exercise, I need no energy at all above the base metabolism. For that, I made a choice of restaurants registered on Foodpanda. It works great. The driver delivers to the reception and the concierge will make sure it arrives quickly. I don’t have a microwave to heat things up. So, speed is essential. Then the bell rings; I put on my mask and Lisa, a middle-aged lady from South East Asia, has put my package on a little chair outside my door. Sometimes, I chat a few sentences with Lisa, who is very friendly. She takes care of at least a whole floor of quarantines, like me. This is my only human-human interaction. Then I get a call once a day, where I report my body temperature. Even with my laptop, I am very “connected”, I avoid private “Zoom calls”. I had a few calls work related to Tilburg University. But that’s it. I am quite lucky in this situation, that I am more of an introverted character. I can imagine for somebody extroverted, it must be hell.
I have a huge can of Nestle instant coffee. That was not a good choice. A friend made me aware of Aeropress. That looks like a handy piece of equipment, and I will get one for sure once I am out.
Tomorrow morning, I have to submit another specimen and submit it to a lab in Wanchai. For that, I booked a delivery service online. Let’s see how it goes. Only after confirmation of my negative COVID-19 test will I be released on Sunday, October 18th. Even though this is not pleasant for me, SARs 2 - COVID-19 is even less pleasant for others. I heard from friends, what it means to get it. And, seems not everybody has the immune response of the current US president. Whatever that story was. So, I instead keep a low viral footprint.
I am running my computer models to understand the spread of the epidemic. Some decades ago, I had the idea to use these models in marketing and treat it like a “disease”. These were interesting consulting projects in the 1990s. But rather than showing you my raw Pascal code, I recommend looking at the models merged below by Grant Sanderson, who also has a website I follow regularly: https://www.3blue1brown.com/
A ray of sunshine in quarantine: German organic apple juice.
Back to the classroom
Teaching my MBA Elective at HKU is great fun. It is a very nice class of smart and engaged students. Even the course covers the whole Saturday and is quite intense, a critical mass stays switched on all day. Given that some of them have a full time job aside, I really respect this level of energy. The Friday before, we had an excellent dinner with Maurice Tse, Sachin Tipnis and Josephine Chan. Under the leadership Dean Eric Chan, their team has built up the MBA Programme of the University of Hong Kong to the level that it was recently ranked Best Programme in Asia by The Economist. Given the intense competition in the region, this is really an outstanding achievement. I know this from my own previous experience with launching the EMBA Global Asia here in Hong Kong University. It is tough. So congratulations. Even rankings are not the only thing to look at, they do reflect the quality of delivery and design of educational programs, and last but not least the standard of students. And this time they are really good. Nice to be back to the classroom.
Getting ready for the next lecture on Sunday