First published in The Financial Times on October 4 2020 and reprinted in our local paper on October 6, Pilita's Clark's piece 'Why the hair salon, gym and work-related travel may never be the same again' got me chuckling.
We learnt to live with minor inconveniences during the lockdown, especially haircuts (for all genders with short hair), and going to the gym. I keenly felt the loss of that. Health is paramount on the agenda of course. There's also the camaraderie amongst gym-mates who don't need/want to be friends, the equipment and the useful instructors some instructors dole out. For some services like haircuts, they're still irreplaceable.
Now that Singapore is halfway back to life pre-lockdown (nobody's talking about the consequences of a second wave when leisure traveling is permitted and cities open their borders), I suppose we've all done a minor stock-taking of our lifestyles and our habits. I did, and realized that there aren't many to revise or change. These and priorities have already shifted last June when Choya came along.
And just think: But for the pandemic, he never would have thought of doing something he wished he had started years ago.
Listening to him talk reminded me of a question that keeps recurring as the Covid crisis goes on.
Will my friend’s discovery — and others like it — end up leaving even deeper scars on some business sectors than the lockdowns and social distancing that are causing so much financial pain today?
Put another way, once you learn that you can do something cheaper, faster and better at home, will you ever go back to paying someone else more to do it for you?
Gyms & Workouts
Well, I quit the gym. Found a loophole eight months into a two-year contract and hustled out of it. The gym suspended all my favorite classes, many of the good instructors left and their replacements suck. I didn't want to pay membership fees to go to classes that I don't enjoy.
My one-on-one pilates and gyrotonic classes in the studio? Those, to me, are irreplaceable. I'm continuing with them. As much as I can exercise without equipment, I enjoy the pointers and corrections at the studios for pilates and gyrotonic. I prefer to stretch on those equipment than to use a stool, a resistance band and a yoga block at home. I'm not that disciplined, so it's very tough for me to keep to an exercise regime at home for months. I can do it for two, three months maybe. But to continue as such, I'll sorely miss the studios. I currently use Aaptiv for my workouts and tweak them to my preferences.
I've stopped running frequently too. Oof. It's tiring okay. During lockdown, I ran like... maybe three to four times a week to get some sort of caloric burn. But it doesn't really do that much for cardio unless I keep to sprinting 5km in 25 minutes, or 3km in under 15 minutes. Which is what I like. It's efficient. In August and September, I slacked off those runs. Now, I just do one run a week. That's more than sufficient for me. Last week and this week, I'm using the weather as an excuse — I haven't done a single run at all. HAHAHAHAHA. I still do 25 press-ups every day. That's easy. But if I'm not careful and forget about my lats, I'll lose strength in the muscles needed to do pull-ups.
Hair & Hair Salons
I can't very well cut my own hair right? The hairdresser still has to do it for me. Trimming the hair thrice a year sounds about right. I've let the hair grow out so I can simply tie it up and have it out of my face while exercising. A short bob is a tad irritating, and I'd have to go shorter to have it practical.
I don't have a habit of going to the salon to 'do my hair'. I don't bother with attending social events much, so there isn't a need to like... be glamorous. Neither is a 'wash and blow' part of my living habits. I wash my own hair fine. I'm not the kind of girl who bothers dressing up or finds it fun. I find it a chore still. Hahaha.
I don't color my hair often now. I don't have the patience to sit at a hair salon for hours. I don't find it pleasurable. It eats into the time that I could use to do so many other things. I touch up the grey roots now and then, and I can easily do that at home with a DIY color kit. At some point, I'll go naturally grey, and that's fine by me.
Whatever else we do for entertainment, and oh the arts?
Where has 2020 gone? Ahhh right, it has been canceled. It's already October. Two more months to the end of the year, and surprise surprise, nobody has year-end travel plans. Ha. When we brought Choya home, I was just thinking to myself 'bye bye long-haul trips'. I didn't count on being aided on this by a pandemic outbreak. I'm likely not traveling in 2021 either.
Not stepping into a movie theater anytime soon. I'd love to step into a theater to watch a ballet or a play, but it's tough to do that unless they can disinfect those seats. As it was, on normal days, I didn't exactly find them very hygienic.
I've still drastically reduced dining out. Why bother. I do cook, just not bothered to do fancy or complicated. I don't have the time to do three-hour dinners. I really don't have the luxury of staying on for drinks at bars because my dog needs to pee. I also sleep by midnight nowadays. Chilling out over coffee at cafes isn't quite the norm for me now. I've stopped doing that frequently when Choya joined the home. I do a hit-and-run. The cafes have got to be conveniently located, or at least have a good cup of caffeine. I do miss good coffee and it's nice to sit down for a lovely cup of piccolo latte once a week or so. Otherwise, a cup of kopi-o-siu-dai at Toast Box works too.
Once the pandemic eases, she thinks people will crowd back into bars and restaurants, where they will soon be saying: “Have you been to that new, bespoke kick-boxing gym? Well, I did. Let's try it.”
“This is the sort of thing that people do when they get together,” she told me recently.
Some things may change permanently, but not as many as we now think.
“Right now, we're in a strange period of rediscovery,” she says, and it may not last.
She is probably right, but it’s a period of rediscovery that I hope will last for quite a while to come.
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