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Listen to the beginning of The Adventuress, a new short story by Jessica Zafra.

Signed copies of zine#1: The Adventuress are available here, P250 each. Limited edition, 500 copies only. To order, email your full name, delivery address, and mobile number to saffron.safin@gmail.com. We’ll get back to you with the total cost including delivery charge. We accept payments by BDO deposit, PayPal and PayMaya.

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The Department of Health has announced that the Philippines is now in its second wave of coronavirus infections. This is news to me because I didn’t know that the first wave was over.
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New quarantine hobby: Listening to the death zaps of those blasted mosquitoes. I know my stats are accurate. Each color represents a different day.

There I was in front of my building, waiting for the Lalamove rider to pick up a package, soaking up some vitamin D while checking my messages. Five minutes later the rider arrived and I realized to my horror that while I had gloves on, I wasn’t wearing a mask! Of course the rider was wearing mask, helmet, and gloves. I passed him the package and slunk back to my apartment in shame. Had I contaminated anyone? Was it safe in that empty street? Had I inhaled aerosol particles carrying the virus? Would I catch the disease? And I had been so careful, I barely left the house in eight weeks. What if it gets so bad I’d have to be hospitalized? What if there are no ventilators left? What if, what if?
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Housework is therapeutic (unless you are a housewife and/or you have to do it for a living). I mopped the floor with a solution of bleach and felt my anxiety dissipating. Then I had a comforting meal of Ligo sardines, rice (ran out of bread and bought plain rice from the canteen next door), and raw lettuce (I save myself the effort of making vegetables attractive to me and just eat them raw). I had a good nap, a phone conversation with a friend whose hypochondria has been cured by the pandemic (Why worry about getting sick when everyone is doing the same thing?), and a writing workshop session on Zoom. I walked 3km inside my apartment.
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via GIPHY

I feel like I spent the last two months in an endless cycle of sweeping the floor and washing the dishes.

In quarantine my primary relationship (after the cats) has been with my phone. It kept gloating about our stiflingly close relationship, pointing out my escalating screen time until I turned off that feature. I do not remember my dreams, but I just had a nightmare in which I kissed my phone screen and it cracked.
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SM North Edsa on First day of MECQ. Photo by Mark Samson.

Disoriented. Nothing’s changed—I have no intention of going out, and my street is still quiet—but now that the city is waking up from a 60-day coma, I dread returning to reality. Everything was simple in lockdown (ECQ). My only concern was to stay safe and maintain my sanity. The future was conditional—we could not assume that we would stay virus-free and get there. As long as I had food, books, videos, writing materials, and an internet connection (and the cats were well-supplied), I was fine.
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After weeks of microwave sunshine and temperatures high enough to perm your hair, the weather has swung to another extreme: lashing rain and rough winds that set off car alarms. Flooding is expected.

Mike T mentioned that he is looking forward to walking his dog around the block tomorrow, assuming the storm exits the city. Apparently Modified Enhanced Community Quarantine begins tomorrow, and we can go out for exercise. Hmmm. I think I will stay home till June, ponder the meaning of modified-enhanced, and see what happens. The real test is on Monday when people head out for work with limited public transport.

I will continue keeping this journal until Modified-Enhanced is downgraded to Basic.