11.090 Rice

11.090

4 (Sat) April 2020

Rice

2.0

by me

at home

-Dasmariñas Village, Makati, Metro Manila, Philippines-

with the Family

Caught the boys filching snacks from the pantry – Cheddar Cheese Pringles and Strawberry-Mint Tic-Tacs – then lying about it.  I was furious, disappointed perhaps more at how clumsily the theft and the cover-up were executed.  As with everything these days, I tried to use it as a learning opportunity to stress the importance of food as a general principle and to highlight the need to respect and conserve food as a limited resource in a world gripped by COVID-19, when every trip to the supermarket presents a risk of contamination, when so many others are struggling to secure even the basics.

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W and I ate XO sauce wings, which had been intended as part of a larger Chinese spread that I didn’t go through with.

To enforce the lesson, they were fed a single bowl of steamed rice for dinner.

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To maintain social/physical distancing, our local supermarket is limiting access to customers, which is good.  I had to wait 50 minutes just to get into the store, but worth the wait.
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As far as I’m aware, this is the first time that stores in the Philippines, and mostly across the world, have ever implemented such measures.
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I would be very curious to learn how these specific items and specific amounts were determined.

On my last post discussing COVID-19 (see 11.076 Broccoli with Chogochujang Sauce), 266,073 global cases had been reported (8,799 in Korea, 230 in the Philippines, 47,021 in Italy, 19,644 in Iran, 15,219 in USA); with 11,183 global deaths (102 in Korea, 18 in the Philippines, 4,032 in Italy, 1,433 in Iran, 201 in USA).

As of today, 2 weeks later, 1,051,697 global cases (10,156 in Korea, 3,018 in the Philippines, 119,827 in Italy, 53,183 in Iran, 241,703 in USA); with 56,986 global deaths (177 in Korea, 29 in the Philippines, 14,681 in Italy, 3,294 in Iran, 5,854 in USA).

WHO issued the first public COVID-19 situation report on 21 January 2020, when the total number of global cases was 282.  4 days later, on 25 January 2020, the total number of global cases passed the one thousand mark to 1,320.  7 days later, on 1 February 2020, the total number of global cases passed the ten thousand mark to 11,953.  35 days later, on 7 March 2020, the total number of global cases passed the one hundred thousand mark to 101,927.  29 days later, on 4 April 2020, the total number of global cases passed the one million mark to 1,051,697. To put that into perspective, 79,394 new cases were reported in a single day since yesterday, compared to the 89,974 new cases reported over 35 days between 1 February to 7 March.

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To be fair, the shelves aren’t always empty, but the lines of food production/distribution have been disrupted to leave uncertainty as to what may be available on any given day.
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I wonder why the anti-hoarding guidelines don’t include fresh foods, like meats and eggs.

Our main concern is here in the Philippines, which is relatively quiet for now.  But an outbreak could be deadly, given the population density and fragmentation of the health system.  If one of us were to get infected, we could be in serious trouble.

(WHAT)(WHERE)

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