On My Mind: The Silver Lining of COVID-19

An Interview of Myself during COVID-19

Question: How is your mental state different?

Joanne Ooi: Most of the time, I feel like I’m floating in amniotic fluid. There are no deadlines. There is neither income nor outcome. What remaining professional obligations I do have, I chew over thoroughly, like leftovers from the Last Supper, working through them dutifully and solemnly between long sessions of writing, reading and thinking.

I’ve lost interest in showing myself to the outside world through social media (specifically, Instagram) — as in, look how amazing my life is and how I engage in gratuitous acts of refined aestheticism/cultivation/refinement while capturing it all in flattering photos of myself — all betokening an ease and comfort associated with privilege and material ease. (On the other hand, I did decide to launch this newsletter — but mainly to counteract inertia and reassert control over some part of my daily existence. I can tell you: it’s been a life-saving antidote to the helplessness and lassitude of shut-in life.)

These days, my concentration is preternatural. Since I no longer have to dedicate partial continuous attention to business, messages or email, my brain throughput is at an all-time high. Consequently, my days are actually more regimented and their rhythm more regular than they have been since I moved to the countryside four years ago. Haphazard errands, many involving an automobile, no longer punctuate my day and fragment my productivity. I have no excuse NOT to work on my book, listen to four-hour podcasts (see below) — or write this newsletter.

I’m uncharacteristically even-keeled, even affable. That’s because gratuitous emotional violence is a self-indulgence when life outside your doorstep has literally become a matter of life or death. We have the mother of all economic depressions coming up. But I’ve already accepted that it is the necessary, excruciating cure for a host of evils that has been brewing and becoming more poisonous over the past thirty years. (It helps hugely of course that my son is sending himself to university and that I was already semi-retired when COVID-19 hit.) My friends — mostly the same age — feel the same way. Many have even said, “I’ve never been happier or more content.” There’s never been a better time to store up energy in our life batteries. For those who are action-oriented or productivity-obsessed (like me), this is a good time to set internal goals, e.g., taking an online course in computer science, learning how to knit, writing a newsletter. It’s because I have some projects within my control that I am so serene. What small goals can you set and achieve in order to regain control over your daily life?

I am neuraesthenically aware of the smallest niggles and creaks in my body. My body awareness has always been elevated but COVID-19 makes me question every tickle in my throat or urge to cough. Ironically, my generous use of bleach — to sanitize groceries for example — makes me cough afterwards. The kids joke, “Wouldn’t it be ironic if the bleach burns your lungs and makes you so weak that, if you get COVID-19, you die from it?” (There’s no lack of black humour in this household of seven adults, I assure you.)

I’ve always been alert and sensitive to racism — but never more than nowadays. The other day before going to Waitrose, my son suggested that he shop separately, as if he was not related to me, so he could buy some extra eggs and provisions — for baking, bless his heart — but more items than technically permitted under Waitrose’s COVID-19 rules. Waitrose has a limit of 3 pieces for any single food item per shopper (based on the assumption that one shopper represents one family). My immediate reaction: “No way. Food purchases are limited for a good reason. Let’s stick to the quota allocated per family. Plus, the last thing we need is for the town to think that there’s a greedy Chinese family cheating the system.” He then asked, “Do you think we should wear masks?” Despite my actual desire to begin wearing masks in public places, I responded, “Unfortunately, that’ll just draw more attention to the fact that we’re Chinese.” (This New York Times video brings home the problem.) When we entered the store, of course, we saw shoppers suited up in body armour, ready for biological warfare….

Question: What’s on my your mind during COVID-19?

Joanne Ooi: This is what I can think of — today:

The end of business models: In a terribly fucked up way, the virus has fast-forwarded us to the future of many industries. For example, what happens when all of brick and mortar retail goes out of business? If we want brick and mortar stores to survive, maybe it’s time to rethink commercial retail leasing. (By the way, I suggested modular commercial retail leasing à la WeWork in an essay originally published in Courier magazine in August 2018. I will share an updated version of that piece here later when I write about how post-COVID-19 consumer retail must be redesigned to reduce our carbon footprint.) Ditto for commercial office leasing since the average usage of office space on any given day is only 30%. (I pulled that stat from this Economist podcast about the Future of The Office.) Another example is the one I highlighted in my first newsletter: why does the fashion industry NEED to get together IN PERSON every three to six months to sell clothes? Every traditional industry is going through a massive soul-searching at the moment — and it couldn’t come at a better time since climate change is approaching the inflection point of catastrophe. (Remember too that COVID-19 and its ilk, potentially lethal RNA influenza viruses, result from the dangerous commingling of the built environment and the natural world, the direct result of humankind’s remorseless colonisation of nature and displacement of creatures from their original habitats. This is a brilliant and timely op-ed piece which makes exactly that point: It isn’t just pigs and bats under the same roof which have led to this virus. It’s displaced species exposed to humans for the first time due to deforestation, new construction and urbanization. Rather than seeing COVID-19 as the result of the same vectors that have led to climate change, we continue to view the cause of this pandemic in isolation: a freak case of co-infection between bats and humans confined in a culturally idiosyncratic space, a Chinese wet market. But that prism of analysis is far too small! COVID-19 is to the built environment what Trump is to American politics — A SYMPTOM of a malignant and structurally defective system.)

The beginning of conscious consumerism: Each discrete consumer choice or even non-family human interaction comes with friction and self-questioning. Do I really need to drive to the grocery store to pick up wine or chocolate because I can’t survive until the next weekly grocery shopping excursion (which, these days, is planned like a military operation)? It took me two hours to shop at Waitrose today — not just because the grocery list was enormous but because I had to queue to get inside (big friction). I ended up buying two trollies overflowing with such items as oat drink, lentil chips and 9 (yes, NINE) extra large Cadbury’s chocolate bars. The sophistication and refinement of these items seemed absurd when I saw a man dressed for the apocalypse, wearing a Mad Max gas mask, checking out next to me. (To wit, last night I watched my second episode of Ozark, the Netflix series. In it, the mother character, Wendy, drives 90 minutes to purchase a tub of organic pistachio ice cream in order mollify her 15 year old daughter who is furious at her parents for moving the family from big city Chicago to hicksville Missouri. THAT scene exemplifies in a nutshelll what is wrong with decadent, first-world culture. I couldn’t decide which was worse: the fact that the pistachio ice cream was so rarefied or that Wendy experienced overweening guilt because she and her husband had asked the kids to move, a routine parental ask.)

The end of showing off: Part and parcel of decadence is the extroverted preening of social media. These trying times, with their privations and epiphanies about our interconnectedness with fellow humans, including those at the forefront of sanitation, personal services, health and transportation, have made it obvious that it is inappropriate — even morally reprehensible — to flaunt our privilege or comfort. It is hard to imagine going back to pre-COVID-19 social norms which tacitly encouraged rich people to show off.

Last but not least, everyone is becoming cleaner and more hygienic, Hong Kong-style. (I was living in Hong Kong when SARS hit in 2002 and, boy oh boy, my hand hygiene changed overnight. I’ve been waiting for the world to catch up all these years.) FINALLY, Waitrose is pre-bagging fresh baked bread instead of letting micro-aerosolized droplets of mucus and saliva gently mist each loaf before it’s picked up by our grimy hands. Let’s also kiss good-bye to those nasty try-on bars used to sell color cosmetics. Each one of those little plastic trays is like a petri dish. Ditto for cruise ships, which are essentially blown-up versions of the same thing. Good riddance to both really!

Excerpted from my newsletter, On My Mind Sign up here or at www.culturevlog.com.