Something to read

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 During the state of emergency, I spent most of my days in front of Google map, checking the route of some of the countries in Europe. As someone working at travel sector, I needed to know tour itineraries by heart. It was a homework to remember some of the major cities to stay, eat and do sightseeing, hiking and trekking.

However virtual experiences they were, it was worth doing because it makes you feel like traveling another countries. Every day, I spent few hours browsing through some of the sightseeing routes and hiking routes in Europe, in a hope to be ready to operate some tours scheduled in summer 2020.

Apart from working on a computer, I went through my bookshelf and did some readings. I picked some of the books that I could give a good laugh, or books which were enthralling enough to forget the reality for a while

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Girl with pearl earring

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Besides, I had a pile of books which was long overdue. I also felt a need to brush up languages while on furlough. I had my family to talk to and could listen to television and radios, so listening side of a language was satisfying enough. But I did need something to read - languages become deteriorated without daily input.

 

There was one book that I became curious – Daniel Defoe’s ‘ A journal of the Plague Year’. As far as I could see from the internet, this book seems to be the one which many people were reading in the spring of 2020.

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It was awkward at first, because the content of the book had quite many similarity with what was reported on the media in 2020 - although the book was written more than 400 years ago.

There are some online book reading communities, and some people were organizing regular reading events. I joined some. No matter how virtual they were, I needed someone who can share the reading experience, as well as keeping virtual contacts to avoid feeling loneliness.

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