Quarantine Diary, August, 2021
Introduction
In the late morning of July 30th, 2021, I received news from the local authority that me and my father tested positive for Covid. On the same evening, I checked into a facility somewhere near Thu Thiem tunnel (in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam) to start the quarantine process, while my father checked into an actual hospital the following morning due to existing health conditions that require medical attention.
During my days in this facility, I spent a lot of time thinking about work, but also about a lot of other random things. On the fifth day, I decided to write down these thoughts, seeing as they had become a burden to keep in mind. That is the origin of this series.
This is a collection of thoughts that span across seven days, mixed between a diary and a journal. They’re a record of my spontaneous thoughts, as well as descriptions of the events happening throughout the day. Such thoughts are perhaps best characterized by broadness, ranging from crises at work to hope, despair and transformation. It gets philosophical and silly at times, but not intentionally.
My goal in publishing this series is to satisfy a pertinent and fundamental desire - to be seen for who and what I am, at least at this particular point in space and time where I’m currently occupying. I hope my friends and those who are interested will be able to see parts of me that perhaps they wouldn’t get to see otherwise. But beware, there are no moral stories, lessons, or anecdotes intended to be drawn from these words. There are only intimate pieces of me that wish to be seen.
Finally, in the published version, I removed some thoughts which originally appear in my journal. As someone who doesn’t mind treading the dark water, my concern is not about the nature of these thoughts, but to avoid wasting time and energy justifying them to respective organizations and individuals who may not only form bad impressions of me but actually can hinder my life. Despite my efforts to keep the words and their meanings as authentic as possible during the editing process, I hope you understand that such public writing must be balanced against my own public image, even though I have tipped the scale towards authenticity as much as I deem possible.
And a final word, and god knows I hate seeing things like this on blog posts, but the English used in these series are not perfect since I am not a native speaker. I’ll try to go over and edit them sometimes, but for the mean time they probably will stay that way.