Day 14: Things to have in isolation

The end of our isolation is feeling very close now. We haven't had our final Covid results back yet but we're hoping they're not far off.

Today was a day of working and watching the afternoon rain.

I had an interesting chat with one of the army guys working here. Within a few minutes we had discovered we both knew someone from his hometown, which reminded me of how interconnected New Zealand is. He was saying that the army are concerned about losing personnel because so many have been pulled in to support the isolation and quarantine effort, which is not what they'd probably envisaged doing when they joined up. The challenge will be to keep them engaged and morale up until things return to normal. Let's be realistic -- that probably won't be the case until a vaccine is widely available.

Things to have in isolation

If you happen to find yourself heading to an isolation facility anytime soon, here is a list of things we have found useful and those things we wish we'd brought along ....

Things we found useful:

  • Portable speaker: music has kept us sane
  • Multi-box: there are never enough power plugs in a room, especially with three people
  • Ability to play Australian streaming services through TV (laptop, HDMI cable, VPN service)
  • Travel washing line + pegs: For making an outdoor washing line (though not all isolation hotels will have access to the outside). The hotel does do clothes washing (for free) but 
  • Laptops for doing work, planning etc, ideally with wireless mouse + keyboard
  • Scissors (opening packets of milk and lots of other things)
  • Books
  • Craft activity materials
  • Headphones for everyone: good to be able to listen to stuff without bothering others, or shut off the sound of others when needed
  • Notepad
  • Travel knife: a sharp one for cutting fruit etc.
  • Ability to buy stuff online from a nearby supermarket for delivery to the hotel: we set this up when we arrived and only made one order but it was great to have. The amount of food the hotel provides is more than enough (too much in fact), along with tea, coffee etc. but sometimes there are those special things you want.
  • Umbrella: sometimes it is raining but you still need that walk to stay sane.

What we wished we’d brought:

  • More light clothing for warm weather living: we'd expected to be stuck in a hotel room most of the time before heading to the cooler south, however we've had warm and slightly humid weather in Auckland so have had the sliding door open most days and been on daily walks.
  • Flip flops/jandals
  • Lots of downloaded TV shows and movies: sometimes the internet wasn't always that great

Thanks to our neighbour Jo for helping with some of the above.

A couple of good articles worth reading:


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