This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around

The setting sun reflects off the clouds following a rainstorm outside our hotel in Guangzhou

It's the ninth day of our quarantine in our hotel room in Guangzhou 广州, and assuming we test negative tomorrow, on Tuesday we'll be set free (or paroled, to be more accurate) and allowed to travel to Beijing 北京, our final destination. Remarkably, despite initially being told otherwise, the three of us have been allowed to share one room rather than be split up for the ten-day duration of the quarantine. Even more remarkably, we haven't turned on each other (yet). It helps that during the weekdays I've had online Mandarin lessons to pass my time, while my wife has been doing cross-stitched embroidery and our daughter has preoccupied herself with the usual video games and her newest obsession, Formula One racing!

Getting to this point was a minor adventure. Due to China's Zero-COVID restrictions, flying commercially into the country is a difficult, expensive and unreliable way to travel. So the State Department has been chartering flights for U.S. government workers and their families to ensure the diplomatic missions can maintain staffing (and for people to take much-needed vacations from all the coronavirus restrictions). Our special flight left Dulles in the late evening of August 10 (following not one, not two, but three negative COVID tests), and arrived about seven hours later in Anchorage, Alaska. Following a crew change, we resumed our trip, heading toward the next stop on the itinerary, Incheon Airport near Seoul. We wouldn't get there, however - a power failure in the cabin (which didn't affect the plane's engines) about 90 minutes into the flight forced the jet to turn back to Anchorage. Which is how we found ourselves staying in a hotel room for more than eight hours, waiting for the trip to China to resume:

In the early morning hours at Anchorage's airport, waiting for word on whether we would be getting back on the plane or spending the night in the city. The answer in the end was "neither".

Our daughter waits to board the bus for the hotel. Not the kind of welcome we would have expected under normal circumstances. But things haven't been normal now for the past 2½ years now, have they?

The view from our hotel room in downtown Anchorage

At least that's what Amber and Shu-E did (except for going downstairs for a late breakfast and early dinner). I, on the other hand, feeling that I couldn't add Alaska to the list of U.S. states visited if I didn't actually do some exploring, went outside for a walk*. The first stop on my stroll was the statue of Captain James Cook, who visited the region in 1778:

Despite the overcast conditions, there was a good view of Mount Susitna (4396 feet/1340 meters) across the Knik Arm waterway:

A giant wall mural near the Anchorage 5th Avenue Mall:

This life-sized moose replica could've been mine for the low, low price of $7999:

A view of downtown Anchorage:

On Thursday evening we were taken by bus back to the airport, and flew to Incheon without incident. Following another crew change and cabin cleaning, we arrived at the airport in Guangzhou** on a Saturday morning local time (what happened to Friday?). Separated from the rest of the airport by workers in hazmat suits, we were eventually able to retrieve our bags and be taken by bus to our quarantine hotel. This has been our view since:

There have been brief spells of rain:

A morning scene, taken around 0700 hours (you can see the airport control tower in the background):

And that's been pretty much it. I mean were in quarantine in a hotel room with a king-sized bed for Shu-E and me, and a rollaway for Amber to sleep in, so what more is there to say? Our temperatures are checked daily, and we've had several swabs taken, with the negative results continuing their winning streak. And as for meals, we get them. Food is brought to the room three times a day, with the offerings for lunch and dinner looking like this:

I've been opting for the "Western-style" breakfasts, which consist of five slices of white bread, three packets of sliced cheese and two jam packets, plus a carton of white milk. Morning after morning after morning. Overall, the food has been edible, plus it helps that my wife has a cousin living in Suzhou 苏州 who has been able to supplement our rations with milk teas and snacks (ordering drinks and food from outside is allowed). Still, I'm looking forward to having some variety when we finally get to Beijing.

So that's about it for now. After getting to our assigned residence in Beijing, we'll be busy getting things set up, and familiarizing ourselves with the strict coronavirus protocols in the capital city. And as a friend already in China puts it, the realities of the the zero COVID policy mean we will still be quarantined off from the rest of the world. We may be able to freely move about Beijing, and even travel to other parts of China (and possibly get trapped in another lockdown, as happened recently in Hainan 海南), but we can forget about visiting family and friends in Taiwan, or traveling again in Japan, for at least until next spring. Any longer, and I may have to reconsider why we're here in the first place.

Is there light at the end of the tunnel? Hopefully it won't be the light General Westmoreland swore he could see. Until next time, when we're settled down in Beijing...we hope

* Including The Last Frontier, the total is 36 - 37 if you include the District of Columbia

** Not my first time in the airport. I spent in a weekend in Guangzhou back in March 2015

Rediscovering my musk in Addis Ababa

The view I had while in quarantine

It's been 16 days since I landed at Addis Ababa's Bole International Airport, and the first fourteen of those were spent in quarantine at my residence. I tried to keep myself occupied - for one thing, you would be amazed at the amount of dust that accumulates indoors (inside a sealed house!) over the course of the six months that we were spinning our wheels in Arlington while on Authorized Departure. It was a lot of work dusting, sweeping, vacuuming and mopping the floors of one kitchen; an entranceway; a living/dining room; four bathrooms; and six bedrooms (only three of which are actually used for sleeping). Our house is very reminiscent of places where we lived in Taiwan - namely, it's a narrow three-story structure with tile flooring that doesn't take much to get dirty again. I also went through all the kitchen cabinets and shelves, throwing out any food items that were past their use-by dates; some had expired back in 2017 and 2018! My wife wasn't too pleased to hear I had done so, as she apparently believes expiration dates are merely guidelines, but my stomach isn't made of cast iron, so like a going out of business sale, everything that was out of date had to go!

Still, despite all the work involved, the boredom was constant. It didn't help that I didn't have working WiFi indoors for the first few days I was back, meaning I had to rely only on my government-issued 3G phone to communicate with the outside world. This also meant I couldn't access Netflix, so my evening entertainment options were limited to my daughter's Studio Ghibli スタジオジブリ DVD collection. Over the past two weeks I've watched (in the original Japanese, with English subtitles) Princess Mononoke もののけ姫; Spirited Away 千と千尋の神隠し; My Neighbor Totoro となりのトトロ; Ponyo 崖の上のポニョ; Howl's Moving Castle ハウルの動く城; Grave of the Fireflies 火垂るの墓; Castle in the Sky 天空の城ラピュタ; and, most recently, Kiki's Delivery Service 魔女の宅急便. If there's one thing I've learned during quarantine, it's that Hayao Miyazaki 宮崎駿, Isao Takahata 高畑勲 and Toshio Suzuki 鈴木敏夫 are (or, sadly in the case of Takahata, who died two years ago, were) freakin' geniuses! I'm looking forward to finishing the rest of the collection over the next few weeks.

Thanks to my supervisor (who provided a box of food for me), and the local versions of Door Dash, Grubhub et al (plus the food in the kitchen and freezer that are still within a safe timeframe to consume), I didn't come close to starving, though it does seem I lost around four kilograms while staying indoors. We'll see what happens to my waistline now that I can go outside to consume.

Tomorrow I return to the office for the first time in 206 days. This upcoming week is going to be a busy one - in addition to catching up on work (especially emails), I'll need to make sure my car is still operating after sitting in an Embassy parking lot for more than six months; pick up all my personal mail that has accumulated during the time I was away; exchange all my old Ethiopian birr banknotes for the new ones the government of Ethiopia introduced in mid-September; and arrange for Shu-E and Amber to rejoin me here following the end of the my daughter's school's first semester in late December (she's currently doing online learning from Taiwan). 

Ah, yes, the family. We've been separated for 25 days now. They had their own quarantine to go through in Taichung 台中, but now they're out and living what approximates something close to a normal life thanks to the Taiwanese government's successful attempts at controlling the spread of COVID-19. We talk everyday on the Line social messaging app, but I miss them terribly. 

Speaking of the coronavirus, how are things in Ethiopia you or may not be wondering? The last time I checked (which was just now), the country has recorded 90,490 cases (out of an estimated population of 109 million), 1371 deaths and 43,638 recoveries. The good news is that Ethiopia has a young population (people aged 0-24 make up 63% of the population); the government acted quickly in response, declaring a state of emergency in April that lasted until September; and nearly 80% of the populace lives in rural areas. On the other hand, because testing has been scaled back due to limited resources, the actual extent of the virus is unknown; and when I went outside this weekend to do some shopping, it appeared that fewer than half the people on the streets were wearing masks, and many of those were only covering their mouths and not their noses as well. For the remainder of my tour here, it's going to masks, hand washing and social distancing all the way!

Don't expect too many blog posts in the coming weeks and months, as thanks to COVID-19 and my unwanted bachelor life, I probably won't be going out too often except to shop and work. As for the title of this post? Well, for fourteen days I wasn't working up a sweat in Addis Ababa's subtropical highland climate, nor was I interacting with other human beings, so I didn't see the point in applying deodorant. Sometime a man's got to smell like a man!

More views from the balcony. The nighttime shot was taken using a tripod. Yes, there really aren't that many lights on at night:

Back in the 'hood after more than six months away:

Stocking up on the essentials:

There's a lot of roadwork going on at the moment, making Alexander Pushkin Street a big mess:

Only 8-9 months to go...