Once I caught The Bug (Covid)

Me sitting on the stone steps of St John’s Abbey with the stained glass behind me

It is my birthday today.

When I turned twenty-five, half a lifetime ago, I laid in bed thinking I was so old, to be a quarter of a century.

Time is how we frame it, as with all things. But Time is particularly tricky, with its immense power to cower us and shame us as well as prod and cheer us.

Only twenty and you have been to so many places?

Forty and you still cannot spell/swim/saute — and still, … single?

You get the idea.

I got lovely birthday greetings, thanks in part to Metaverse that helped announce it to everyone I said ‘yes’ to being friends with. One greeting however did stick out — “you are alive!” — and that is because, just twenty days prior, I received the unwelcome yet anticipated SMS from our Ministry of Health to confirm that I am a Covid +.

It was quite spectacular actually that I should test positive. The previous Tuesday, I felt buggy, but we had a family break planned for the next three days in a local hotel. So we went and I took it real slow. On Friday night, I felt a little worse, took an ART (a rapid test) which signaled that I was not in the clear. In Singapore, the protocol is to head straight to a clinic for a more failsafe PCR test.