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A Sweet Treat During A Pandemic
Teatime with my daughters reminds me of the long arc of time
Like everyone, my plans for 2020 gradually disintegrated. From travel — a highly anticipated trip to Bhutan that has now been rescheduled, to the long-awaited milestone of my daughter’s college graduation that will most likely occur online, all plans for the year are either on hold or abandoned.
Working from home and spending time with family has turned out to be a mixed blessing.
Will anything good come from this tryst with the novel Coronavirus that has us in its grip, I wonder.
As the end of the work day approaches, I take a break for tea. It gives me a chance to get up from the desk or chair or room where I have been attending to calls and followup action items. My kitchen overlooks a nature reserve. It is lush green, with no sign of humans in the vicinity, although, in Singapore, you are never very far from another building. This natural curtain that apparently shields me from urban life is not very different from the act of staying home to avoid encounters with the virus.
I miss my office pantry. It overlooks a large rectangular lawn which has thankfully not been deployed for development into another nondescript…