SDL Day 31 - Extended to June 1

by Rebecca

Today I see the management around our complex removing all the lawn chairs. The picnic pavilions are closed and taped off now.

Singapore has announced an extension of the Circuit Breaker (Essential Services only) till June 1.

We were 1/2 way there before the announcement (2 weeks in of the 4 weeks). Now we're only 2 weeks in with another 6 weeks to go. I was starting to think that the 4 weeks would be over quite painlessly and quickly, but 6 weeks is sounding pretty far away.

They also announced a tightening of what is permitted at this time. Essential services are being reduced. Before everyone with a Food and Beverage Licence was allowed to be open for Take Away, but now vendors like bubble tea and dessert sellers will be closed. I'm not sure what else they'll close, but they are restricting the number of employees allowed in to work in a business to the very minimum for that business.

More importantly we are told to stay home and only go out ALONE for essentials or exercise. They specifically said, do not go out to exercise as a family. I find this one the worst announcement of all.

Immediately, everyone I knew was messaging around trying to figure out if this meant that kids couldn't go outside now. When I had time, it took me about 15 minutes of digging around on the government website  to find the relevant clause.

You can accompany people who need assistance, such as seniors and small children.

Because Singapore has been issuing fines for non-compliance such as not wearing a mask or swimming in a condo pool, the question is now, how will those exceptions be applied.

  • Can I take all 3 kids out with me at once? Maybe? Maybe if I'm very close to home?
  • Can I have one adult to one child in a group? Probably not.
  • Do I have to take each child out individually? I'm thinking this is very likely.

We'll see how that all plays out, so I took just MsC with me for a walk this morning.

We set out to find the path up Mt. Faber near our place. I thought it was a block away; it was two.

I really had no idea where the path was and MsC had only been on it once. We took a few wrong turns and started in entirely the wrong area, but found the path up in the end.

Not the road to the path.
We started down this one, but it is not the path. 

Our first try fizzled out into a tiny narrow path about a foot wide after about 50 feet. It made me think of poisonous snakes. We went back and tried going a bit farther up the road. We didn't see anymore trails that way and went back down to the main road and tried walking to another area. After the Hawker Centre, we found the real trail. It was obvious - a wide concrete path with so many sets of stairs going almost straight up.

The actual path.
MsC saying, "Not more stairs!"
MsC: "It's so hot, can we go home now?" 

There are a few private residences on Mt.Faber. MsC pointed one out and said she'd really rather live somewhere with a large backyard at the moment. Sorry, I don't think that won't be happening in Singapore for us.

A private residence on Mt. Faber seen on from the path.

We headed back down and stopped at the Hawker Centre to get MsC a drink. We were done our water already.

Eating at the Hawker Centre is illegal now. Tables are all tarped off now. I only had $12 cash on me, but that was enough to get us 3 take away meals and tall drink: Pad Thai, Chicken Rice, Dosai and a Blueberry Longan Berry Leeche Drink.  

Our take away meals were awesome eaten at home. It's probably been 2 months since we bought anything from the Hawker Centre.