I’ve always thought of myself as a book reader rather than a TV-watcher, but all this went out of the window in the strange and early days of the first Movement Control Order. Suddenly, I was captive in front of the screen, randomly flicking through channels, trying to find something that would hook my attention and keep it.

Naturally, Netflix came up with its laundry list of suggestions, most of which I ignored (what algos do they use again?) until I stumbled on The Untamed for about the fifth time and decided to watch it. The first two episodes made no sense (this is one of those shows designed for you to watch a second time to get all the things you missed in your first viewing) and then I really got into it.

It wasn’t until my eighth viewing of the same 50 episodes that I figured that this was not normal behaviour, and I may in fact, have a problem. A friend and colleague who was addicted to some other shows used the shows as a way of exercising. She walked up and down, amassing steps on her trusty device, her attention riveted on her tiny screen. I don’t know what this did to her state of mind, but I do know that sometimes her step count reached 25,000 because she allowed the episodes to progress one after another, without stopping.

But I digress. Whatever meanings I could wrest from my eighth viewing of the same show, there was no getting away from the fact that I could have used that time to read a book. Several books, in fact. Or write a letter (although posting letters at this time was a sort of an exercise in futility since the post office effectively refuses your mail). Or started on a magnum opus.

I recognised what was happening. About two decades ago, I read Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, an excellent book about the frying of our brains through prolonged exposure to mindless entertainment (and in this, he included the evening news and so-called educational programmes such as Sesame Street, long-touted as one of the benefits of TV). 

He set the world created by George Orwell in 1984, where an evil power imposes its will (and mandates) on the people to one created by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World, where people didn’t have to be cowed into subjection but gave up their power willingly, hypnotised by what was disguised as entertainment.

“For in the end, Huxley was trying to tell us what afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking,” Postman observes.

For context, all of this happened, when everyone had their plates full with work. We did not have less work because of the pandemic; we had more. The fact that everything had to happen online did not make any difference. There were still pages to fill.

But being confined at home and not having a good chunk of your day stuck in traffic, seemed to imply that there were great swathes of time to be filled. Some people baked bread. (I baked fruitcake when I was not stuck in front of the TV, mindless and passive). Some people (in this team, in fact) made Dalgona coffee. Some followed the exploits of people who were not in fact, stuck at home. Others listened to Harry Potter audiobooks ad nauseam.

Postman warned that the television sets (or if he had lived longer, he would have included computer or phone screens) encouraged passive receptivity, which had an impact on our ability to think. And even when you knew it was happening, it was difficult to fight.

And that was how we came up with the theme for this bumper. To look at all the ways people stuck at home, chose to amuse themselves (to death, or perhaps, just a state of comatose absorption), and what we could take from these two years of suspended animation. 

I have always found my mother’s obsession with soap operas rather disconcerting. The commitment to organise her daily routine around airings, the attention to detail when she recounts the trials and tribulations of her favourite characters and the way she looks forward to the never-ending cliffhangers were always baffling.

There are serials that she has been watching for years, and she can’t bear to miss a single episode. She becomes so deeply involved in the lives of certain characters that sometimes she walks away in a huff and then returns to her recliner to replay the scenes she missed.

I have even caught my usually polite mother verbally abusing characters (usually an extremely entitled husband or wicked mother-in-law) or expressing utter disappointment over the stoic behaviour of a beloved character (almost always a highly accomplished and docile daughter-in-law). Having been a homemaker for most of her married life, these soap operas have been a constant source of comfort and diversion.

Admittedly, on rare occasions, I too tend to get reeled in (classic sitcoms such as I Dream of Jeannie and The Nanny being favourites), especially when I need a respite from the daily grind. But I never fixated on any for long. That is, until the pandemic hit and for the first time, I found myself with little to distract me from the chaos of working from home and the onslaught of depressing world events.

Like most of my generation, I tried baking for a while. But there’s only so much banana bread and pasta chips a family can tolerate. I tried cultivating my sourdough starter, which failed miserably (I was secretly glad because I dislike sourdough).

Some recipes, especially Korean ones, have become perennial family favourites. Twenty-two months later, I still treat myself to an occasional glass of iced dalgona coffee — for which I even acquired a miniature battery-operated whisk — and am on the path to mastering Maangchi’s kimchi and crunchy fried chicken recipes.

What truly offered escape, however, were K-dramas — the epitome of South Korean entertainment after K-pop and movies, collectively known as Hallyu, Chinese for the Korean Wave.

I had held off succumbing to the lure for years. While my colleagues and friends would gush over the incredibly suave Gong Yoo and captivating Hyun Bin, I would tell myself that it’s a slippery slope knowing my bingeing tendencies from my days of playing Counter-Strike for eight hours straight.

But Netflix recommendations wouldn’t relent and a girl’s got only so much willpower. Having run out of shows to watch, I chanced upon Start-Up — a story of budding entrepreneurs competing to make their mark in the cutthroat world of South Korea’s high-tech industry and finding themselves in a love triangle.

The archetypal melodrama aside, screenwriter Park Hye-ryun skilfully packaged social prejudices, mental health and the struggles of those with disabilities with themes of family, friendship and love. 

I have since binged on Signal, Crash Landing on You, Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok-joo, It’s Okay to Not Be Okay, Guardian: The Lonely and Great God, Itaewon Class, Kingdom and Hometown Cha Cha Cha — covering romance to suspense to a zombie apocalypse, all while challenging conventions and stigma. 

It took only 16 episodes (in one sitting) to turn me into a fan of all things Korean. I have started using Korean catchphrases, wondering about life in South Korea and googling haejang-guk recipes.

And I thought my mother was losing it! 

I learnt that it is possible for me to get sick of Harry Potter. To my close friends and family, please hold your gasps, and let me explain.

Before the pandemic, I would listen to Stephen Fry’s reading of all the Harry Potter books — maximum three chapters a day — while driving to the office and before I sleep. So, when the pandemic hit and I had more time on my hands, I listened to more chapters in a day, which also meant that I finished the audiobooks faster than usual.

And while the audiobooks played in the background, I kept my fingers busy with the Harry Potter Puzzles & Spells mobile game (like Candy Crush, only better). In pre-pandemic times, it would take me about a week to finish listening to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone but during the pandemic, it only took a couple of days.

That’s four times faster than usual. Silly ole me figured: “If I finish it faster, I can listen to more of it!” Until the bleak reality hit that Vanessa Gomes, indeed, could get sick of Harry Potter. 

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I never want to have anything to do with Harry Potter ever again. I just need a gap, a breather, before revisiting the magical wizarding world that I call home. But I was left with a gaping hole the size of Hagrid and I needed to fill my time.

I turned to Netflix, specifically to Friends, but before long, I found myself sick of Friends too. Thankfully, just around that time, Netflix released season one to 15 of Grey’s Anatomy. Having followed Grey’s for close to 10 seasons before losing track, I took this as a sign from God to continue on this medical journey. The Grey-Shephard romance kept me occupied and took me on an emotional roller coaster that definitely kept me entertained.

And once I was done with that, I found that I had the urge to watch the series from Season One. I didn’t understand why I was drawn to shows that I had already watched (and re-watched a million times), but when I spoke to Association of Private Counselors (Counselling Psychology) president Johana Dato’ Johari on the overconsumption of entertainment, I learnt that my habits were a coping mechanism.

She said during times of uncertainty, like during the pandemic lockdowns, the mind seeks things that are familiar to feel a sense of comfort and security. It could also be a sign of mental illness, such as anxiety, which is something I wasn’t conscious of at that time.

Thankfully, with the help of my god-sister, I managed to channel my restlessness and Potter obsession into creating personalised wand holders to showcase my wand collection. I was never one who excelled in art classes, but for the first time in my life, I was interested in art and put my heart and soul into it.

This has now evolved into a long-term project to fill my bedroom wall (pictured above) and I’m thankful to the pandemic for pushing me out of my comfort zone.

I love hiking. You can imagine, then, how stuck I felt when we were unable to go outside during the lockdown. That was when I stumbled upon vlogs of thru-hikers in the US who were completing the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) on the West Coast.

A thru-hike is a long-distance backpacking trip. The PCT is a famous thru-hike trail in the US that goes from the southernmost tip of California, dominated by deserts, through the snowy Sierra Nevada Mountain ranges and ends at the tip of Washington state at the Canada-US border. It is 4,270km long and typically takes five months of daily hiking, camping and carrying all of one’s necessities in a rucksack to complete. 

The scenery on the trail was surreal and a far cry from the four walls and computer screen that I was facing all day. Soon, I was consuming multiple thru-hike vlogs from the PCT and Appalachian Trail, another famous thru-hike on the East Coast. I loved watching these resilient hikers on the adventures of their lives.

But as the lockdown dragged on, it became depressing. I couldn’t bear to watch people adventuring in nature when I only traversed up and down my stairs. So, I began watching vlogs of people living normal lives. At least, more normal than mine, because they were living in cities with less strict lockdowns.

For instance, I watched vlogs of people living in Seoul, visiting cafés, meeting friends, hiking and exploring new cities; I followed the lives of people in New York, Los Angeles, Sydney, Alabama, Tokyo and Boston, to name a few. The vloggers were mostly girls around my age and Asian-American. They were living in places that I either love or want to visit. 

I was quite literally, living vicariously through these vloggers. I wasn’t even consciously searching for new vlogs on YouTube. The algorithm, catching on to my taste for escapism, was constantly promoting these videos to me. 

At one point, I was so deep into these vlogs that I felt like these vloggers were my friends. They often answered questions from their followers on social media and shared their personal stories on the videos. When my parents talked about how the Covid-19 situation was in other countries, I was able to tell them because, I had literally seen it for myself.

These vloggers sustain themselves by promoting affiliate links or getting sponsored by brands. I was so familiar with these brands and convinced of their quality just because the vloggers were promoting them repeatedly. Luckily, I didn’t buy any of these things because they were all priced in US dollars. 

As the lockdown was gradually being lifted, I found myself lagging behind on my vlog watching. This is good. If I continue being hooked on vlogs, I’ll probably blur the boundaries between their lives and mine and eventually lose a sense of my own reality. But regardless, I’m thankful for these content creators. Without them, the isolation from almost two years of on and off lockdowns would have been unbearable. I just have to make sure that I don’t forget to have my own adventures instead of living vicariously through them.