Week 4 of modified coronavirus quarantine

ARE things looking better? Public transportation has come back in some form. It is not quite accessible from all areas, so regular office hours are not yet kept. Actually, even parttime appearances in workplaces are made possible only by taking a taxi, which is expensive for the salary scale of most workers. So, I have to pay the taxi fare of my assistant whom I need to navigate Social Security System ( SSS), Pag- IBIG Fund and Philippine Health Insurance Corp. payments, plus the utilities. And that is expensive for me as she lives in Novaliches where there is no public transportation to be had coming my way. Paying the government agencies is an ordeal of jumping over hoops and competing with the crowds that come because of the deadlines they impose. For example, SSS will not accept one check for three months’ payment. It demands separate checks and long waiting time. So, are things better?

We still cannot make heads or tails of what the Department of Health, the Palace spokesman, the Inter- Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases and the local government units are saying. There are too many voices and very little lucidity.

At least the “Balik Probinsya” stunt has been suspended in order to go back to the drawing board, if it ever came from there. It was a dud, bringing people back to the provinces without coordinating with their local governments or doing coronavirus testing or producing real jobs. It was conceived in haste and impelled by selfpromotion with nary an inclusion of social workers, local officials and job generation at the terminal point. “Hatid Probinsya” is a better idea, but it should have the health protocols necessary in this time of the coronavirus and it should make a dent at reducing the number of people who are stranded. So far, it has not. If a project is undertaken, it should be done right.

Meanwhile, with the “modified” circumstances, an avalanche of bills has been raining down from the utilities — power, telecoms — and we are nervously waiting for the water bill to show up. They are due at triple the usual amounts. So, are the club dues (like the utilities and the government regulatory agencies). Alarming sums because, while some of us paid something during the lockdown and even donated money to tide over employees, and sent images of deposit slips to attest to the fact that money was paid for bills, they were not taken into account (inadvertently or inefficiently) and the amounts due mindlessly churned out without notice of what was paid before. I have had to show deposit slips of past payments while on lockdown so they are officially recorded and taken into consideration so as to get the right amount due. One club even had the nerve to append a surcharge after not sending a bill for months. These folks should get going to the new normal in a better way and not act robotically.

Another stunt is the credit cards and the banks managing them. While I have repeatedly requested that they send me itemized charges in hard copy, they only do so immediately after my request and never again. They insist on forcing me to be paperless. I do not want to be so because I am sure to make mistakes. I know myself, I did not grow up with the internet. Comes the electronic bill with no itemization of what one is paying or what credit card is involved. This last is crucial because the bank I deal with demands (putting the client to work which I think it should be their job) that one writes the kind of card and its number in the back of the check. I did not do that and the check was not accepted despite the effort made to have it brought to them which they could have easily checked in their records. Worse, I next inadvertently put the wrong credit card number since I did not have an itemized bill and suddenly Netflix tells me that my account is on hold (bank did not have the decency to tell me). In the middle of this pandemic, no Netflix! Cruel and unusual punishment.

So, the above has intruded into my quarantine headquarters. Nevertheless, I am consoled to see in the garden the Doña Aurora bush laden with ivory blooms, springlike and ornamental, a sight to see from near and far. The kamuning has bloomed again and the dama de noche is bursting with little green flowers that cast an aromatic spell in the evenings. And suddenly my melendres plants, a variety of crepe myrtle, which separately bear white and pink flowers, are showing them. The botong tree (Barringtonia) keeps shedding its spidery white flowers with a touch of lavender on the grass below it creating multiple soft star-like images at its base. Then there was the eclipse last Sunday after which the sky before sunset turned into colors approximating the aurora borealis.

Yes, Nature is still with us showing what she can be when she is loved, cared for and admired. She, in turn, can calm and heal us.

The “new normal” is descending on us; let it be reasonable, effective and kind. And let us reciprocate by being the same.