What to do in hotel quarantine?
It wasn’t bad. I treated the 5 night/6 day stint as a staycation. Also, being cooped up in a room for several days wasn’t so bad for me since I am an introvert and can entertain myself pretty easily. Read more about quarantine in this post.
Rather than reinvent the wheel, I’m just going to cut-and-paste my facebook posts during quarantine, edit them for clarity and incorporate some of my friends’ comments.
Due to quarantine health protocols, food is served in single-use disposable containers and eaten with similarly disposable utensils. So far food in quarantine has been OK but I’d like more fiber and less rice. Thankfully mom can send care packages (yes she labels the fruit… she’s organized that way). Then I can use the food containers for leftover rice 🙂 and put that in the refrigerator. By quarantine’s end I had enough to make fried rice.
Edited to add: mom’s explanation in the comments – the labels are for the hotel staff so they know what’s in the containers, since no cooked food is allowed in the care packages.
Reviewing the food gave me something to do during quarantine. Those strange green dumplings – were they radioactive? I think whoever made the dumpling wrappers just put too much green food coloring. Green was probably supposed to represent the vegetable filling (carrots? radish? whatever it was, it would have been good with soy sauce). The “international breakfast” of bacon came with hash browns. I was not a fan… bacon a tad too salty and hash browns aren’t my favorite potato prepration (ketchup would have been nice). The scrambled eggs were decent. After this breakfast I made a note to myself: stick with the Filipino breakfasts which at least had garlic fried rice (sinangag) – like in the bottom right gallery photo. Breakfasts came with fruit, but no fruits came with lunch or dinner. Lunch and dinner had appetizers and desserts instead.
For the curious: here is their menu for the quarantine package. They also have a room service menu from which you could order additional dishes and drinks.
Today I also got the TV working – for some reason Skycable wasn’t loading yesterday. I might have pressed something on the remote control to change settings.
I took photos of the outside world from my window.
Here’s a lovely dusk-time shot of the Trinoma shopping center. “Trinoma” is a mash up of “triangle north of Manila”, which is a description of its location – a triangle bounded by three major roads. I think the branding folks did not ask any medical personnel for their opinion about the name. Trinoma sounds like a tumor or something similar.
Here’s some slice-of-life photos from the construction site across the street.
Construction workers getting ready for the day’s work 
On the last day, someone had a banner… 
With a name and phone number
Made use of the computer-to-TV (monitor) HDMI connector today and watched a bunch of things on Netflix, and the last two movies of The Hobbit trilogy (I watched the first one on the plane). What long movies! Or maybe I just don’t have the attention span.
I was also being productive making slides for a short talk later in January.
Day 5 started with a phone call at 4:23 AM from the quarantine hotel front desk, saying the swab team was here. So I hurriedly changed out of pajamas and got myself ready for a COVID-19 swab. Done by 4:35 AM. They do this very early on day 5 so you’re ready to leave the hotel by checkout time the next day (if results are negative). Still waiting for my results about 16 hours later. They said the results will be out within 24 hours. Of note: upon checking into the quarantine hotel, the staff did say swabs were on the morning of day 5 but didn’t say “early morning”. A friend who stayed here previously was given a window of 2-5 AM, so I sort of knew it would be early-ish. But what if I didn’t?
Anyway. I was awake. I also napped a lot today, what with the early start and late-ish night activity:
Here’s my set-up for a Zoom talk I’m about to give in about an hour – 7 AM Thursday Houston, Texas time/9 PM Philippines (on January 6, 2022). Really didn’t expect to be doing this from quarantine, but here I am. This the curtain call from quarantine, and the show must go on. Thanks to the Baylor College of Medicine/H. Ben Taub Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation and their residency program director Dr. Rochelle Dy for having me spread the word about being a physiatrist practicing Performing Arts Medicine at their weekly morning grand rounds.
Edited to add: the day 5 COVID-19 PCR swab test is negative, 17.5 hours later. Exiting hotel tomorrow! Hooray.
Exiting hotel quarantine entails forwarding a copy of your negative swab result via email to the hotel. Upon checking out of your hotel room and paying your bill, they will give you a printed certificate attesting that you’ve done your time in “facility quarantine”. Then you can finally go home and begin the “home quarantine” phase of your 14-day total quarantine. (Update: as of January 16, the total quarantine duration has been reduced from 14 to 7 days. This can change based on current COVID-19 circumstances so please check with your airline and/or news and official government websites).
