Arrival and Isolation

 I arrived in Singapore on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, flying in from Paris. The apartments where I'm staying require people to take a covid test on arrival, and mine was negative. Monday was the first day of classes, so I went to work, talked to people in the office, taught my classes, and so on. I had the tiniest bit of a sniffle in the afternoon, and I thought it would just go away, but it didn't. So I took another covid test very early Tuesday morning, and it was positive. Ugh!!!  The next couple of days I had a very stuffy head and was tired, so it was unpleasant, but not really more unpleasant than a bad cold, except for being worried about whether it would get worse. Singapore requires people to isolate for 72 hours after a positive test, then retest. If you're negative then, you are free from isolation, but if not, you have to isolate until 7 days or a negative test, whichever comes first.  According to the apartment people, that would have been until noon on Monday. Fortunately, I tested negative a little earlier than that (Sunday afternoon).  By that time I was extremely glad to get out of the apartment!

I had recorded some of my lectures in advance, so the students were able to watch them online during the days I missed, and Singapore has very good delivery services for food and so on. My colleagues were very nice and also offered to bring me anything I needed. (And none of them got sick, which was a relief! Singapore has an indoor mask requirement, so that might have helped.) So, it could have been worse, but I'm very glad it's done!

The top three pictures were from walking around after I got out of isolation, and the bottom ones are from when I first arrived.

Breakfast at the apartment

On the way to the apartment

Changi Airport