I'm reverting to the Friday Gazette formula. It's not that we're not still engaged in the battle for survival. And it's not that covid is beating a retreat. But policy has changed around us, so we now have more freedom. We just have to be careful how we exercise it.

Covid really hasn't gone away in these parts. Sarawak still regularly tops the charts in the Malaysian case statistics, even though we're not testing everyone we used to test... And our rate of deaths per 100K people, once quite enviable in the great awful scheme of things, is deteriorating markedly. On the basis of data from the last two weeks, the figure for Malaysia as a whole is 3.9, while Sarawak's is 6.0... This is the problem with large numbers of covid cases. There's always a sad tranche at the bottom that will not make it. The bigger the overall number, the bigger that tranche will be.

Anyway, we've been cautiously out and about. At the end of last month, I explained how we'd set aside two weeks to get all the stuff done that needed to be done before we hunker down for four weeks of isolation in preparation for our pre-flight covid test. Well, we're now nearing the end of the second of those weeks. We've ticked off all the jobs but one, and this overhang will be dispatched on Monday.

But there have also been lots of nice things this week.

We hadn't been able to meet up with our little "dining club" since January, so we needed to fit in a meal with them before we head into low-profile territory again. We went back to Ah Kui Seafood, near Petanak Market, and had a great evening out on their terrace, catching up on news and chewing our way through some really excellent food (fish curry, black pepper lamb, cangkok manis with egg, and an amazingly smooth tofu "loaf", topped with shrimp). No pictures because we were so busy enjoying...

Last week we were allowed to be tourists again, and this week the ban on inter-district travel was lifted as well, so we hired another car, and devoted ourselves to day trips. Padawan on Wednesday; Telaga Air on Thursday; and the Matang area today. Super-enjoyable.

But Kuching has continued to yield its pleasant surprises. Here are some: