Many of you may know I work from home in Hong Kong most of the time, while most of my colleagues (200+) are in Beijing. During this pandemic, I have done so since 23 January, right before the Chinese New Year.

Because of SARS in 2003, we Hong Kong people have been on high alert, and know very well what to do during a pandemic. The below are what I did to survive. I have shared these with some foreign friends, and hope these would be useful to others (and I hope these are not too late).

COVID-19 is highly contagious, much like flu, but with a much higher fatality (not as bad as Ebola).

Realistically eventually everyone is going to get it (as there are many infected people with no or little symptoms), but if one gets it now, it is dangerous. Feel free to roll your dice, but I am not going to do this.

Reducing chance of infection

Reducing the chance of infection is not only about you, but including everyone around and near you, and most of them are your loved ones. Once you are infected, people around you could also be infected easily. This has been proven.

Therefore, the fight is about reducing your chance of being infected. It will not be 100% as this cannot be achieved, but please do everything you could to reduce the chance as below:

  • Wash your hands and face often (NOT only hands). Your mouth, eyes and nose are the major infection routes (this is why you also need to wash your face).
  • No casual face rubbing (for example, nose picking or rubbing of eyes) unless you know your hands and face are clean. This may sound easy, but from my experience of dealing with very nasty chemicals at my PhD study, this is unexpectedly difficult (at that time I had to wear masks with filter to work for 4-6 hours per day).
  • Hand sanitizer is not absolutely necessary, but is essential when you have no access to water and soap on the street to clean your hands before scratching your face.
  • Avoid gathering (including family gathering) as much as you can. We do not want to deliver sufferings to our loved ones by our very own hands, do we?
  • Face mask has proven to be useful. This is only my conclusion, but because of my PhD experience of wearing mask, please understand I really hate wearing face mask. This is one major factor why Hong Kong people save themselves from this pandemic. Virtually everyone on the street in Hong Kong is wearing a mask (see picture below). It does not have to be surgical grade, but covering your mouth and nose (if possible, eyes also) with some form of filter could reduce your chance of being infected significantly, especially in places with a crowd (shopping mall, public transport, and so on). You will never be able to move fast enough from someone's sneeze unless you are a fast moving superhero like Flash.
  • However, because of shortage of supply of surgical face mask, we have to be clever to save our limited stock. There is a way to reuse your mask as virus could not survive for seven days. This idea is from a Hong Kong You-tuber Shiu Yuek Yuen, and please credit him for this. Put a used mask in an envelope for seven days before using it again. You could wipe the mask gently with dry cloth/tissue paper before doing so. Do NOT use wet cloth, and do NOT rub your mask as these would destroy the mask internal structure. If you have seven masks (I know this is not easy and may be a luxury now), you could have seven envelopes marking Monday to Sunday to complete a full cycle. If you do not need to go out very often, this could help a lot. However, this does NOT work for people working in high risk environment like hospitals or quarantine centers.

Stay healthy, stay happy

  • I know these are platitudes, but these are much needed than ever.
  • Now the gyms are closed (before that I went to gym at least twice per week), but you could exercise at home. I found Nintendo Switch Ring Fit Adventure very useful. Highly addictive, luring you to exercise everyday (I am dead after playing for 45 mins). Before my dumbbells arrived, I do my push workout with a 15kg bag of rice (......). Look around and you have all the tools necessary (though may not be very good). The only thing stopping you from exercising is your unwillingness.
  • This could be a good time to do things that you were too busy to do, like talking to your family more. In addition to this, work, and reading court decisions, for me, I have a lot of video games to clear ('ω')ノ.
  • Stop listening to news once in a while. No news is good news.

Working from home

I feel so lucky to be in an industry (the patent profession) allowing me to work from home. I know that it is difficult for other industries, but this could be done for many others. There is no reason to insist on going back to your office most of the time. It is in fact more efficient for me to work from home.

This means that we have to work with emails often. Below are my email tricks:

  • Keep track of your work with flag (in Outlook. In Gmail it is snooze). This is how I monitor whether people including myself have done the work by a certain date. I sometimes send emails to myself just for setting flags.
  • Delete emails once you have dealt with it (may be just after reading them). Move emails that you need to keep in specifically named folders. Keep you inbox clean as much as you could. Emails that you have not dealt with for 3 years (for me, 1 year), delete them, as there is no point of dealing with them anymore (hopefully your insurer is not knocking on your door).
  • Send emails with clear and short (as much as you can) title. If there is a deadline, say it in your email title, and say whether it is extendable or not.
  • Simply put, cut the crap!

It feels miserable now, but as Queen Elizabeth II said, we will meet (in person) again!

Originally published 12 April, 2020

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.