Last Friday at 4pm, Singapore’s prime minister made an announcement about Covid-19.
We have decided that instead of tightening incrementally over the next few weeks, we should make a decisive move now to pre-empt escalating infections. We will therefore impose significantly stricter measures. This is like a circuit breaker. It will help reduce the risk of a big outbreak occurring. And it should also help to gradually bring our numbers down. This in turn will allow us to relax some of the measures. This circuit breaker will apply for one month, in the first instance.
He then announced a series of measures that sounded familiar to me because my friends in all parts of the world were already experiencing something similar.
“We’re having a lockdown,” I announced to some people.
“Really? I thought he said we can still go out?” someone asked.
“Though he may not have said the word ‘lockdown’, that is what a lockdown is,” I explained.
And sure enough, I wasn’t the only one who had the same observation.
And that is why you will find a lot of Singapore residents posting the phrase “circuit breaker period” which starts today.
Coincidentally, I have a funny circuit breaker-related story that happened over the weekend.
At around 10pm on Saturday, we were supposed to have a video call so I tried to plug my laptop to its charger when somehow, this caused a power trip and our whole flat got enveloped in darkness. Dang it!
I walked out into our living room and peered into our fuse box. Sure enough, the circuit breakers had worked and prevented my electricity accident from setting the whole house on fire. I flipped the switches back up but still – darkness.
I got in touch with our landlady who gave us the number of her electrician. I followed his instructions till he asked me to show him the electric meter and figured out that the trip was so bad, it had shorted everything all the way to the clinic downstairs. We had to reset the fuse box at the clinic, but since it was already very late, nobody from the clinic could swing by then and could only do it the next morning.
Luckily, Jemma and I both love scented candles, so we lit one and had a video call session with our friend Dred, like this:
This gave me serious South Korea vs North Korea vibes. Yes, that is a Crash Landing On You reference. Yes, I, too, like most women who has seen the series, am in love with Captain Ri because why not?
Who wouldn’t want to be served and protected by him, and to lean on those broad shoulders?
Sorry, what was I talking about? Right. The “blackout.” It was very hard to sleep in humid Singapore with no aircon or electric fan. I had to crack my window open and I was paranoid because it opens up to the hallway and it reminded me of a terrible incident many years ago which involved a neighbour having to lodge a police report on a pervert she had spotted outside my window. 😰
The next morning, I woke up to cool air blowing from my aircon, and even though I was still super groggy from lack of sleep, I quickly jumped out of bed in bliss. I don’t think I’ve ever been as grateful to electricity as in that moment.
According to my teammate GH, there’s a moral lesson in all this – that it’s okay to suffer through a small period because in the end, everything will be alright again.
I hope he’s right and that at the end of this circuit breaker period, we’ll all feel a collective sense of never having been as grateful to freedom as in that moment.
We can do this, Singapore, and world!
If you need anyone to talk to during these trying times, please feel free to message me on any of my socials, k?
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