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.

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.

Within days of my arrival, New Zealand imposed new restrictions. First, our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that everyone who entered the country would need to self-quarantine for 14 days, meaning I need to stay home. Then the government shut borders to foreigners and urged Kiwis overseas to return home. By the time two weeks were up, my flight out of the country had been canceled and New Zealand was in lockdown. I figured I would just stay put.

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