Safe distancing brings families together

To those complaining about safe distancing, the irony is it brings families together. In fact “safe distancing has meant being in touch with relatives and friends living miles apart. Through family chats I now know more things about my near and distant relatives whom I would not have known if life was “normal”.

This blog comes from my side of the family, the Adea-Navarro, and they are scattered all over the world living in the US, Portugal, and London. So through our chats we have come to know not only of our roots but also about vignettes that we would otherwise have forgotten.

The COVID-19 has also forced us to change our way of life. Before, the concern was how to make a lot of money to buy luxury goods and eat in expensive restaurants. In our village in Alabang housewives are turning to cooking as a business.

Those who worked in offices have daily conferences to keep the economy going. We don’t know how the new normal will be after COVID-19 but it will change. This morning was the first time I went out of the house to look for a clinic offering blood tests. Having stayed home for almost a month, it was a sight to see empty streets and only the street sweepers doing an essential job.

A son will be sore at me because the COVID-19 brought me to the Korean telenovela. He said it’s not important enough for a column. Maybe. But these Korean telenovelas are more informative than media reports on the North-South division of the country.

I used to be addicted to watching Downtown Abbey and had a crush on Matthew Crawley, a middle class lawyer who would be the heir to the Crawley fortune because he was the nearest male relative to the Crawley family. Very entertaining and shows how life was with the interaction between the upper and lower classes that ultimately changed with more equality and tolerance.

But the crush I had for Matthew Crawley was soon replaced by Hyun Bin, the handsome Korean lead actor Hyun Bin of “Crash Landing on You” in Netflix. His features are Oriential and attractively  chinky eyed.

It might seem trivial but the theme of the Korean telenovela “Crash Landing On You” helped me understand the notion of how a divided country is not just about politics but the common lives of individuals torn by love and loyalty. These might be trivial but we can look at our politics and see how Imelda’s past and her obsession to be considered a wealthy Romualdez did more to politics than any other factor at the time.

And now for the more serious. More people support return to work in an online survey during the mid NCR ECQ extension.

This was posted by PUBLiCUS Asia Inc as the result of their online survey. This solid support is an indication of what people want to do – they want to work.

However, PUBLiCUS executive director and spokesperson Aurelio Sinsuat noted that Metro Manila employees would likely not be able to return to work in the couple of weeks as President Duterte announced on Friday morning that the ECQ would be extended in the National Capital Region and other high risk areas until May 15.

“A controlled return to work implies a gradual build-up of employees physically present at workplaces conducting non-essential business. This is unlikely to happen until after May 15 because the second extension of the ECQ in Metro Manila means the restrictions on non-essential businesses will continue to apply,” Sinsuat said.

“The government needs to prepare its game plan for getting non-essential businesses back up-and-running once the ECQ ends. Metro Manila alone accounts for 38 percent of Philippine GDP. Rebooting the Metro Manila economy will be critical to staving off a national recession,” he added, referencing the PUBLiCUS Freeze & Reboot economic plan for COVID-19 recovery.

NCR COVID-19 Online Panel Survey is an independent non-commissioned tracking survey designed by PUBLiCUS and VOX Opinion Research (VOX). The survey data was processed and analysed by VOX, the in-house strategic research arm of PUBLiCUS.

The survey aims to gauge public opinion and perceptions on the following key indicators: Living Standards and Needs during the ECQ; National Government Performance; Local Government Performance; Existing/Proposed COVID-19 Policies.

The online fieldwork for the first run (Apr. 2-6, 2020) and the second run (Apr. 13-18, 2020) of the survey was conducted in partnership with Lightspeed Research/Kantar (Singapore). Lightspeed provided an online panel of 1,000 Metro Manila residents aged 18-70 from its pool of 100,000 Philippine panelists. The number of respondents per city was distributed proportionally based on official population data. 

Lightspeed is now the Asia-Pacific headquarters of Kantar, a leading firm in the global data industry with a panel reach of 88 million respondents in 90 markets worldwide according to its website.

 More information on the purposive sampling methodology and panel selection process of the survey can be found here. Reference: Mr. Aurelio C. Sinsuat, PUBLiCUS Executive Director, E-mail: [email protected]