On Monday we were supposed to emerge from the pesky CMCO that's been our miserable lot since 13 January.

We were fairly sure relief wouldn't be coming, though, as Sarawak's covid numbers have remained stubbornly high. And sure enough, the CMCO was extended until 29 March...

So we have to soldier on, our purple wings still very much clipped.

And the authorities' decision has been vindicated, it seems, as daily new covid cases this week in our state have continued mostly in the 100s/200s (with a very dispiriting 303 new cases recorded yesterday, along with 34 active clusters...). So at the moment, it's not boding well for a relaxation of the provisions next time round either.

Jeez, when is this EVER going to end...?

On the Tern domestic front, it's been one of those weeks. We had to have the aircon man round to fix a dripping unit; the internet was out for a couple of days (something wrong with the cable to the entire block); and various other things also chose this week to throw in the towel.

But we have had St Patrick's Day... Normally, we don't celebrate St Patrick's Day. Now we celebrate anything.

Not that it's inappropriate to celebrate St Patrick, as many believe he is as much a Manx saint as an Irish one.


As Sophia Morrison records in her 1911 collection of Manx Fairy Tales (a battered old copy of which, with quite a few pages missing, I owned as a child):

"The Irish have always looked on the Isle of Mann as a parcel of their own land. They say that when Saint Patrick put the blessing of God on the soil of Ireland and all creatures that might live upon it, the power of that blessing was felt at the same time in the Island.

"Saint Patrick was a mighty man,
"He was a Saint so clever,
"He gave the snakes and toads a twisht!
"And banished them for ever."

(Actually, Patrick probably didn't do any of the things he's famous for, but it turns out his real story is even more fascinating.)

Anyway, we celebrated. I made corned beef hash, because that's what you have on St Patrick's Day (mine was a low-carb version, with white radish and cabbage instead of potatoes). Nigel treated himself to a Guinness. We didn't get to watch the Irish movie we'd planned on (see above on the internet outage), but hopefully we can catch up on that tonight.


More locally, as previewed last week and last October, this was the week that saw the official launch of "a brand new image for Kuching Old Bazaar".

I'm still very dubious about the minister's aspiration for this atmospheric old area to one day "rival the brand of Singapore's Chinatown, Penang's Georgetown and Malacca's Jonker Street"...

But I'm really enthusiastic about the documentation that's been happening. There's a great new website, full of interesting photos and stories.

And we both enjoyed this quite moving little doco, featuring many of the places we very frequently pass on our walks. Some of the people in these shops are even older than we thought they were... There are nonagenarians among them, with memories that go as far back as the Japanese occupation.

Looking forward to more instalments.

To close, pictures of the week: