These days of crashing at about half past two and being up around nine seem to be quite normal. But today was a tad earlier since I had a call to get on. German-styled breakfast again. Lunch was a highlight — ordered some Chinese food (butter prawns, squid, lala soup, and glass noodles). It was extremely scrumptious, but the kicker is the restaurant called us to inform they were open for deliveries. We last ate there approximately six months ago. Clearly, restaurants are doing “inside sales” now and are finding a hard time (1.5 months so far to close right?). Had to pay cash for this transaction. Did an Ishaq workout and felt hungry after, so an omelette was on the plate.
The Star has gone behind a paywall. I really don’t know how I feel about paying RM9.90 a month. I do read the business news, but it is still money that goes to a MCA controlled entity… (public listed, 27 sen, thankful I didn’t buy in at 50 sen; EPF ceased being a substantial shareholder, they’re doing a share buy back now). Besides, it is not that I don’t pay for media… I’m probably in the top 1% of readers out there buying tonnes of media.
Malaysia’s Covid-19 situation gave us 170 new cases, total infections now 4,987, 5 deaths (total: 82), 202 discharged (total: 2,478). Singapore has had a massive spike, with 334 new cases, numbers standing at 3,252, and from a data visualisation standpoint, I think CNA gets it correct.
It seems that the UK has decided an extension to the lockdown makes sense, so they get 3 more weeks. The problem is, “The Treasury warns of “systemic failures” if the economy is not brought out of its coma by mid-summer. “There’s a point where there just isn’t anything to come back to,” one well-placed source said.” And if this goes on longer, the UK economy could shrink by 35% with 2m job losses, warns OBR (and if you want some nice graphs, The Times satisfies). This is just looking ugly. Even the IMF says so, Coronavirus: global economic downturn in 2020 likely to be worst since Great Depression, IMF says (naturally, I expect one to read beyond the headline, and unpack the statistics).
Back to Malaysia. It seems there’s yet another contact tracing app being developed, this time by Khairy and MOSTI. I am not entirely convinced, but will want to analyse this further, likely tomorrow if I have a bit more time. So far the rest of the world seems to be thinking about deaths in nursing homes (old folks homes to some), but in Malaysia we don’t hear much about this at all, which I consider weird.