Just 4 days before MsC's birthday party, Singapore heightened Covid restrictions to limit social gatherings to 5 people.
It wasn't entirely unexpected. I saw it coming and was wondering if we were going to get MsC's party in before restrictions started. Nope, those restrictions came into effect the morning her party was scheduled for.
Despite 6 months almost no local Covid cases, Singapore discovered around 60 cases within a week. They found them through vigorous social tracing and testing. In fact most of the cases are asymptomatic. Before this cluster, almost all the cases in the last 1/2 year were "imported" ones. Imported means they were people flying into Singapore who immediately entered the 2-week government quarantine facilities. Imported cases were never any real risk to the general public.
But these new 60 cases are in the general public. They are linked to a nurse and a patient in one of the hospitals here. Upon finding a hospital link, Singapore quickly locked down 4 hospital wards, tested every employee in the hospital, asked the general public in 4 schools to be voluntarily tested, and started raising restrictions. They discovered a mix of the newer more dangerous Covid variants. They expect to find more cases over the next while.
After the first few restrictions were in effect, Singapore then moved from Phase 3 light restrictions to the stricter Phase 2. We're back to my dreaded Rule of 5. Being a household of 6, this means we can't all go out together. As MsE says, "We have to choose between bringing Daddy or Auntie." It also means it's challenging to even play at the playground. Every time a neighbour passes by and stops to say hello, or a child runs up, I'm frantically trying to count how many people we are together, so we don't break the rule. It means a lot of added stress that mostly went away under the Rule of 8. If also means that my carefully laid plan to get MsC a birthday party of 8 children almost went in the garbage.
Under the Rule of 8 we could have had 8 people into our condo, but we didn't really want that many people in such a small space during the Pandemic. The last party we hosted end up with all of us sick with colds a few days later. We also could only be a total party of 8 outside. That might have worked, but it would have left MsC only able to invite 4 or maybe 5 friends. I certainly didn't feel comfortable managing so many kids at the pool, so I wasn't sure what we would do at an outside party. I wasn't even sure I liked the idea of us all sharing a meal together.
Thankfully we didn't go that route. The barbecue pits, and clubhouse function rooms were closed down even before we moved down to Phase 2, and then it also rained the evening we held the party. We decided to have the party hosted at Evolve Arts. It would be MsC and MsE and their 6 closest friends (instructors aren't counted in class counts).
MsC had been trying on her own to pull together a K-Pop BlackPink Imitation Band. K-pop is Korean Pop and BlackPink is her favorite K-Pop girl band. MsC had been recruiting kids at the playground for a few months, but wasn't getting much traction. Apparently no one was practiced enough for MsC's, and when she got after them, they all kept quitting her band.
Evolve Arts agreed to figure it out how do a BlackPink Imitation Band, record it and put together a music video with the footage of the kids.
Then the newest restrictions came in and MsC was distraught. Last year we were in Lock-down for her birthday. And now, we weren't sure we were going to be able to pull a party off. MsC rightfully felt that having to skip having a birthday party two years in a row would have been too much to ask. We thought about rescheduling the party, but restriction are in effect for 3 weeks. And, there's no way to really know when the Rule of 5 will be lifted again. Last year we did see the Rule of 1 (as in, 1 person is allowed out at a time).
I got an email asking if I was going to reduce the party to 5 kids. I couldn't see how we could just exclude 3 people, and instead asked if we skipped serving food whether the group could be deemed a private class. It was not.
In the end I came up with the idea to have Evolve run 2 shorter parties back-to-back with the kids split into 2 different groups. By the time we had this agreed to, it was less then 2 days to party time and I had to reconfirm new party start and end times with all the attendees.
For the actual party I just needed to decorate, because I couldn't be there for the actual parties because I would have made us too many. We found Black and Pink decorations. We glued together up a BlackPink poster, which is now in MsC's bedroom. Black/Pink cupcakes were created by baking 2 types of of chocolate cupcakes (one set dairy free), locating pink icing that said it didn't need to be kept chilled, because regular icing melts so fast in Singapore, and we topped the cupcakes with Oreos that happened to have pink icing inside. We wrapped them up individually for the girls to take home with them.
For the party I provided drinks for all the dancers, but we served no food. They got an hour of games and learning some choreographed dance moves to a BlackPink song. The 2nd group did a new song, so MsC and MsE got to learn some more new moves. Everyone had a blast! I'm impressed with the energy Instructor Finn showed right to the end.
We sang MsC happy birthday once we were back home. The music video to the 2 BlackPink songs arrived via email a few days later. It's so cool and will be treasured. We've already watched it so many times.
