Best Thing About Lockdown
[00:00:00] Track 3: Thank you for listening to Vietnam podcast by Seven Million Bikes. We share the stories of people with a love for Vietnam. My name is Niall Mackay. And I'm your host. I've lived in Vietnam since 2016. As the show has grown. We know, talk to people from all over the world who have a Vietnam story this year. At the end of every episode, we ask our guests the same set of questions each time.
[00:00:32] Niall Mackay: So enjoy this bonus. In his compilation episode where you can hear our guests answer what was the best thing about lockdown for them it's been a tough year for everyone but hopefully we can see Some positives
[00:00:43] We'd love to hear from you what has been. The best thing about lockdown for you? So send us a message on the socials or better still join the Seven Million army facebook group and post your answer there There's a link in the show notes enjoy
[00:01:04] What's been the best thing about lockdown.
[00:01:07] Brian Letwin: Very obvious things. Time with family on a couple levels. One the daughter, like you mentioned before, it's just great to be. That's probably the biggest singular silver lining of this all. Is that in general before. So busy all the time that I'd see my daughter for 30 minutes in the morning before she went to school.
[00:01:25] And then in the best case scenario for maybe two hours after getting home from work and being tired after work too, and things like this. And then, you know, usually say three nights a week, I'd have some after work, work thing, some client thing or some event to go to. So even then I wouldn't see her very often.
[00:01:45] And now for better or for worse, definitely. I, I mean, we, she wakes up at between five 30 and I hate her for that and Seven best case. And that rarely happens. My print best case is more like six 30. And the deal with my wife is she takes care of her. If she wakes up in the middle of the night, cause I'm a fussier sleeper.
[00:02:08] My wife can pass out again pretty quickly. And then I am the one who puts her to bed at night. And when she wakes up in the morning, I'm the one who hangs out with her. So, and then, so yeah, wake up with her at like six or whatever, go. Maybe take her outside for a walk for a little bit or play with her, watch some baseball because 6:00 AM coincides with east coast baseball start times and yeah, make breakfast and then do some exercise in the morning.
[00:02:33] And then with her, you know, it's still her nap time. My wife and I switch off like office hours in this room where the other person works in the living room kind of half working, half. And then she takes a nap for like an hour. And then that takes us to this like eight o'clock, 8 30, 9 o'clock at night.
[00:02:48] And then I have like an hour or an hour and a half to watch some bullshit, like before. And then I go to bed. I'm too tired to stay up to, like when it gets to 11, I'm like, oh, I'm really pushing it. So, but it's great. It's wonderful. She's hilarious. She's an easy kid. All things being equal, especially for someone who's not able to like go out and expend their energy, not to make a comparison, but as a dog owner, you know, that like, if they don't, aren't able to release some of this stuff, like it manifests in other ways.
[00:03:18] And. Yeah. So we put her on the balcony and she does this thing called gymnastics, where she goes up on the drying rack, which is like the metal drying rack of clothes. And she just like, like a little monkey just climbs up and down. And like, does these like really what she thinks is like Olympic level, these one handed kind of like this and like, you know, have her legs out of the perfect posture for about an hour.
[00:03:39] And then she comes in and drenched in sweat at like five o'clock and it's pretty, pretty great. And then spending time with my wife is also wonderful. I think we've to our, both of our credits done a good job. Respecting each other's space and realizing that this is a difficult time for any couple. And that work, we have to be a little bit more lenient than we probably otherwise would with each other in each other's habits and things.
[00:04:03] So, yeah, it's been overwhelming, positive and spending also more time with my parents on video chats as well. We've been doing more of that. So, whereas we used to talk to them like once a week now we talked to them like at least once a day.
[00:04:19] Track 3: It's time for myself. I love that. Yeah. I think I, I don't know if you can tell, but I'm a very social person and I, I need that. I need to get out. I need to talk to people. But it's true that when you always spend time outside, then you don't really, you know, go back and then really ask yourself questions and know who you really are.
[00:04:41] So yeah, during this time I've been reading a lot of books and I've been doing a lot of feelings. I know I saw one of those books back in words and 92. Yeah. But that's what I do every day. And I, I think that I understand myself much more now. Yeah. I, I love this because I don't have FOMO anymore because everybody says, oh, I can set.
[00:05:06] You can spend this time then really like, you know, think about what I'm going to do about my, my job, about what I'm doing right now. And do I really want to do that and still not yet. So I think a great time for myself to things and not scared that everybody is, everybody stay home.
[00:05:29] Tracey Nguyen Mang: At the beginning of the lockdown in 2020, it felt very surreal, but I almost like enjoyed it.
[00:05:39] And here's the reason is because. Both my husband and I have such demanding jobs at the time. Cause I was still doing the podcast in corporate America at the time. I felt like the lockdown allowed me to be with my children. We didn't have to commute. We had, you know, we were taking long walks together.
[00:05:59] We were, you know, they didn't have all these activities that I had to shuffle them to on the weekends. And so I actually quite enjoyed it. And then my husband and I were like having wine and watching TV together. So at the beginning it was almost. For me, it was a blessing because they were things that we didn't because of the hustle and bustle of our lives that we actually never took the time to really focus and be present for obviously like other families that got old quick.
[00:06:30] Phuc Map: I think discovering more about my relationship with my wife. You know, we heard in the beginning, even last year, when the lockdown started, that divorce rates were up, suicide rates were up, drug addictions were up domestic violence, things up.
[00:06:45] Track 3: And my wife and I we've been together about three and a half years and being stuck in that house together made me realize that's why I married her because we can get along in complete silence. My wife likes to play video games. So we'd play call of duty on the phone a lot. We can watch the same movies and TV shows and.
[00:07:07] Yeah, building this relationship has been great. In fact, when we got married, we lived in a very, I was, you know, as the Scottish, I was very cheap. I had 4 million a month apartment, which by apartment, it was just a room and a bathroom and we got married and she moved in with me and it's like half the closet for me, half the, cause a verb, no kitchen.
[00:07:29] And once we got through that, and now that we've been through a couple of lockdowns here, I feel like it's strengthened our relationship and I feel coffin and saying we can spend what's together without getting out of the house and be just fine.
[00:07:42] Jovel Chan: my neighbors. And I got really close.
[00:07:45] Niall Mackay: We have like
[00:07:49] Jovel Chan: yeah, we got really close. And the rest of the building and I, we yeah, we got rid of the clubs because we wanted to get vegetable delivery.
[00:07:56] And back at the time, when we were under the military Mahershala martial law in lockdown, they used to do only like eight kg, minimum vegetable deliveries. So went around knocking on everybody's doors and then it was great. And yeah, it was really cool.
[00:08:14] Zoonie Nguyen: Well, funny enough, thanks to zoo. Thanks to all the platforms that are now is to connect.
[00:08:20] The best thing I would say is that it gave me. What time? It gave me more time because I don't have to travel. I can travel online and just hop on zoom or, you know, meet or Google or Skype. And then, you know, it takes a few seconds and that's where I am. So I think it's, you know, my mindset is different now and made because it's been almost two years, we don't have the choice.
[00:08:44] So, you know, the best thing is that it gave me more time and more time also to be with my families. Because before that we're everywhere. We're not at home and yeah. And meet people like you and all this. And I'm so, so grateful. Very grateful.
[00:08:59] Niall Mackay: Well, you've got to find the positives in there. The how there have been positives throughout this and the connection with people from around the world has been a really big one SIM SIM for me as well.
[00:09:09] Martial Geniére: I think it's my cat giving birth to four kittens. Wow. Four ketones during look down. Yeah, you can't, you got an L then she's been your cat's been going out getting more busy than you have.
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