Mark Lean, a T+L Southeast Asia contributor for more than 12 years, is currently based in his home country Malaysia. How does a travel journalist who’d previously spent almost every weekend in different cities around Asia cope with lockdown while avoiding the cliches? No, he didn’t get a dog or a cat, though he did kinda-sorta embark on a well-trod path to mindfulness. Like most curious writers, he is learning new ways of being inventive. This includes sacrilegiously adding jackfruit slices to cendol, a dessert composed of green jelly slivers, crushed ice, brown-sugar syrup and coconut milk. He also matches workouts with energy techniques that tap into the body’s innate strength — magical stuff. But as events of the past year show, the best approaches are the unexpected ones.