Day L58: Three More Hours of Freedom

May 28, 2022

Think back to when you were a kid and wanted to go biking around the neighborhood. Maybe you would ask Mommy for permission and she would set some limits. That's exactly where we are right now, except that Mommy State is the one doing it via a hierarchy of local officials. Us good little boys and girls have earned another 3-hour pass to leave the compound and it didn't come easy. We had to apply for this through the 'neighborhood committee' and it seems they are rotating passes so that once a week we get about 3 hours of freedom.

The 'neighborhood committee' doesn't do much in normal times, but now they have become the compound gatekeepers. They get their orders from the next level up, that is the sub-district officials who in turn get their orders from the district. This keeps going up the chain. The sub-district as mentioned last time is a small area of about 3 square kilometers. It's called 'jie dao' or street in Mandarin as I just learned today. Similar to the neighborhood committee, the 'jie dao' doesn't do much normally but they have become our Mommy and Daddy during this covid horsecrap.

Throughout the week the 'jie dao' ordered all the compounds to go 'silent'. This means: nobody in/out, suspension of food deliveries, mandatory covid testing for 3 days in a row, and back to house confinement again, i.e. the pet cage. That didn't last long as the residents pushed back and walked around the compounds anyway. I later found out that more and more residents fought against their overlords and demanded passes to go out entirely. This trickled up to the 'jie dao' who finally relented. The reason for going silent in the first place was to consolidate the efforts of zero covid in the community (sub-district) and to be absolutely sure no new cases would happen when people were let out. If there was a case in the sub-district, the overlords would get blamed for it by someone higher up the chain and so these people wanted to cover their behinds at our expense.

A bike ride was surely to happen, and the first stop was the ATM. This was much needed to replenish cash supplies that had gotten worryingly low.

One of the first things to do was try and order a coffee nearby. The store was open but the guy said, "Sorry, you can't buy coffee, can only order online." Just to try and make a point, I used the app and ordered with a scooter delivery driver. I entered the location as the coffee shop itself. The scooter guy arrived, pickd up the coffee, handed it to me, and I drank it outside the store in plain view of the employee.

There wasn't much of a destination in particular to bike to, so it was either add kilometers for the sake of it or visit a friend. I ended up chatting to the same guy who walked almost two hours yesterday to our compound. This time he showed me the operation for sneaking out of his own compound. Quite clever actually, there was a hole in the fence that I would have never found otherwise if he didn't point it out.

The chat had to end because of the freedom time limit. I was able to get a few grocery supplies on the way back. Also some good news came in apparently. On June 1 they are going to release all the compounds and allow people out to walk around the city provided they have 72 hour covid tests. Basically a test every 3 days. There are hundreds of mobile booths being set up around the city as I type.

The big question is whether there will be any establishments to frequent while being allowed outside in the first place. This fake freedom is nice in a way, but also pointless if there are no businesses to spend money on or return to work to support the economy. Otherwise you might as well have a compound-centric GDP that revolves around covid tests. Oh wait, we do. Yes indeed there are elites that are making an absolute fortune off the covid economy and they would seem reluctant to give it up.

We'll just see what happens on June 1.

At least the checkpoints between districts and sub-districts were slowly being dismantled. This was a half-assed effort at best now.

It was some pretty smooth riding today. Biggest takeaway was how fast and efficient this mode of transport really is. With not many cars on the road you just go straight and it's a joy to keep going without having to turn around every 50 meters doing endless loops in a compound.

The final turn was the real heartbreaker as I would enter the compound gates and surrender my freedom pass yet again.

Today's ride: 15 km (9 miles)
Total: 142 km (88 miles)

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