It was a big weekend for us. We were finally free to leave home after four weeks' quarantine. And we were celebrating the first anniversary of moving into our flat.


You'll notice I've reverted to the "Kuching diary" rubric, for the first time since January. We're still intending to survive, of course, but "survival diary" spoke to temporariness and contingency, and as we're now properly back home, I thought I ought to start reflecting normality and routine again (even if both are still in some flux).

I was almost nervous going out for the first time yesterday, unsure what kind of Kuching we were going to find in these troubled times.

But the Big Padungan Cat was instantly reassuring.

And it became obvious that, here as elsewhere, people are gamely trying to adapt and get on. The businesses on Jalan Padungan variously remind you to wear your mask, or tape off areas to discourage casual traffic, or block off seats to encourage social distancing. One of the temples on Jalan Carpenter has a one-way system in operation.

We stopped off twice yesterday, once at Indah for the first cafe-bought coffee since we were in Spain, and once at the supermarket. The whole business involved having our temperature taken three times, signing in with various location apps, and cleaning our hands with the sanitizer provided. All of which is good, of course, and seems pretty much de rigueur everywhere.




Inevitably, the pandemic seems to have levied its toll on some businesses. One of our favourite coffee stops seems to have shut down, as has our favourite beer venue. But at least two new eating places have arrived on the scene, and will, of course, need to be tried.

Our shopping expedition produced chocolate (alas, not Whittaker's, which we haven't tracked down yet), and salad (we were sporadically able to get cucumbers and tomatoes delivered, but no other salad vegetables).



In other news, the riverside digger has completely disappeared. You wouldn't even know he'd been there...


And the Indonesian Consulate seems to have moved. It's now very close to us, which might be handy one day.


And Kuching continues, covid or not, to be as beautiful as ever:





We had a real humdinger of a storm yesterday evening (Nigel has a little vid here.)

It was perhaps the mightiest we've ever experienced since living in Southeast Asia. You could feel the glass of the windows flexing at the thunder-claps, and we paused our movie-and-major-beer celebration, partly because you couldn't hear the actors, even with the sound turned up, and partly because it was such an awesome show out there.

This morning was still pretty drippy, and a lot of vegetation had bitten the dust:




Even so, there was still enough dryness for a Hungry Ghost burn-up:


It's good to be back in this fascinating home that I still don't really understand the half of. Like William Dalrymple in India, "I feel like a child in a sweet shop or a miser in a bank vault sometimes. There’s an almost infinite amount to take in, see and understand."