The Pneumonia Scare

Right. The Wuhan Pneumonia Scare. The Coronavirus. Whheee!

Not really as scary as the media has made it to be, at least, in my circles. It’s caused a bit of inconvenience in that face masks and hand sanitizers are like gold currently, prices are skyrocketing.

I always had a stash of face masks anyway so it’s fine. I don’t use hand sanitizers. I prefer to outright wash my hands.

And I was gutsy enough to travel out to Hong Kong yesterday as well! My good friends C and P have our annual “Third-day of Chinese New Year Lunch” (Chinese custom: don’t visit people on the third day of CNY as you’re going to argue 赤口) in Disneyland this time. I thought it was simply because of the character dim sum, and C thought it was because it’s “the year of the Rat” (so, Mickey Mouse), and well, P says it was simply to eat.

No surprises though, the food sucked LOL (as one would imagine these cutesy foods would taste). Though they didn’t even actually looked nice... *shrugs*



The park (Disneyland) was actually closed yesterday! We simply just went there for lunch. Shopped a bit at the gift shop (got a nifty knit cardigan-poncho thing for half price!) Then, back to Macau. Immigration was clunky with the extra health check point. But otherwise it wasn’t too bad.

Can’t believe I actually went to HK Disney twice this month. Took mom (and her friend) there last week to have a walk around and this time for lunch.

Pneumonia Scare 2

In less than 3 hours, there has been a development. Government institutions will get Thursday and Friday off as well.

Let me explain.

We have a maybe complicated, but probably enviable "public holiday" system.

Government holidays are divided into "Statutory Holidays" and "Public Holidays."

"Statutory Holidays" (triple pay days) are holidays that no matter what, an employee will get. It's 10 days a year. Big holiday days like 1-January, 1-May, the 3 days of Chinese New Year, etc... are Statutory Holidays. The employer MUST give the employee this holiday. If the staff has to work on these Statutory holidays, they get an extra day off and extra pay, with the extra day off and extra pay combined equivalent to a "triple pay". If a Statutory day falls on your regular day off, you get to have a "Compensation day off".

Regular public holidays are not obligatory. If it falls on your regular day off, you will not get a "compensation". You either get the day off, or if you work you get a "double pay", but you don't get the extra day off.

In my company, we just newly got the all-holidays thing (we used to only get the Statutory holidays, now we get the regular public holidays as well).

Anyway, for these 3 CNY days, as it falls on a Saturday and a Sunday, we get compensation day offs. I can use 2 days of holidays within 180 days now. Government institutions though, have the custom to get the compensation day offs immediately after. So the City is practically dead until tomorrow. I chose to work these 2 days because I like the flexibility to choose my future day offs, and going to work these 2 days is almost like not going to work anyway (not many people working anyway)

But now that the government has announced for people to not work on Thursday and Friday....  this is a dead city this week.

I need to deposit 2 cheques..... I wonder if the banks will open on Thursday.