July 2022
May and June continued Hong Kong’s tradition of being interesting and frustrating.
The big news on the personal front was that I contracted Covid-19 in early June. The process by which I discovered that I was positive was itself revealing. Wife Fanny like a great many local people is obsessed about and scared of contracting the virus. A number of her clients are similarly obsessed and made it a requirement that she undergo daily testing, and forward photos of the results to them as confirmation. Among those clients who signed up with TA Consulting around this time was front runner chief executive candidate John Lee Ka-chiu (see previous diary entry). Because she saw him so frequently during the campaign, Fanny had to test daily. One morning she tested me because of a slight fever and there were the dreaded two bars on the RAT device.
All attempts to register on the government website, as citizens were urged to do, failed: the IT kept telling me my entry was in the wrong format. After some 20 failures I gave up and called the hotline. Things from thereon worked well. Despite lack of a registration number I was given an appointment at the local clinic and successfully booked via another hotline a free taxi to take me there. Staff at the clinic could not have been more helpful. The clerk who registered me, the doctor who saw me and the pharmacist who dispensed the medicine were all highly competent and professional. Star of the show was the nurse who not only saw I got treated despite lack of advance registration but also helped me to register on my phone (though there were several more failed attempts first).
So the humans saved the day despite many failures of the IT systems. And the medicine worked. I felt much better from the first dose onwards, quarantined at home and duly tested negative on days five, six and seven. So no real effect on my health, and a lesson (reminder) that people have it over machines every time.
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