Day 47 – A Humorous Slice of Life in Quarantine

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By: Julia Clavecillas, Journalist

Day 47

The toilet paper panic has largely abated and the staggering combination of boredom and cabin fever made way for a new challenge during the quarantine; an over abundance of junk food.  My male parental unit has been plying me with unhealthy snacks and drinks during the quarantine. My Oreo intake has spiked up inversely proportional to the stock market. At this point, I’m statistically more likely to be in danger of obesity than catching the dreaded virus. 

To mitigate this risk, the parental units keep inviting me to go out for an hour of exercise to walk on the trail with social distancing. However, the crushing demand of assigned work being given to us students prevents me from joining them or the Weight Watcher’s meetings I should probably start attending.  My sleep schedule has been totally disrupted between the reading assignments, homework, piano practice and chores. 

During the weekends, I try my best to relax but the parental units want  to “educate” me with pop culture that I “need to learn”. This past weekend, the required movie was “The Matrix.” The characters keep going to these square boxes and lifting what looks like a banana to their ears! The parental units called them “phone booths” and I said, “What? A small box where people use their phones? You mean to say like toilet stalls?” In 1999 when this movie came out, we were looking at artificial intelligence, neural networks, machine automation, and virtual reality. Since CGI was in its early days, it’s fascinating to me how they developed it and how commonplace it is. Now in 2020, we have Tiktok, where CGI is now a commodity. How the turntables have re-surged!

Other normal programs like Zoom also have CGI. I found out about this since we have to resort to Zoom meetings to connect to my family, friends and other folks. This technology is great but how come it allows you to blur or change the backgrounds for privacy but can’t blur the faces for a more pleasant experience? 

So in order for us to survive this quarantine, here are my top tips in these trying times. Drop the Oreo, walk it off, and DM your homies online. In other words – eat well, exercise, and keep in touch.

Related Articles:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/04/03/use-zoom-here-are-7-essential-steps-you-can-take-to-secure-it/#2ac879947ae1

https://www.cinelinx.com/movie-news/movie-stuff/how-the-matrix-changed-movies-forever/

https://www.nytimes.com/article/quarantine-coronavirus.html