Nicholas Quirke was playing keeping house on 5 March 2020 and started his day with vacuuming the apartment and planned to spend time in the kitchen preparing lunch. They had been ordering food and various items including a new salad bowl which had arrived but would not be delivered until 5pm as per the agreement with the neighbourhood officers. This meant he had to improvise with the marinade for his braised Tofu dish which would be added to the raw food salad he was preparing. Peng had to work and Nicholas filled the time with answering emails, chatting online with a friend, reading and making more space for his belongings. For the first time since they were locked in he felt a little tired and wanted to have a sleep, but he was determined not to drift into inertia and kept himself busy, even playing solitaire on the IPad was worth giving his attention to. After lunch, which was very tasty he allowed himself to eulogise to Peng about his abilities as a chef then after that flight of fancy and thought of Stuff Dhal on the menu he focussed on the preparation work he needed to do for his first Mandarin class. Studying vocabulary, Expression, Reading and Listening, his first impression was to delve into a stereotype and say it was all ‘Chinese’ to him, but of course, the truth was, it was. He noted that initially the most difficult aspect was probably going to be pronunciation though he was pleased to have scored 90% on the test. He changed the exercise routine on the advice of Personal Trainer Peng and did 30 minutes of High Impact training on the treadmill and actually found himself jogging which was not a pastime he ever thought he would find himself doing. It had never appealed to him on grounds of lost dignity, but finding himself in a running vest and shorts was not a look that helped him maintain any form of dignity and why bother worrying he thought and was then encouraged to stand on a machine that Made him find his core and shook him and his body fat In ways he really found unseemly. Still it was worth recording the moment for posterity. The officers carried up the order at 5pm and the debris from this mammoth delivery was quite overwhelming, The cupboards now stuffed with the demands of the house guest. He was going to have really earn his keep and do more cooking, starting with a food he was never without at home, now he finally had the ingredients to make his legendary Hummus. Peng had said that he would buy all food during the period of being confined to quarters, but even the parsimonious Mr Quirke could not allow the expense to rest on his friends shoulders and insisted that he pay at least half, if not all of it as he was being housed rent free. He managed to watch more of Parasite which he found thrilling but still did not get to see the end which would have to wait tIll his next gym session. Smoothie for dinner, home improvements as Peng put up a new towel rail and then as they watched another episode of ‘The Outsider’ to close the the day both enjoyed some of the most delicious strawberries either had ever eaten. He wanted an early night as he had his first Mandarin lesson early the next day which meant goodnight and bed.