Covid-19, the WHO, Home-based Learning, Cooking and Sanitizer

short story competition / Kedubes Australia

I scribbled down the list of assignments. School tasks that my children's teachers sent on a daily
basis. Whatever they asked, I wrote it down on yellow or orange sticky notes and I stuck them
on my son and daughter's PCs as soon as I got them. If I didn't, I was sure to forget them amidst
the overwhelming influx of messages, consisting of mostly Covid-19 related news. Being an
educator, I did all I could to give my children the impression that their schooling would continue
as normal as possible, no matter the circumstances. 

"What do you mean it doesn't work, be specific darling?" I asked my wife, Natalie.
"Tried it twice already! This crappy website won't let in. Can you check the log-in, please" she
said. 
"Hold on...ehm." I don't like interruptions when I'm composing emails. "Try it
again....wait....what user ID did you use?" I called back. 
"Jason dot preston at gmail dot com, right? With a capital J?" I could barely hear her say,  a
bit of frustration marked her voice which echoed through the corridor. She was on my son's
computer in the living room, while I was in my home office.  
As our voices travelled back and forth between the rooms, I heard our front door being
slammed shut and little footsteps approaching. It was my 8-year old daughter, Kylie.
"Who was that at the door, honey?" Natalie yelled.
"It's just Kylie!" I yelled back. This wasn't the first interruption of the morning. It was the 7th. 
"Dad, I went down to get the burgers you ordered. Here's the bill from the delivery guy at the
lobby," Kylie said excitedly.
My eyes scanned Kylie for a second or two.
"Put that down. Don't touch your face. Where's the disinfectant spray!" I said, obviously
panicking and trying to locate a sprayer among dirty clothes and piles of paper.
"Do you remember what I said about not touching stuff from outside?"
I could see her momentary confusion, then her face signaled an "Aha" moment. She nodded.
Having heard all the virus related news, she knew about Covid-19's contagious nature and that
we needed to be cautious about what we touched. 
 "Kylie, you know what to do now, right?"
"Go and wash my hands, with lots of soap, 30 seconds at least!" she replied. 
As our daughter bounced her way to the bathroom, turning on the faucet, my wife could be
heard murmuring something in the living room. She had still been trying to log-on to our son's
online English class.
"It still doesn't work. If this isn't the user ID, what is is then? Jason is already 15 minutes late,
can you please help," Natalie said.
My E-mail was never going to get finished. It was nearly 10 am. The dishes needed to get done,
the air-conditioning repair main was scheduled to come before lunch, laptops had to be
charged, and messages replied to. 

As did most schools, our children's school switched to a home-based learning approach,
keeping in line with the Jakarta City Administration's "stay-at-home" and "study-at-home"
appeal. School authorities and principals brainstormed the best contingency plans - catered to
students' needs, students who also were adapting to days without classmates, teachers, and a
clear study pathway. Despite the school's best efforts, at times it looked as though teachers
wanted simply to finish the race towards the end of the school-year. 

Trying to catch my breath, I leaned back and shouted:

"Try it now without the dot in between the names. It's jasonpreseton@gmail.com."
"So that's why it didn't want to work, Ok, I'll give it another try," my wife sighed.

Meanwhile my son, who had been sitting on his mother's lap, had lost his patience and stepped
down to play with his Legos. 
"Jason, your English teacher is going to be online any moment now. Put on your shirt, and stop
with those toys," Natalie said.  

Five minutes later my son would finally join his online lesson. Was it worth the effort, did he
learn something in those 40 minutes of online learning? I hope so. And so the other school-days
went by in similar hectic tempo. Our family tried to stay sane despite the pandemic which had
reached most countries. 

Once my son could finally log on to his Zoom session, lunch was ready. So he took his plate to
the computer, something I really hate seeing. During zoom sessions, he'd often reminded me:
"Dad, I'm on Zoom with the teacher. Can you please not walk around like that?"
"Yes, yes, just continue with the lesson," I said as I went looking for my jeans.
My son shook his head in response and put his headphones back on. For some reason he never
wanted me to come near the computer when he was Zooming with his teachers. 

While my son was the quiet type, my daughter is an energizer bunny. She had weekly hip-hop
dance lessons before Covid-19, and she wasn’t going to quit. Before the stay-home-period, her
mom or I would take turns to drive her to the dance studio, but now her lessons took place via
the video conferencing app "Zoom". Because we lived in an apartment, there was no way we
could have her jump around for 2 hours without expecting complaints for noise disturbance. To
avoid our neighbors from showing up at our front-door with sour faces, we decided to take our
daughter to the gym or playground where she could do her hip-hop thing. It was a good idea
until we found out that the Wi-Fi signal didn't reach that far. The solution was to do the dancing
in the corridors, at least no one could pinpoint where which apartment unit the noise came
from.

Things were starting to feel impossible at times. After two months into the stay-at-home period
my patience went out the window. I loathed being in front of the computer. 
The digital world I've come to find is does not live up to its hype. Trouble always looms at every
corner. After a few weeks of being constantly online, our family longed for simpler activities;
tennis, cooking, reading novels, and off-line Nintendo Switch games. Let's hope that the
pandemic soon comes to an end and we can unplug a little more and gain our sanity back.