Painting, Painting, and More Painting: One Week in Cupertino, CA, Barricaded in My Room

Quarantine Diary Week 1 by S, a student at MIT

Age: 21

Gender: Female

Occupation: Student. MIT. Dual undergraduate and graduate student in engineering.

Location: Cupertino, CA, USA

Displacement Status: Displaced from Dorm; Quarantined at Home with Family

State of calmness: It’s aite so far. Starting to get restless and wanting to go out.

Reaction to local/state/federal response to the area: MIT has closed. Shelter in place by county order. I think all these responses make sense but they also make me sad. I would like my life to return back to normal. I am getting a bit bored with staying at home all the time.

I returned home from MIT and was self-quarantined in a sectioned off part of my house for 14 days. Even after these 14 days, I haven’t left my house at all. My family is a bit afraid of going to the grocery store, so my parents have experimented with delivering groceries to the door. My mother has a whole system set up in the garage. Every item that comes to us, whether it be mail or groceries, is labelled with how many days it has been. Only on the 7th day, does my mother use ungloved hands to touch the item and bring it into the house.

I have set quite a few goals for myself given that I am unable to go out. I also never had that much school work to begin with. Working out on a daily basis, creating finished paintings on a weekly basis, reading, and teaching myself how to use different technologies are some of the activities I entertain myself with. I also video call friends a decent amount.

I keep myself up-to-date with a daily dose of coronavirus-related videos on youtube. Content includes rising case numbers and other worrying information both domestically and internationally. I’ve never really been one to follow politics, but I’ve definitely been following the Chinese response/cover-up of information on the media as well as U.S. government action with particular emphasis on Trump’s speeches about his take on the future.

Day 1 (March 23, 2020)

- 1:00am: Didn’t sleep yet but trying to get to it. Got caught up watching workout videos about how to burn fat. Learned that walking for 20–40 min before breakfast works pretty well. Made a pact to myself to wake up at 9am the every day to walk for 20 min on a treadmill.

- 9:00am: Woke up (naturally!) … but then went back to sleep

- 9:30am-10:20am: Snoozed a series of alarms. Finally got up at 10:20am

- 10:30am-11:15am: Called J to teach her how to use the computing cluster that I have for my Master’s thesis. Talked about our 886 final project (graduate class about algorithm engineering) that involves implementing 5 different versions of Bellman-Ford.

- 11:15am-3:00pm: Worked on writing my thesis. Realized that I had written ~50 pages of technical content in less than a week. Bemoaned the fact that my Master’s advisor wants a first draft of my entire thesis within 2 weeks … which is unideal because the thesis is literally due mid-May. He wants me to keep busy. So much effort. I’ve been writing nonstop. Been also super distracted every time I write. Bullet chess games and youtube videos about fashion and skincare scattered throughout. Ate lunch during this time. My parents feed me off of paper plates and bowls that they hand to me (making sure not to make contact with me!) over the barrier. This barrier is an overturned table that blocks the hallway so that my cat can’t jump over it and make contact with me. Will be sure to include a video/picture of my food and barrier situation.

- I’m quite sick of this quarantine situation. I would like to move around my house freely and not be confined to the two bedrooms that I have access to. I must admit that it does have its advantages. My parents can’t randomly bother me when I’m in the middle of something like they normally do. My days are usually filled with thesis writing, psetting, and vchatting. I’ve been quite productive actually

- 3:00pm-3:45pm: I’ll be starting at a San Francisco startup soon, and my friend and future coworker S invited me to join their daily Zoom call where the employees get together and stretch. They usually do this in person, but the shelter-in-place situation has obviously prevented this. They make do with the Zoom call. For many of them, it’s their daily dose of human interaction.

- 4:00pm-5:00pm: Worked out my abs, arms, and inner thighs..didn’t really feel it in my inner thighs though. Contemplated showering after…didn’t end up doing it out of laziness and also lack of sweat.

- 5:00pm-8:00pm: More thesis writing. Called boyfriend A at 6:00pm. Continued to work on thesis during the call. Sent him a bit of my thesis to look over. He’s probably the only person who will ever actually read my thesis other than me lol. The video call was a combination of doing work and talking about random things. Played a couple of rounds of down with a cross.

- 8:00pm-9:20pm: I got so bored that I started doing my thing where I just go down my list of messenger chats and video call people until the first person picks up. E picked up first (she was the fourth person that I ended up calling). We talked about the quarantine situation and daily routines. Caught up on life. Hadn’t seen her since leaving MIT last Friday and had only messaged on and off with her ever since. She reminded me that I had another call at 9:30pm, so I hung up to shower and then go to my other call.

- 9:20pm-9:30pm: Showered

- 9:30pm-11:30pm: Call with high school friends. Talked about life. T recently came back from SoCal. The five of us are finally all in the Bay at the same time but we are unable to see each other. It’s quite sad. Played a couple rounds of downforaross with each other.

- It’s now 11:45pm. Time to start my nightly routine of doing nothing productive until I finally decide to sleep. Activities include Youtube videos (these are mainly about dance, skincare, art, Li Zi Qi videos, weird food videos, COVID-19, etc.). I’m also trying to find a movie/tv show/drama to start but I am so bad at consuming media that is longer than 20 min on not 2x speed so it’s difficult to choose what to actually watch. Most of the time I just end up watching a bunch of trailers and not settling on anything.

Day 2 (March 24, 2020)

- 12:00am: was watching A Silent Voice. cried during the movie

- 9:00am: Tried to wake up. Failed

- 10:40am: Finally got up

- 11:00am-2:00pm: Checked on 886 scripts that were running from before. Finished writing the Results section of the paper. What a glorious feeling that was.

- 2:00pm-2:45pm: Had a lab meeting. Gave my update about writing >50 pages since the last lab meeting (a week ago). Spent the rest of the meeting muted and playing Bullet chess. Also wrote up the last question of my 886 pset and submitted that. I don’t feel that stressed about the correctness of my answers given that all classes are now on P/IE (basically pass/fail).

- 3:00pm-3:30pm: Stretched with future coworkers. Discussed back flexibility and doing the bridge

- 3:30pm-5:00pm: Worked out. Did abs, butt, and back. Then showered.

- 5:00pm-7:00pm: Called A and caught up. Tried on the three new dresses that I had ordered.

- 7:00pm-10:20pm: Called Australia crew Caught up. T talked about his home situation and recent fight with his mom :( I also asked them about their 1. greatest regret for the spring semester, 2. one thing they were looking forward to in the next month, and 3. one thing they want to change about their current situation. Sparked some insightful discussion. Also talked a lot about relationships with parents. Near the end, I started working on my 50-flower etymology study. The idea is that many flowers have many traditional meanings/symbols associated with them. For each flower, I will draw a female personification that represents the flower in watercolor. I feel like I’ll eventually get a lot of backlash from some feminists who think I’m depicting girls as literal “wall-flowers” who are only valued for their beauty. To me, I think damn right women are beautiful…Let’s appreciate their beauty and recognize that they should be valued for more than just their beauty…like the positive traits that their flowers symbolize.

- 10:20pm-11:00pm: Chatted with my mom while eating a popsicle. Talked about how commencement was officially cancelled earlier during the day and how the two dresses she had bought to attend the ceremony have now gone to waste. Talked about the corona virus and how we think that this period of government-mandated shelter-in-place policy shouldn’t last too long. Probably 2–3 months max…but we’ll see.

- 11:00pm-11:30pm: Coded a bit for my Master’s to check the correlations between the samples of each Monte Carlo simulation (which is the main part of my experimental design). A pointed out to me that if there exists any correlation between any two samples, then my computation of coefficient significance (z-score) would be terribly inaccurate…hopefully, it won’t be too big of a problem…

Day 3 (March 25, 2020)

- 9:30am: Tried to wake up. Failed

- 10:40am: Finally got up

- 11:00am-12:00pm: Checked on my Master’s and 886 scripts. Did a bit of coding/debugging.

- 12:00pm-3:00pm: Worked on Introduction and Conclusion of thesis. Vchatted E at the same time.

- 3:00pm-3:40pm: Stretched with future coworkers

- 3:40pm-4:40pm: Worked out

- 4:40pm-5:00pm: Shower + skin care

- 5:00pm-7:00pm: Continued working on thesis. Debugged my Master’s scripts too.

- 7:00pm-8:40pm: Called boyfriend A. Talked about his relationship with his parents.

- 8:40pm-12:00am: Worked on Literature Review for thesis. Was distracted with messenger conversations with R and X. Talked about coronavirus with R. Talked about club elections with X.

Day 4 (March 26, 2020)

- 9:30am: Tried to wake up. Failed

- 10:40am: Finally got up

- 11:40am-1:00pm: Finished first draft of thesis

- 1:00pm-3:00pm: Finished all 886 work that is due next week (two sets of reading questions + one paper critique)

- 3:00pm-3:40pm: Stretching with future coworkers Got baited to start earlier because “what else are you even gonna do anyway now that you’re done with your thesis.” They told me that working part-time to onboard is a viable option. Talked to S later. He suggested that I work on personal hack projects/preview some web technologies in order to make onboarding easier. Will definitely try to do one or both of these two suggestions before even considering starting early. My current thought is to hold off on making a decision until A gets back to me about my thesis and tells me what else I need to do. If there isn’t much for me to do and this shelter-in-place thing is going to continue through at least the end of May, I might consider starting early. Originally, I didn’t want to start early because (1) I want to start in the office and (2) I want to play for the month of June. However, if this shelter-in-place thing continues such that playing is not in the foreseeable future. I can just work part-time for a bit, then I think starting early is not that bad of an idea.

- 4:00pm-5:00pm: Called G and caught up.

- 5:00pm-6:30pm Workout + shower

- 6:40pm-8:20pm: Called boyfriend A. Decided that it’s not necessary to video call every day.

- 9:00pm-12:30am: Called S. Painted while we called. I first did a practice painting of a girl. Looks meh.

Day 5 (March 26, 2020)

- 9:30am: Woke up to mother waking me up and saying that I’m released from quarantine. Got up, hugged mom, hugged brother, pet my cat. Dad was at work

- 11:00am-12:30pm: Chilled and talked to my mom

- 12:30–1:30: Ate lunch

- 1:30pm-3:00pm: Edited my Master’s thesis

- 3:00pm-3:30pm: Stretch with future coworkers. They started baiting me so hard to start early. Told me about the option of ramping up part-time.

- 3:30pm-5:10pm: Edited my Master’s Thesis

- 5:10pm-6:30pm: Workout with brother.

- 6:30pm-7:00pm: Edited my Master’s Thesis

- 7:00pm-8:00pm: Dinner

- 8:00pm-12:00am: Unpacked all boxes and did a huge closet clean-out.

Day 6 (March 27, 2020)

- oops forgot to record this but will rehash from memory without time stamps

- got up late

- proofread thesis

- organized jewelry and bathroom / threw out a bunch of things

- watched video about building website with TypeScript while organizing

- proofread thesis

- worked out with brother

- proofread thesis and emailed to AC

- vchatted A, E, and J

- started sunflower painting, finished drawing everything but no color, and watched drama until 5am

Day 7 (March 28, 2020)

- watched drama until 5am… that was terrible

- woke up for fun splash lessons with friends at 10am. learned about the kardashians 10am-12:00pm

- ate lunch

- played ping pong with brother

- painted while calling R (1.5 hrs)

- painted while watching drama. watched drama until the end

- painted while calling boyfriend A who was busy with his pset. hung up. (1 hr)

- went through my chat history calling people

- finally Y called back. called her for a bit until she had to leave. painted while calling. (2 hrs)

- called J. finished up painting while calling (2.5 hrs)