4 months in (and learning we can't get out).

As soon as we finished setting up the house, the Premier announced that WA was going into lockdown and travel was going to be banned for the next six months, I felt really miserable. But I'm realising now that I am blessed to still able to do the things I've been doing since I've been here. I can still do my supermarket runs. I can still go for my walks at the parks or along the beaches. I can still cook up a storm in the kitchen and fatten us up for winter. I can still tend to my garden, read my books, hang out with the cats and watch movies till I get giddy.

I had earlier thought this coming Hari Raya is going to be painful for me because I won't be able to fly back home. I'll be seeing family and relatives get together, wearing their beautiful outfits, eating all that good food, and I'll be feeling left out and terribly homesick. Well, now everyone back home is going through lockdown as well and in fact, it's worse over there. I think my parents haven't seen my brother for more than a month! In the meantime, the beaches are open again over here!

So what's it like to be in our position? To be somewhere new, and just learning to fit in and stabilise ourselves, and then be hit by a pandemic? This one is a good story to tell around the coffee table. It has given us time to really pause. To enjoy the things we love doing and never could back in sg. To just be. To enjoy the space and nature we have so much of here. To gain confidence and experience as new residents. It's almost like a blessing to us. That said, we can't wait for the travel ban to be lifted so we can re-book our tickets and fly back home, hug our loved ones tight, tell them we miss them.

We were at Scarborough Beach. Covid-19 impacts are starting to be felt everywhere around the world. Practising physical distancing isn't hard at all in a place like Perth, thank goodness.