A mural brightens up a back lane in Kuala Kubu Baru. Photo: Joseph Lopez
It is tempting to describe 2020 as an annus horribilis – a horrible, dreadful year – with much justification. So many lives lost, livelihoods destroyed, plans disrupted, economies in free-fall, the sense of being imprisoned, the damage to mental and physical health. So many things that we had always taken for granted suddenly became uncertainties. Amidst the vortex of emotions many experienced with the lockdown, it would have been easy to slip into acedia.
But human beings are nothing if not creatures who readily adapt. Amidst the dark, foreboding clouds, we discovered so many silver linings. There was Netflix, of course, but we quickly harnessed technology to our advantage in other ways. We came to realise that trekking daily to our workplace, with all its travails, was probably no longer essential. We could work just as easily, and in some instances better, from our homes. But we also soon found out that we had a need for the human contact of our colleagues that the computer screen could not provide.
