Singapore Quarantine Experience

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After 5 months of waiting we were finally allowed to complete our move from China to Singapore with special permission to enter Singapore. As part of the process, we are required to do 14 days of quarantine before we can go “out and about” into the public areas of Singapore. Because we were from America (a high risk country) we had to do our quarantine in a government sponsored facility - in this case at the Regent Hotel.

When we arrived in Singapore from LAX we had to go through both Health Check stations and typical Immigration processing. Unfortunately some of the online Health registration forms were out of service when we arrived so processing took longer than usual. We were then processed through Immigration, picked up our baggage, and assigned to a line to get on a bus to take us to our assigned hotel. At the hotel we waited in an waiting room area for room assignments. Fortunately families with kids were assigned adjoining rooms. This provided a bit more space as well as enabled me to work from one of the rooms while the kids and Katie play games in the other. During check-in we also were able to choose what meals we wanted to select for lunch/dinner during the 14 day stay. With check-in complete - we entered into our new 14 day residence - rooms 810 & 811.

Nothing much exciting happened during the 14 days. A typical day would involve:

  • Breakfast delivery around 7:30 - Cornflakes, some bread rolls, some fruit and juice/chocolate milk
  • Minecraft
  • Board Games
  • Lunch delivery around 12:00
  • More Minecraft
  • Tablets/Netflix
  • Arts & Crafts
  • Dinner around 5:30
  • Netflix
  • Showers
  • Bed-time around 8:00

Katie and the kids didn’t like a majority of the meals so we heavily used Grab Food, Panda Food, Amazon Now & RedMart for food subsidies. We have had a strong, positive impact on the Singapore economy. We ordered chips, cheese, 5 Guys, milkshakes, grapes and lots of other “necessities” during our quarantine time. Since Katie’s computer was still in storage we also bought a Dell Inspiron 7000 2-in-1 which has worked out really well.

I also worked most of the days in quarantine (at least partially). It was nice to be able to work in the same time-zone as the meetings and people I was working with after a few months of working Asia time from the US. Unfortunately the hotel wifi was not great most of the time so conference calls were often interrupted - so still not the best work experience ever (plus the challenge of occasional Minecraft breaks). Katie spent alot of time looking at apartments for our future house-hunting.

As one may imagine, quarantine with the kids has been vastly different than my other quarantines in Singapore, China & the US. Fortunately we are nearing the end of our quarantine time and everyone has survived so far (knock on wood). Soon we will move into temporary housing for 30 days and then into our permanent Singapore housing. Everyone is excited to get back to a norm - and to no longer be living out of suitcases and have the kids back in school!