There’s a classic South African TV advert that has a child asking her grandma about her life.

“What did you do to pass the time?”

“We cooked,” the old lady said.

“And what did you do for fun?”

“We baked.”

This year, we became that grandmother as we turned our attention to pass the time during the pandemic, whipping, whisking, kneading, and rolling in the kitchen to sate our appetites, feed our creativity, and ultimately, to nourish our souls.

We started with Dalgona coffee, went through a salted brownie phase, progressed to cinnamon rolls, mastered the burnt Basque cheesecake, learned to make the sushi bake, and began to experiment with sourdough bread. Some of us discovered that we had real culinary talents – and entrepreneurial skills to boot – that we turned our kitchen hobbies into a home business, supplying the metro with quick fixes for their food cravings, thanks to Grab and Lalamove.

This is the year we learned to launder money – literally. In the early days of the pandemic, we were operating at peak paranoia, which meant avoiding touching anything and everything the coronavirus could cling to, including paper. Cashless was the way to go – hello GCash! – but if you absolutely had to handle money, you had to wash the paper bills first, leave them to dry, and then iron them so that the heat would kill off any remaining super-microscopic residue of the virus.

This year, the notion of travel became a fever dream as we went through the different Qs of the longest lockdown in the world. It made me think of J. Lo’s catchy dance anthem On the Floor that went “Brazil, Morocco, London to Ibiza, straight to LA, New York, Vegas to Africa,” as a litany of all the places we couldn’t travel to anymore, thanks to COVID-19. The most traveling we did from March to mid-June was to the supermarket, and even then, we prepared for the trip with the determination of a soldier going into battle, with masks and shields and gloves, sometimes even the PPE as our armor, wipes, and sanitizer as our weapons.

With its military-manned checkpoints and the equivalent of the safe conduct pass, this was war, the household card. We’re currently on an uneasy détente with the coronavirus; we’re familiar with all the protocols and generally comply with all the social distancing requirements, but we still proceed with an element of wariness accompanying all our movements. To get anywhere now – to the beach, for example – we need to get tested. We’ve since accepted that the sharp discomfort of having a stick shoved up your nose is well worth a few days of relaxation under the sun and by the sea. Plus, we learned about this disease because the droplets prefer being indoors rather than outdoors. So if you can’t get to the seaside, find yourself an open-air deck in which to hang out and dine al fresco. Except that you can’t hang out too long, lest you end up drinking too much and forget to follow safety protocols in the process.

The virtual world blossomed in 2020. What we couldn’t do in real life, we did on Zoom. Birthdays, cocktails, webinars, PR launches, office meetings, workouts, and more filled everyone’s calendars, and this work from home setup saw us busier than ever, but only from the waist up. How we lived became just as important as how we looked, and we went into a home decorating frenzy, sprucing up interiors, and styling our tables. In the spirit of virtuality, we documented our Martha Stewart-inspired achievements on Instagram for all to see.

However, the most beautiful thing about 2020 is how, in the midst of a pandemic, when most of the world was shut down, and families were isolated, even from each other, we rediscovered our humanity.

Early on in the pandemic, after we figured out how to sanitize our spaces, we immediately turned out attention to fundraising efforts and feeding initiatives to help the frontliners in need of PPEs, as well as our less fortunate compatriots who found themselves without work and therefore no money to provide for their families. We mobilized our own staff to prepare meals by the dozen, even hundreds, to feed indigent communities. Those with fashion businesses enlisted their seamstresses to produce masks and protective gear for doctors and nurses in hospitals. And we honored the sacrifices the frontliners made day after day to keep us safe, even if we sometimes took risks we shouldn’t have.

Even in isolation, we also rediscovered simplicity in the things we used to take for granted – the beautiful blue of the sky, the birds’ song, the clear, unpolluted air, the pleasures of solitude, and the value of gratitude. As well as the everyday blessing known as Netflix.

For how else would we have survived this year without The Crown?