Quarantine: year 12

What can I say? Not all my posts can be translated and keep the same jovial spirit that the Spanish version has. This is because of the linguistics, so shame on you English language, shame on you!

I remember when the whole coronavirus thing started in Mexico, we embrace it as anything, with humor; by the end of the day we already had thousands of memes and no one actually had gone under quarantine. A lot of people kept their vacations plans going on and some others, like me, don’t even notice how our way of living became the standard overnight. In the news you heard about some Chinese folks ate Batman just like that, not even a pinch in salt, a chili nor a tortilla. Not even a tatemada in the comal; honestly, they don’t even have a comal over there so you would expect them not do to that.

And so one day I woke up and saw my wife at the living room, the phone in one ear and her handsfree in the other one joggling her meetings plus doing some power points presentations and on her flip flops. It caught me a bit by surprise and I was about to ask her what was going on when I heard our neighbors talking about homework and video calls to keep their school duties going on. I started to freak out at that point. I started to feel a bit of anxiety, a bit of fear and a lot of hunger. As I could, still in the shock of what was going on, I made my self some ham and eggs with cheese, some tortillas and about 33oz of coffee. I turn on my laptop, started to work while sipping my coffee from time to time that, with each sip, became colder. Just like my reality. The jomofis have been decree as the new go-to way of working.

Days went by, fifteen days, and they announce the quarantine have been extended until 40 days. I laugh. What were they thinking? Quarantine means 40 days. Why would they say 2 weeks and later until April 31st? Fools. But April 31st went by too and the instruction of each day was the same: stay at home.

As the days went by people stop counting them. There were some more important things to count like how many languages they learnt, how many new dishes they now know how to make, how many projects they can manage with their eyes closed while jumping in one leg and hands tied in the back. A lot of human achievements have been conquered, beyond anyone’s imagination and it was just year one.

Today, 12 years later, I cannot even remember how life was outside. We developed technology that allowed us to recycle everything, everything and I mean everything. I do not want to go into details but let me tell you that if you have enough mosquitoes you can cook an exquisite dish worth of any 50 Michelin stars restaurant. The sun was always overrated, clean air all the contraire. The rain stop being acid and went to be sweet, so sweet that you can leave a jar outside and you won’t need any sugar to sweeten the water, mostly because we no longer have sugar. That we could not recycle because social media experts said it was bad for our health. But the rest was ok.

And to make the long story short I just want to say that staying at home isn’t really that bad. The bad thing about it is staying at home together at the same time. You wanna know why? Learn a bit of Spanish because this is a joke I cannot translate.

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