Living in exile

I was unable to blog about Days 9 and 10 of the self-quarantine. So I am going to do a broad overview.

Day 9: I did a lot of prep (especially the setup of the livestream) for the online class on Tuesday evening. 10 kg of potatoes (called 山东小土豆) and a big piece of ginger finally arrived! I cooked a chicken teriyaki dish using a recipe from a second-hand Penguin book on Japanese cooking. I was surprised to see cayenne pepper in the recipe. Binge watching the sitcom involving addicts called Mom. Can be deep at times but mostly a dramedy. Look out for Octavia Spencer in some of the early episodes.

Day 10: Finally cooked about 3 lbs of potatoes. Made garlic roasted potatoes which is now a side dish to all the “western” dishes I have made. Our oven died immediately after finishing the dish. I planned to make beer bread but, RIP, it died doing what it did best. It was about 1.5 years old. Now in search for a new oven. Did more preps for the first online livestream at 10 pm. Strange timeslot? Yes, because I needed to respect time zone differences. The first livestream went well and administrators from the graduate school joined as well. (Where ever did trust go?) Had an interactive back and forth with a student who asked for details about Monte Carlo. Before the livestream, I also tried recording a trial 30 min video where I go through some horrible algebra. I sounded like a late night radio DJ with my slow jam or perhaps Bob Ross is my guru (happy little summations).

Day 11: Cancelled the onions I ordered. Gave a lot of feedback on each of the research project topics my students are pursuing. No fixed deadline for their topic submission because I am extremely laissez faire. This feedback giving took my whole day. I also ordered a Wacom tablet for my TA so that he can deploy TA sessions online as well. Steph cooked flatbreads and I cooked spam and some Japanese-style scrambled eggs. We had savory and sweet (with fig jam) flatbreads in the spirit of the 煎饼. Finally cooked the Filipino-style beef steak recipe but included some boiled potatoes and almost dry fried the whole thing. Started watching The Outrider (not yet finished but quite good; almost at the same level as the first season of True Detective).

Potatoes galore: Next, I will be doing garlic mashed potatoes, potato pancakes, potato salad (not the one with mayo: this is a travesty!), classic pommes frites, the fusion dish I found at the university restaurant called 干编土豆 (potatoes cut as fries but dry fried with Sichuan peppercorns and chilies), potato slivers in vinegar 土豆丝. That should allow us to substitute away from rice for the moment.

A few more days and we will be done with the self-quarantine. Not really excited to go out except to throw the trash. I am not sure what the building has done to actually deal with the garbage situation. So we are accumulating and sealing the trash as we approach the end of the quarantine.

Life here in China has somehow returned to normal in some sense. People are returning to their work. Despite the changes brought about by the pandemic, I wonder if it will fundamentally change the people. People fall back to the usual patterns. It is both a good and bad thing. What worries me is that the bad patterns are here to stay or even become more magnified.

Let me end with something from BoJack Horseman once again:

“Sacrifice is good. It has to be, because I sacrificed a ton, and I was freaking awesome.”