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Features 21
MONDAY, APRIL 13, 2020
“You’ll still have urban centres,”
Kotkin said. “But they’ll be less
intense and more dispersed. You’ll
no longer have to choose between
unaffordable, overcrowded cities
and incredibly boring countryside.
There will be a more attractive
middle ground.”
Already, the arrival of urban
emigres - whether temporarily or
long term - has raised alarms in
many vacation communities. In
Bethany Beach, Delaware, police
posted a plea on Facebook,
begging people not to drive out to
their summer homes and not to rent
temporary housing: “Although this
area is awesome, we have limited
hospitalisation facilities that cannot
accommodate a rise in potential
illnesses.. . . #stayathome means
just that!”
“People are leaving populated
areas and they’re coming to their
second homes here,” said Paul
Kuhns, the mayor of Rehoboth
Beach, Maryland, a resort town with
about 1,500 year-round residents,
but where the summer weekend
population can soar above 25,000.
“It’s very difŠicult to tell people
not to go to their second home -
they have no problemremindingme
that they pay taxes - but my big fear
is we’re going to be overwhelmed
because our medical facilities are
very limited,” he said.
At the Polo Club, a gated
community in Boca Raton, Florida,
recent days have seen an inŠlux of
northerners,especiallyfromthehard-
hit New York metro area - a reversal
of the usual trafŠic this time of year,
when snowbirds head back north,
said Joel Rosenberg, a physician
who heads the club’s emergency
preparedness task force.
“They’re bringing in extended
family to get away from the virus,
and we’re asking them to maintain a
14-day quarantine,” he said. “There’s
no legal way we can force them,
but we’re asking, really imploring.”
As the threat of the virus
intensiŠied last week, Danette
Denlinger Brown, 54, hoped to
relocate from Williamsburg, Virginia,
toNorthCarolina’sOuterBanks,where
she and her husband own a second
home. But as she prepared to leave,
shelearnedthatNorthCarolinapolice
had blocked the Wright Brothers
Memorial Bridge connecting the
mainland to the barrier island. Only
year-round residents could cross, a
restriction county ofŠicials said was
necessary to stop migrating families
from overwhelming the area’s only
hospital, a 20-bed facility.
Real estateagents “wereactively
soliciting people to come down”,
said Bobby Outten, the county of
Dare County, which contains part of
the Outer Banks. “We can’t handle
all that.”
Brown, who owns a concrete
company with her husband
and planned to work from their
waterfront house, said she has
a compromised immune system
and would feel safer in the more
remote location. The decision to
bar second-home owners was “very
underhanded”, she said. “Everyone
worked hard for their second home
and should not be punished for
having one.”
Deepti Hajela & David R Martin
NEW YORK (AP) - The shelves are
stocked, the coffee percolating at
Deli-licious delicatessen.
The only thing missing are the
customers - the ofŠice workers who
would come by for breakfast or
lunch, the neighbourhood residents
stopping in for a quick purchase of
a drink or a snack.
But in the days of coronavirus
and sheltering in place, "it's
been a ghost town", said Alex
Batista, 28, who with his brother
owns the bodega in the Glendale
neighbourhood of Queens.
These days, "you don't get that
kind of crowd", he said. "Mostly
we're just staying open, trying to
help out the community."
They have had one consistent
source of business, sadly, as the
virus has ravaged the city, killing
more people than were lost in the
September 11, 2001, terror attacks:
"Funeral homes guys, they usually
come in too. A lot. They're busy,
too, unfortunately," he said.
They've shortened the hours at
the store, from 7am to 6pm, and cut
staff hours. When the occasional
customer comes in, they maintain
distance, bumping elbows across
the sandwich counter instead of
exchanging handshakes.
The cat, a mainstay of many
a New York City bodega, strolls
around the store, no one around to
bother it. It's been hard for Batista,
who with his brother grew up
watching their father run a bodega
after coming to New York City from
the Dominican Republic as children
and being raised in East New York.
"I'm the type of guy, I keep it
busy," he said. Normally, hewouldbe
up at 5.30am to get to the store by
6.30am to open it up, and going to
the gym, going to the wholesalers.
Now, "I go home, watching the
news. You get a headache from the
news, you see the same thing over
and over".
He said the Širst week, sales
dropped precipitously, around 60
per cent. The week after, it picked
up somewhat with deliveries, but
not enough to make it up.
It can't keep going on like this, he
said. "Three or four months of this,
and that's it, we have to shut down.”
For now, he's waiting, "just
trying to get on with it, see what's
going to come next".
Surviving in shadow of the past
The future is gloomy for bodega owner as he serves coffee and food in ‘ghost town’.
Co-owner of Deli-licious delicatessen Eduis Batista (R) takes an order from
a customer at the store. PHOTO: AP
Hadi bin Wahab and Hadi bin
Adanan had a vision: to launch a
food delivery service app in Brunei
Darussalam to offer a boost to the
local economy.
After months of brainstorming,
planning and pitching of their idea
to restaurants, the GoMamam app
was born, in February this year.
Hadi bin Wahab, who is Chief
Executive OfŠicer (CEO), told the
Bulletin, “We were students in
the United Kingdom (UK) where
everything can be delivered to
the doorsteps, from pre-packaged
food to groceries. So we thought it
Food at the touch of a button
GoMamam connects the public with restaurants and small food vendors
with its food delivery service app.
GoMamam founders Hadi bin Wahab and Hadi bin Adanan share their vision
of their food delivery service app. PHOTOS: RAHWANI ZAHARI
A GoMamam dispatcher fetches food for a customer
Kit Center enhances the couple’s second home
Izah Azahari
would be a good idea to bring this
service to Brunei. ”
Whileformulatingtheoperations
of GoMamam, the founders found a
gap in the market.
The CEO said, “Not only do we
want the app to be a platform on
which restaurants and other micro,
small and medium enterprises
(MSMEs) in the food and beverage
industry showcase their products,
we want to help to lower the
unemployment rate here as well.”
Currently, GoMamam is in talks
with Pusat Bahagia to support
differently abled people in gaining
Šinancial independence, adding
that “we are planning to have
our team undergo sign language
training to aid this initiative”.
With a background in IT, Hadi bin
Wahabworkedhard tomake sure the
app would meet the international
standards. “I want the programme
to be able to track deliveries by
our customers as well as the
restaurants,” he said, which he sees
as being important psychologically
for the customers as the tracking
will give them a rough estimate of
the arrival time of their orders.
Some 30 vendors have signed
up for the app service, supported
by 90 dispatchers from full-time
runners to part-time students.
“Each of the dispatchers has
a photo identiŠication card for
security reasons. Even on the app,
our customers are able to see who
is delivering their food,” said Chief
Financial OfŠicer Hadi bin Adanan.
He added that due to the
measures of social distancing,
“orders have been coming in non-
stop. We have dispatchers working
around the clock; even Hadi and
I have been making deliveries to
make sure we meet the promise
of bringing food to customers’
doorsteps within an hour”.