We may not remember how many days exactly we have embraced this new normal of life where the roads are less busy and the air is much fresher. The first time Malaysia's Movement Control Order (MCO) was announced, uproars were everywhere. We have heard people from all levels of social stratification express their apoplectic complaints against MCO and yet, the government remained steady and persevered to bring Malaysia to what we have today. What we can see now is that everybody can take a deep breath of relief knowing that the number of cases which was forecast to be a tsunami never became a reality.

New normal

Handling something as new as this new normal is never easy. The pandemonium that we see on social media reflects the truth of what everybody around the world is currently facing. People are losing their jobs, saving money is thinning, various industries are slowly crumbling and not to mention the repercussions of all these to our economy. It all comes down to one issue - the unprecedented pandemic: COVID-19.

Despite the hardships, the silver lining is worth mentioning.

Today we are proud to see that many of us are well-protected in our own homes. It is imperative to ascribe this to our government's fast action and response to this new virus that serves as one strategy to ward off this infection from even coming close to us!

We cannot deny the fact that this MCO moulds something clever out of ourselves. The way we run our lives and daily routines have substantially changed. We are already building a new nation with a new culture. Many months ago, not many among us bothered about self-hygiene and social distancing, but now we do. We never really knew how a virus works on our body but now we have a flair control to even preach others about it. We suddenly become extremely careful with whom we talk to and if only we were this vigilant before, many crimes would have been prevented. With fewer vehicles on the road, our mother nature finally finds peace. People no longer flock to shopping malls for excitement and entertainment. We live our life as simple as we could where only necessities seem to matter.

Online learning

Our students have started to get acquainted with online learning and our educators finally pave their way to using all viable e-learning tools that have been made available many years ago. Both instructors and students are maximising their potentials - creating and sharing content much more than ever! We have become better users of the Internet and make full use of it to sell things, to do promotion, to share recipes, to spill beauty tips, to ease donations, to educate and the list goes on! Dozens of thanks should go to MCO!

Women particularly, we have become more productive and useful than we were before. Some of us have taken up some online classes and are learning all sorts of new skills! We started cooking new dishes, sewing our own wear, learning musical instruments and some of us who never know how to use online videos are now collecting fans on YouTube! In so doing, we have as well witnessed many of the needy are getting what they deserve - a helping hand! Donations are made easy since MCO came into force because we eventually got to see those who are considered uncharted are publicised on social media - proves that they are also part of our big community and they deserve every lawful right a citizen should get.

Social media

It is true predicaments do bring the best or the worst in us. With the use of the powerful social media, many of our locals from all walks of life stepped forward initiating donation movements to help the underprivileged go through this with ease. We finally feel that we are truly functioning as a unit in this community to ensure that no one should be left behind and everybody watches and cares for everybody.

No one ever expected that we can be this resilient. Perhaps the commotion we had within the first two weeks is just a matter of an adjustment process to adapt to this new normal of life. We moved on, got better and better and finally got our full grip and swing of this fresh phase! Nothing seems to be difficult now. We have become a mightier nation and we didn't do this alone, it is us all - Malaysians! We fought our fear and we never know that we could do this and got this far. We have multiplied our life skills and it proves that staying home is not a bad idea after all!

COVID-19 is predicted to end soon. We are almost there. So come on everyone, we can do this!

-- BERNAMA

Che Nooryohana Zulkifli is an English Language senior lecturer at UiTM Penang and is passionate about positive vibes and how changes in life can lead to new and exciting opportunities.