Day 272 (March 20): Live Blogging a Crisis
00.36 - Elise has found me sitting at the kitchen table eating ice cream from the tub. I haven't slept yet, mostly because yesterday ended with an epic fight with my son and I'm confronting my shortcomings as a parent. Also, living in pseudo-lockdown is hard. A friend has sent us a link to a news story reporting that the State Department is about to set a worldwide Level 4 warning, recommending all US Citizens return to the States or prepare to "shelter in place indefinitely." Awesome.
03.30 - After hours of talking at the kitchen table, we're finally laying on a bed in a dark room. The pace of conversation is slowing. Soon we'll give up and fall asleep.
05.30 - Cate appears bedside, having had a nightmare. After a attempting to sleep with three in the bed, Elise gives up and moves to the living room. For those of you keeping score, that was about 3 hours of sleep in the early evening and about two in the early morning. Yay!
09.00 - I get out of bed and join everybody except for Lily, who is still asleep, in the living room. Breakfast is rolling out slowly. Elise looks better than you'd expect for a person who has this much to worry about and only slept five hours in the span of the night.
10.00 - We've read the new State Department advisory. Several friends and relatives have contacted us to make sure we've seen it. We have a conversation that turns into a family meeting. We remind (or explain to) the kids that there are all these complicated tradeoffs, as there have been since we decided to take this trip. My brain is wrapping around four options:
03.30 - After hours of talking at the kitchen table, we're finally laying on a bed in a dark room. The pace of conversation is slowing. Soon we'll give up and fall asleep.
05.30 - Cate appears bedside, having had a nightmare. After a attempting to sleep with three in the bed, Elise gives up and moves to the living room. For those of you keeping score, that was about 3 hours of sleep in the early evening and about two in the early morning. Yay!
09.00 - I get out of bed and join everybody except for Lily, who is still asleep, in the living room. Breakfast is rolling out slowly. Elise looks better than you'd expect for a person who has this much to worry about and only slept five hours in the span of the night.
10.00 - We've read the new State Department advisory. Several friends and relatives have contacted us to make sure we've seen it. We have a conversation that turns into a family meeting. We remind (or explain to) the kids that there are all these complicated tradeoffs, as there have been since we decided to take this trip. My brain is wrapping around four options:
- Go home
- Stay here
- Go to UK
- Go to Japan
11.00 - We attempt our first Google Hangout with some of the other families here in our apartment complex. It becomes very clear, very fast that our kids don't know how to behave on a group call. Henry is just talking louder and louder and louder to try to get through. We abort the call. A long group chat ensues trying to figure out how to enable the kids to text and message each other but not video call. Meanwhile, maybe we can "meet" for happy hour via video chat later in the day...
12.00 - We feed the kids lunch while they watch Rocky and Bullwinkle. Elise and I each call our parents to give them a briefing. The calls reaffirm our concern that things are crazy AF in the USA. It's hard to hear your parents so worried about you. I'm sure that if the roles were reversed I would want my own child(ren) closer to me and closer to the familiar world and home.
14.00 - We meet in the parking garage with those same families for "social distancing olympics." Without getting within a safe distance of each other, we do some calisthenics together, run the X-yard dash, jump rope, and other silly games. Eventually we get some music playing for some stamina events: running in place, jumping jacks, speed clapping. It's probably 90 degrees and 90% humidity so we're all pouring sweat!
15.30 - We have a phone appointment with our travel agent but they don't call. I was really hoping to get some answers: are the airlines still flying (I know some regional airlines have grounded their fleets)? Does the US Port of Entry affect our arrival experience (quarantine, e.g.)?
17.00 - Elise and I accept a challenge from a member of our worldschooling tribe here in Johor to join a stair climbing game. We're all in different buildings and we all have different goals. Elise and I climbed 30 flights of stairs twice in about 20 minutes and sweat through our shirts. Before we left I had done some research on airlines. Reliable sources are reporting on how much different airlines are cutting back on their fleets. Lufthansa has grounded 700 out of 763 aircraft. Delta has ceased flights to Europe. But most of the Asian airlines are still going pretty strong. It looks like Cathay Pacific could get us from Kuala Lumpur to any of the west coast hubs (Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles) with only one stop in Hong Kong. This makes me feel much less frightened of getting stuck in Malaysia.
18.00 - I've cooked steak and corn and we're eating dinner. The kids have finished watching a favorite movie, Ponyo, and there is almost no yelling or arguing anywhere in the apartment - a rarity. We're a bit too busy to think about the Big Questions for a little while.
19.00 - The kitchen is clean. Henry has finally gotten Elise to play Beyblades with him and now he's happy. The twins are tinkering with legos, having refused Elise's proposal to disassemble all of the projects they've done so far in order to harvest raw materials.
22.30 - We've had a phone call with the travel agent (AirTreks) who booked almost all of our flights to date. Right off the bat our agent explained that they have ceased issuing tickets for clients because the airlines are changing so fast that it has proved impossible for them, as an agency, to provide accurate information. He told us to contact airlines directly. He confirmed that many airlines are shuttering their operations. (A friend introduced me to flyertalk.com where I found tons of information on this, updated regularly. There's a cool infographic about Delta moving its fleet to bases in Alabama and Arizona.) His theory is that state-linked airlines are going to be the most stable in the coming months. It seemed ironic to me that he said China Air could be one of the best, in part because they have a lot to prove about their country's recovery.
23.00 - After the call we talked it through a lot. We agreed to drop any idea of going to the UK. We agreed we don't want to go back to the USA quickly, mostly because they seem to be on the steep (upward) part of the curve whereas SE Asia seems to be on the back/downside. We agreed to take a 3 day break from decision-making. Apparently Malaysia is mobilizing their equivalent of our National Guard to help enforce the RMO. We're hoping there will be announcements early next week about the status of the containment. Our goals are to learn about our options in Japan with or without stopovers in Singapore or Hong Kong.
23.30 - We called our parents (to say good morning) and gave them updates on our choices. We finished watching the first two episodes of "Picard" which was a lot of fun. It involved a successful adoption of a VPN that allowed us to access content despite our location, which is a nice sign of progress.
So this was a crazy day but by the end of it I felt more peace of mind than at the beginning.
17.00 - Elise and I accept a challenge from a member of our worldschooling tribe here in Johor to join a stair climbing game. We're all in different buildings and we all have different goals. Elise and I climbed 30 flights of stairs twice in about 20 minutes and sweat through our shirts. Before we left I had done some research on airlines. Reliable sources are reporting on how much different airlines are cutting back on their fleets. Lufthansa has grounded 700 out of 763 aircraft. Delta has ceased flights to Europe. But most of the Asian airlines are still going pretty strong. It looks like Cathay Pacific could get us from Kuala Lumpur to any of the west coast hubs (Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles) with only one stop in Hong Kong. This makes me feel much less frightened of getting stuck in Malaysia.
18.00 - I've cooked steak and corn and we're eating dinner. The kids have finished watching a favorite movie, Ponyo, and there is almost no yelling or arguing anywhere in the apartment - a rarity. We're a bit too busy to think about the Big Questions for a little while.
19.00 - The kitchen is clean. Henry has finally gotten Elise to play Beyblades with him and now he's happy. The twins are tinkering with legos, having refused Elise's proposal to disassemble all of the projects they've done so far in order to harvest raw materials.
22.30 - We've had a phone call with the travel agent (AirTreks) who booked almost all of our flights to date. Right off the bat our agent explained that they have ceased issuing tickets for clients because the airlines are changing so fast that it has proved impossible for them, as an agency, to provide accurate information. He told us to contact airlines directly. He confirmed that many airlines are shuttering their operations. (A friend introduced me to flyertalk.com where I found tons of information on this, updated regularly. There's a cool infographic about Delta moving its fleet to bases in Alabama and Arizona.) His theory is that state-linked airlines are going to be the most stable in the coming months. It seemed ironic to me that he said China Air could be one of the best, in part because they have a lot to prove about their country's recovery.
23.00 - After the call we talked it through a lot. We agreed to drop any idea of going to the UK. We agreed we don't want to go back to the USA quickly, mostly because they seem to be on the steep (upward) part of the curve whereas SE Asia seems to be on the back/downside. We agreed to take a 3 day break from decision-making. Apparently Malaysia is mobilizing their equivalent of our National Guard to help enforce the RMO. We're hoping there will be announcements early next week about the status of the containment. Our goals are to learn about our options in Japan with or without stopovers in Singapore or Hong Kong.
23.30 - We called our parents (to say good morning) and gave them updates on our choices. We finished watching the first two episodes of "Picard" which was a lot of fun. It involved a successful adoption of a VPN that allowed us to access content despite our location, which is a nice sign of progress.
So this was a crazy day but by the end of it I felt more peace of mind than at the beginning.
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