Hello!
I’m writing to you to feel productive as I sit beside the window and look for signs of life in the courtyard. Floors two and three across from me have finally opened their blinds to let in the uncharacteristic Berlin sunshine. Being on the shaded side, I’ve kept mine open permanently to let in the sunlit glow from the honey-coloured wall. You’d think after three weeks of being stuck at home together, we would have at least waved across to each other. To date, I have seen floor three’s plant on proud display at midday, but not more than its owner’s forehead.
Personal updates: I have kept busy by participating in the 43,000-strong #WirVsVirus hackathon organised in 4 days by the German government, set up a Github page blog, which includes a summary of security issues with the video conferencing app Zoom, and a directory of Asian Businesses in Berlin to support.
Our small courtyard has other signs of life. Between the trains running just outside our apartment, the birds have no human competition in their conversations. One family keeps a nest in our courtyard’s single tree, which has finally unfurled its dainty leaves. One pigeon had the audacity to land on my kitchen rail and stare expectantly while I cooked. It flew off when I flung the door open (for fresh air). A blackbird happily calls at dawn. And some finch-like bird drops by the wooden birdfeed house.
In the past three weeks, I’ve seen a lady with a thin plumage of vermillion take the occasional morning stroll. Neighbours have carried boxes, bags and ladders through the doors to each of our four entrances. One family even moved in. The man on the first floor across perches his bag of garbage on the ledge right outside his kitchen window. In the mornings, he reaches carefully over the bike under his window to get the bag and throw it out. Our collective refuse remains uncollected. The day after the lady made her stroll a graffiti artist marked his purple signature just left of the solitary daffodils, where the plaster is still holding. A week later, another artist left a red one on the edge of the wall overlooking the train tracks. In between, the kids have strung easter egg decorations.
Though my flat is barely 35 square metres, I only discovered the window as a viable hangout a month ago. Idleness must be credited. Now, I can sit here for hours, inhaling crisp air from the window, warmed by the heater underneath. That this act feels luxurious makes it no less heroic, according to social media these days. I used to think that radiators underneath windows were a terrible design for heating. If there’s a ledge, as there is here, it becomes a brilliant one for window watching.
When I turn my chair ninety degrees so that I am parallel to the radiator and window, the space turns into a study. I put my legs up, rest my laptop on my lap and type. The view is always a left turn away, my cup of coffee perched on the ledge.
My flat in Berlin is roughly the same size as the one in Hong Kong, but it does not feel as spacious or as comfortable. But I can lay out a yoga mat in two spots for a change of scene and get my walking in by being forgetful. Usually, a craving that originated by the window requires three trips to the kitchen to be remembered. These days, every step counts.
We have in the past weeks or months stepped into another life — unwillingly, reluctantly, maybe resentfully. The arrival has in most cases been abrupt and swift, amidst a cyclone of government declarations and notices.
Though this step in our life has been forced, the steps we take to ease into it are a choice. Would that we had another twenty or forty years like our elders to feel out the contours of a rich, if more physically confined, life. Then again, people who lose limbs also weren’t given notice before accidents. Still others were born with physical and health limits we who are able and mobile have the choice to not entertain. But at no other time have we had such unlimited access to the voices of others who have lived the life that we are now having to live. For example, Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen has a beautiful conversation about “The Difference Between Fixing and Healing” as someone with a lifelong battle with Crohn’s disease. Or, X-Files (and Sex Education) fans can listen to how dignified age sounds when Gillian Anderson takes a breath before speaking on Ctrl + Alt Delete.
If you want more recommendations, more podcasts and articles are at the end of this e-mail.
Within the confines of our home, if we are lucky enough to have a whole one, one place even the most cooking-adverse now must visit is the kitchen, unless you keep your cutlery for takeout in the living room. I don’t like my current kitchen, so before March, I didn’t spend time with it. It came stuffed with cheap pots, pans, and tableware that I hid immediately above the cupboard when I moved in. This kitchen doesn’t get direct natural light. There’s an apologetic bar table tilted in a corner taking up space. Meals made in this kitchen were whatever came to mind quickly and made readily. Confinement and time have allowed forgotten cravings to bubble to the surface of my stagnant pool of culinary staples.
One day, I was possessed by a craving for French onion soup. It is a soup my mother orders out of hope at restaurants even though we cannot recall ten memorable ones combined between us. I don’t like onions. But I can relate to her conclusion that salty soups are the fault of chefs, and soggy bread is the consequence of neglect. During Berlin’s March cold snap, I woke up convinced that warm caramelised onions in a sinful amount of butter were the perfect remedy.
During hard times, turning unassuming onions into something delicious seems a heroic act of optimism. The idea came to me by the window from the best friend I’ve never met, Tamar Adler, via her book The Everlasting Meal. In the chapter titled “How to Snatch Victory from the Jaws of Defeat”, where she has endless mouthwatering recommendations for salvaging charred food, she declares: “There is no such thing as a burned onion.” I laughed. There’s no such thing as a bad kitchen.
I ended up making French onion soup twice and red cabbage variants materialised in a second pot each time. I still don’t like the kitchen, but I’ve made my peace with its abilities. It is far more equipped than the floor of our undergraduate dorm rooms, where my friend used to squat over her rice cooker, nursing her Cantonese soups.
I took a photo of my creation and sent it to my family. If things had gone as planned, I would have gone to visit them for Easter. But because they haven’t, I have a new dish to take home for the next visit.
Listenings and Readings:
Sex Education on Netflix
From The Intelligence Podcast: “Going to townships: covid-19 threatens Africa” and “Life sentences? Prisons and covid-19”
Notes to Self: Essays by Emilie Pine
100個基本 松浦弥太郎 作
Covid-19 Knowledge for Clinicians by Amboss
“A Quick Look at the Confidentiality of Zoom Meetings” by Bill Marczak for Citizen Lab
“H&M just thought twice before triggering force majeure clauses with suppliers, and here’s why you should too” by Anna Triponel and John Sherman in Business & Human Rights Resource Centre
“What it’s like to be a delivery worker during the COVID-19 pandemic” by Sean Captain in Fast Company
“How Will the Coronavirus End?” by Ed Yong in The Atlantic
Thanks for reading this post! If you enjoyed it, please consider spreading the positive vibes to a friend or loved one.
Thanks and until next time!
— Athena
PS: You can check out my more informative blog posts at https://shenchingtou.github.io.