I'm a 30-year-old woman and my dad has just told me to clean my room.
It's slightly humiliating, but not entirely surprising. For the past month, I've been at my childhood home in New Zealand on coronavirus lockdown -- and it appears I'll be living with my parents for the foreseeable future.
Until recently, I lived in my own apartment in Hong Kong with a spirited cat and a large collection of potted plants. My interests included heading to the beach or grabbing a drink in a pub.
Now, my hobbies are a bit different. Last weekend, I made five different types of bread. This weekend, we have grand plans to go on a walk.
For almost all of my adult life, I've lived in different cities to my mum and dad. After all those years of only staying in touch via intermittent phone calls, for a month, my parents have been basically the only people I've talked to face-to-face.
Back in late January, as the coronavirus outbreak grew increasingly serious in mainland China, CNN's Hong Kong office largely shut down and I was asked to work from home. At first, I enjoyed the novelty of wearing my pyjamas during work meetings. But as the weeks wore on, my 370 square feet (34 square meters) studio apartment only seemed to get smaller, and work days and weekends bled into one another.
So, at the start of March, I decided to work from my parents' home in New Zealand for two weeks.
I left my cat with a willing friend, and headed to New Zealand, which at the time only had a handful of cases. I had visions of going to see my brother's band play and hanging out with my best friend. Although my parents are in their 60s, they are both fit and healthy, and we didn't feel like I would be putting them at risk.
