Say Goodbye To Day 12… Covid Test, Hotel Tennis, and Bed Sheets • Tennis Player Ellen Perez’s Mandatory Quarantine

By Ellen Perez

Saying goodbye to day 12 of hotel quarantine and lying here rather tired. Today was a busy day. I actually feel like I didn’t have much time to even think or be bored. Today Dasha and I set out to become TikTok famous! Whatever that means. We wanted to make a tiktok of our experience in hotel quarantine. We thought it would be a good way to show the world what Australians have to do if they travel home. Turns out one of the videos has reached somewhat amateur level viral as it’s on over 15,000 views.

After we became tiktok famous Dasha and I also wanted to start to feel what it was like to hold a tennis racquet in our hands again. Since being locked in this room we haven’t been able to play tennis but have had some fun with badminton and a plastic tennis racquet.

It was crazy because after playing with those and not picking up a racquet in a while it felt so heavy to hold the real thing. The grip felt massive and the racquet felt so long. I hate not picking up a racquet for a long period of time because I feel like I lose my touch and sense of the game. I know coming back in my first few hit it’s going to be very ugly. I know some players can take weeks off and pick right back up from where they left off. I can tell you now I am not one of those players and would die for the ability to do that (Dasha is probably one of those players).

After playing some mini tennis and volleying to one another I completed colouring in the parrot I had started the day before. I’ve always enjoyed arts and crafts and would always say my favourite class in school was arts but then again, I feel like that’s almost every kids favourite class arts or sport because it didn’t require you to use your brain!

After finishing my drawing, we had a knock at the door, and it was the health professionals coming to do our departing covid test. This one to ensure you are negative before being let go in 2 more days. I suppose if you are positive on this test then you would have to remain for some further days until you test negative. My fingers are crossed that I am negative so I can escape this place asap!!! Today I also decided to tidy my room because it was getting rather messy and to freshen up my towels/sheets. Even though there is only 2 days (hopefully) left of quarantine it gets hard to feel motivated when everything is everywhere, and you don’t feel like the environment around you is clean.

I’ll better explain the sheets, laundry, towel and accessories situation since it’s a very different experience to what I’m usually used. I’m no stranger to a hotel room as I spend most of my life living out of a suitcase and travelling from country to country and hotel room to hotel room. Except the difference with staying in this hotel room during quarantine compared to hotels around the world outside of this situation is that we have to clean our own rooms, make our own beds, wash our own clothes and request for supplies when we get low. Upon arrival we had a large supply of toilet rolls, hand soap, dishwashing liquid, body lotions, shampoos and conditioners and an abundance of different sized towels.

As the week has gone on and supplies have diminished, we have had to ask for top ups and put all our old towels and sheets in a bag and leave them outside the room for them to collected and then wait for a fresh set of towels and sheets to be delivered. Because we can’t have a cleaner come into the room it means we have to change our own bed sheets and empty the trash ourselves. Also due to the fact we can’t leave the room and everything inside the room is considered dangerous as it’s been touched by us we have to do our own hand washing of clothes and dishwashing of dishes. It’s crazy how quickly a hotel room can get dirty and how desperate you can be for a vacuum! Once you are forced to live in a confined space for a long period of time, I have really learnt how important it is to keep things tidy and respectable. Nothing worse than living in a messy or unclean space. Having cleaners come in every day to a hotel room when on the road is something, I’ll never take for granted when I travel again!!