Places and the Pandemic

Change — that is one of the words that we can associate with our current situation as a community. With the pandemic affecting every aspect of our daily living apparent in education, business, recreation or personal wellbeing, we must be able to adapt in order to cope up with these changes.

Nowadays, you can only set foot in most establishments under certain conditions. These conditions consist of wearing protective equipment such as face masks and face shields or even presenting a QR code for contact tracing purposes, as shown by the placard on the photo. This QR code assists our local government in tracing individuals that may be infected or have been in close contact with someone infected by COVID-19. In this manner, they can easily prevent the spread of the virus by automated contact tracing.

People from different walks of life come together at Plaza Rizal to relax, meet up with others, and eat the food available from the surrounding stalls. They wear masks for safety, only taking them off when they have to eat or drink something. This is a huge difference from that prior to the pandemic. Friends used to be all huddled up, families eating street food side by side, the chess players no longer get together to play, the visually impaired masseuses no longer offer their services and even the numerous food stalls are nowhere to be found.

Lines like this show how internet service providers became even more in demand, with how the new normal makes us adjust by doing things online such as working from home and partaking in

online classes. However, internet service providers are having frequent connection problems due to either technical difficulties or upgrades or improvements to satisfy customer demand. This affects us greatly as a community as most of us are now very reliant on the use of the internet for our daily activities.

The implementation of online classes led to classrooms in schools being unoccupied for over a year. Before the coronavirus, these classrooms served as the place for interaction between teachers and students. Now, there is a distance as teachers and students alike are forced to adjust to a new system of learning.

The COVID-19 pandemic has really challenged us as individuals and as a community. We have all experienced these changes, and most of us are struggling to adjust ourselves to them. We can only hope and take the actions necessary to give just even the slightest chance that things will finally change for the better.