Day 5 Quarantine - The Food Situation

The heat of the room and the food are my two biggest issues. There is no air conditioning functioning and the room is hot and stuffy, its probably mid 80s in here. I talked to a colleague of mine, who is also in this quarantine facility and her room is boiling as well. So it’s not a room specific problem.

The food. For the first two days we were given food twice a day and I was using instant noodle packages from my suitcase to supplement. There is no microwave here, only a standard Chinese hotel room electric kettle. You can imagine the noodles were a bit more than al dente. Starting yesterday lunch showed up, but we didn’t know if it was indeed lunch or early delivery of our 2nd meal. So we only ate half of it to ensure having dinner. Then dinner came. See the picture below of it.

It made both me and Husband feel a bit ill. I don’t want to feel ill for any reason, because if our temperature goes up they take us out of here and to a hospital, and I don’t want that. I wondered if the meat was maybe the culprit and it is distinguishing so I asked to have no more meat. You can see that breakfast this morning got smaller….I guess no meat will mean less food overall:

Last night we received a text message communication with common questions and answers for our quarantine time. There is a section on food and the rationale why we cannot order deliveries on most things. (China has an amazing delivery system for both groceries and restaurants). They claim unsealed food may result in food poisoning and it will be confused with CoronaVirus. Yet today for lunch, after I said no meat, I was served seafood pasta with shrimp and mussels and other identifiable things.

Here is the text message:

My coworker who is here ordered from a nice restaurant last night had her delivery confiscated, $50 worth of food. She had not been given the information about what was acceptable to order, I sent it to her this morning. Hopefully she is going home today and won’t need to order.​

Of my suitcase food, this is what I have remaining to supplement my prison slop:

I’ve been reusing 1 tea bag throughout the day, enjoying the subtle flavors that emerge after the 5th or so use.
I’m trying a grand experiment tonight to help get some better food and supplies into my rations. I put in an order today with a corner shop near my apartment for these things to be delivered at 6pm tonight. Let’s see what makes it through from my list. The clerk even sent me a nice little video for me to check the items. So nice!