My Neighborhood Market On A Lockdown Afternoon - A Market Friday Entry

It's Friday again! Time for #marketfriday, an initiative of @dswigle. If you haven't heard of this challenge before, please do read up about it and start sharing your Market Fridays. This is one challenge I try not to miss every week.

A few Fridays ago, I made a couple of posts about my neighborhood market. It's a temporary wet market located just outside the subdivision where I live, about 300 meters away from my home. For this Friday, I have decided to feature the same place again but under different circumstances. Our city right now is under what is called an ECQ, Enhanced Community Quarantine. This is actually just one step away from a lockdown. Under the ECQ, face masks outside the homes are obligatory, social distancing is imposed (at least one meter or 3 feet away from the person nearest to you), home quarantine is strictly followed. Nobody is allowed to leave their homes except to buy food, medicines, see a doctor or go to a hospital. Senior citizens and children are not allowed to go out of their place of stay as they are the ones most vulnerable to the COVID-19. The following photos were taken earlier today at about 5pm. Photo below is the market scene along the left side of the road, coming from my subdivision.

The guy with the megaphone is a local district watcher who enforces the social distancing rule by regulating the number of buyers entering the selling area. But he faces a very daunting task as people on his turf are hard to control, often disregarding him and crowding the stall. See picture below.

The next picture is the market scene across the other side of the road, opposite the stalls shown above.

There's suppose to be another district watcher enforcing the social distancing requirement but I don't think the guy's making a good job at it despite the fact that there are less people buying on this side. There are 2 fruit stalls along this side of the market but one is closed. Here's another view of this part.

I was going to buy some veggies and went to my favorite vegetable vendor. Beside her is another stall selling fish and this big Yellow Fin Tuna gave me quite a start because when I saw it I was just in front of it. See photos below:

Beside the Yellow Fin Tuna is a big Grouper but he appears to be very small beside the big one.

Actually, the Yellow Fin Tuna is the fish of choice to make Sashimi, a Japanese dish of thinly sliced bite-sized pieces of raw fish eaten with soy sauce and wasabi paste. The next picture shows the cut up parts of the tuna. Apparently they have already sliced up one earlier.

After buying the veggies I thought of buying some roasted chicken as I passed by a stall roasting them. See below:

But I passed up on this.

Time for me to head for home. As I was leaving, I took another picture of the left side of the market and finally, I see some order and social distancing as the guy with the bullhorn was already livid with frustration and started becoming more strict. Good work!

That's it for this post. Thanks for visiting. The scenes shown above are not really reflective of how an ECQ or lockdown should be. But they also underscore how important it is for each of us to cooperate with what authorities are requesting / ordering us to do. Without our cooperation, the whole effort will just definitely go down the drain. So, stay safe and keep your distance. It just might save your life and that of your family's.

Oh by the way, I saw this plant with beautiful flowers on my way home from the market. It just cheered me up and kept my hopes up high about the outcome of this pandemic. You see the plant was tangled up with so many vines and has not been maintained at all, yet it has bloomed such lovely flowers despite all the problems around it. The Rangoon Creeper.

See you next Friday!