To be honest, it was always just a matter of time. Restrictions have almost been lifted completely, going out more often than ever given that I am in office three times a week now (as compared with 0-1 times a week during the first half of the year), and as usual I have not been the strictest when it comes to personal hygiene. So my first reaction when test confirmed it was like, ah, here we go. 

I wasn’t super mad or worried about catching it - pretty sure I could make a full recovery. I also wasn’t complaining about having a week off work out of nowhere although the last couple days of MC I was alr working almost the entire day, albeit at a slower pace. 

The only inconvenience is that it came during that specific week that I shouldn’t be grounded - the exact weekend which I was supposed to be spending in Phuket. Sigh what karma is this. 

In hindsight, I maybe should have taken a bit more precaution but it didn’t register with me that the wave triggered by XBB had started and I also forgot that I should be a little more worried the week pre-trip (I think back to the week before my two Brunei trips during these two years and I definitely was a lot more paranoid). So when the invitation to go to F1 came I readily made myself available coz it was too good to pass, forgetting about the likely massive crowds which meant that even if I went, I should probably take extra precautions. 

Oh well. So in the end I had to pay extra to change one of the legs of my tickets (damn you Scoot) and the major surprise was that AirAsia didn’t charge extra for date changes, only fare difference which was minimal. So we got away with that. The Brunei duo, who narrowly missed the window to get a free date change for the first leg of their trip (coz they were within the 48h window by the time I notified them) also decided not to proceed with the trip in a sign of solidarity lol and converted their trip to a weekend getaway to KL hahah. 

It was actually pretty hectic coz it was the morning when I tested positive, and I was busy texting ppl in office to notify them, and frantically looking for a alternative travel period for a possible solo trip (my initial plan was for them to proceed with the trip without me coz they had missed their window by then), there was time pressure to get this settled before my 48h window (which was on 11.20am), all while my brain is fried from fever and what not coz it was COVID symptoms at its peak zzzz. But got it done and plopped back to sleep. 

Anyway long story short (separate post on the long story) is that I recovered without much complications. Day 0 (coz I still tested negative) to Day 3 (the day I was supposed to travel) were horrible but it got better from the evening of Day 3 onwards. By Day 4 I was already able to happily plan my meals and scrolling through foodpanda/grab for options (coz I got nothing better to do anyway). Actually scrap that, on the evening of Day 3 I was even able to climb up to replace the LED down light in my bathroom which actually needed a bit of electrical work (it wasn’t like changing lightbulbs). Actually what I noticed is that the symptoms generally set in quite suddenly and severely, but they also go away all of the sudden - in my case i got a bit of sore throat on Day 2 and suddenly on Day 3 it faded way when I was mentally prepared for it to linger. 

The second line on the test kit took a while to go away though. Only on Day 8 did it start fading and it only went away completely on Day 11. But I had exited isolation as per guidelines anyway. And actually at this point, two and a half weeks since testing positive, the cough is still lingering although I do feel it finally fading away. And other than that there doesn’t seem to be any signs of so called “long COVID”, nor are there side effects like “difficulties in focusing or remembering things” which some people reported and I honestly thought those are psychological. 

Stamina wise, I tested it out at around Day 11 and found that I can still run, though I went at a much slower pace than usual and took more breaks, but I chalked that up to the fact that I hadn’t been running for almost three weeks, and I really only ran once since mid Sept when the sister visited. So that didn’t seemed very much affected too. 

So overall not quite uneventful haha. I think it’s similar to regular flu, you always feel miserable anytime a flu comes anyway, just that I don’t get that very often so maybe that’s tougher for me to endure at times? While not discounting the 0.02% that had serious complications and passed away even, COVID had well and truly mutated into something that everybody can cope with as evidenced by the opening up of almost all restrictions, as it should.