A Day in the Life at the End of the World
4:15 AM
Ariana Grande is screaming at me. Like, screaming. It takes me a second to realise that she’s midway into the second verse of “Break Free”, which is the third song in my Google Home’s wake the fuck up playlist, an unrealistic attempt to technologically engineer my morning moods. My brain does some mental acrobatics and I realise that I’m already late to the literary conference I signed up for on New York time, another sign of idiotic idealism. I postpone the self-castigation and roll out of bed, straight into the computer chair I bought on discount, when it became clear that I would be in Singapore for more than a hot minute. I hate that chair. It creaks every time I sit in it, but it takes less effort to hate it than it does to exercise, so I do. I turn on my camera and hope that no one can tell I’m not wearing pants.
6:20 AM
Three people have made jokes about watching the sun rise in my little Zoom rectangle, and I’ve smiled weakly and mimed laughing along three times. Mimed, because my Zoom is always on mute. The birds in Singapore are ferocious and screech non-stop from 5:30-7:00 AM, and then do an encore show at 6:00 PM. They’re worried we can’t tell the sun is rising or setting, or something like that, but all this does is set off some kind of deep and primal frenzy in my cat. She darts around the house yowling and crashing into furniture, making a mockery of the concept of feline grace, while I try to come up with good and meaningful things to say in response to whatever is happening on-screen. When everyone waves goodbye, the sun is not yet fully up, but I’m already tired.
7:00 AM
I’ve managed to whittle my doom-scrolling tendencies down to a five-minute window. At the beginning of the pandemic, I spiraled, hard. The more trouble I had processing the new reality, the more I binged proof of it. I’ve never been the sort to leave an ulcer alone either, and now, each new day is an open wound. I refresh Twitter: another university sexual assault case in Singapore; San Francisco is burning; there’s a meme about us surviving six months of the pandemic, ‘surviving’ being used in the loosest sense of the word, ever; the police murders in America have crystallized into jewelry; people are furious at the new Mulan; the world’s first floating Apple store opens in Singapore today; a friend prefaces a job promotion with “Small personal news, but…” It’s not small personal news. It’s actually big fucking news. But coming up against the end of the world, everything is simultaneously horrible and trivial. I have to force myself to close Twitter. I do this, always, by flinging my phone across the room, the physical act a flash of catharsis. But always just on the bed, and always more gently than I’d like. I don’t want to have to get a new phone.
2:00 PM
I spend all morning and the first half of the afternoon wrestling with the fourth draft of a screenplay. It’s been almost a year since I’ve worked in the script format instead of prose, and although they say you can’t just forget how to write scripts, I feel like I’ve been forgetting a lot of everything lately. My brain feels like it’s just holding water. A friend Telegrams me to say she cried reading the script, which lifts my spirits mildly, but when I prod more, I realise she’s crying at the wrong lines.
5:00 PM
I think about exercising, but don’t.
7:00 PM
Someone on a film set here tested positive for Covid-19, which is actually shocking because our community cases have been down for quite a while. Dengue is the pressing public health threat now. Apparently, they’re considering halting all local productions. I briefly wonder what that means for my script deadlines, and then speculate if that makes me a bad person.
7:30 PM
I need a beer. I always do, nowadays. Everyone does, and it’s a game of chicken, to see who texts who first to say, “I need a beer”. Today, my girlfriend caves - beer? - and we quickly arrange to meet at a bar equidistant from our homes. We both have early mornings the next day, so efficiency is key. After we hang up, she sends me a Google Cal invite to unwind for exactly 2 hours and not a minute more. It’s a sort of inside joke, but also not really.
8:00 PM
I am not even kidding when I say that the highlight of my day is locating a mask that matches my top. I derive such flat, pathetic joy from frivolity. It’s super illegal to go out mask-less in Singapore; you get fined $300, then $1,000 each subsequent time you get caught without one. The government has given out several rounds of reusable masks to all citizens so there’s no excuse, but still.
So, we’ve all pivoted. We’re leaning hard into masking, now.
Here is what I know about masks. It’s easier to breathe in the surgical ones, but they’re really only effective when they’re BFE >95% certified, and also, if you don’t cut the straps before disposing of them, they might strangle the sea creatures or birds that haven’t been killed by climate change yet. The reusable cloth ones with little pockets for filters are more environmentally friendly, and act as vehicles of self-expression: I’ve seen masks printed with smiley faces, cartoon characters, batik designs, and even swear words. There’s a whole market for it. The ones made of mulberry silk purport to be antimicrobial and prevent ‘maskne,’ but everyone knows their main function is to be pretty. Plus, they flap around and stick to your nostrils every time you inhale. Uniqlo has launched masks in their famous AIRism fabric, triggering long queues all around the city, which seems counterintuitive, but what do I know. How can I find it so hard to hold on to things but remember every last mask-related detail? Things are so horrible, yet so trivial. They are so consistent. I tighten the straps around the back of my ears, pick up my keys, and go.
