The country did not go into the circuit breaker mode of lockdown this year.
Instead she went into what the government called a Heightened Alert, or a HA.
It wasn't very different from CB last year, except that the stores, the shops and the malls were open, there was more flexibility here and there, and you could have a quick meal at public benches and void decks just so long as you observed social distancing, didn't make a ruckus with masks off, and cleaned up after yourself.
Work from home remained default- just like it had already been for a while- but now with the new rules of HA, most of the country found themselves having afternoon meals and dinners around the table in environment of home.
We don't do elaborate meals here in the officetel.
By elaborate I mean we don't bake cakes or muffins or whip up curries.
But the hotpot is somewhere in the cupboard and we do have a fry up here and there.
Amongst some of the unique meals we made this time included wagyu beef burgers which patties we got from the supermarket, threw them in the pan for a shallow fry, then stuffed them between breads that we had ciabatta one time, brioche another.
Besides the burgers, there were days when we arranged frozen gyozas in the pan, attempted fluffy five-egg omelets Thai-style or decided to shallow fry chicken pieces that we bought from the deli in the supermarket.
Brunch on weekends saw us having sausages, fried bread and hash browns.
And because the resident chef in the officetel is good at at making fried rice, especially green curry fried rice, on certain days, overnight rice and leftover green curry mixed with a beaten egg became our meal.
Me, I'm better with the pot than with the pan, so yeah, there was shrimp ramyun with cuttlefish balls, fish balls, lettuce and tomatoes happily tossed inside.
We did takeaways, of course.
But we were more selective this time.
I must admit that it might not seem fair to some of our favorite restaurants or to F&B in general, but this round we decided to exclude the Western as much as possible (somehow the meats all tasted cold and unappetizing when they arrived), and we decided that we would be very careful with our order of sushi as well.
As much as we missed certain items on the menu, it seemed more prudent to wait for re-opening and have them straight at the table instead of bringing it all the way back only to find them less delicious than we anticipated them to be.
Most of our takeaways this time went to the Thai. I don't know precisely when we ate what we ate, but if I remember right, there was basil minced meat rice, there was green curry with beef, salted egg chicken with rice, fried beef kuay teow, pad thai, and the coconut soup known as tom kha.
Not to say that we didn't have sushi or Japanese.
We did- we just chose the (salmon) sushi that could be comfortably eaten cold and we ordered bento sets that included battered tonkatsu, teriyaki beef slices, tamago, gyozas, salads and rice.