A leper colony with wifi please

At the hospital today I saw a man in a long white lab coat use the bathroom and then not was his hands.  I saw an elderly woman being wheeled through a crowd with dried blood all over her face.  I'm beginning to realize why people say they don't like hospitals. 

I told my doctor that in the past few days what feels like my tonsils have become very sore.  She quickly peeked in my mouth and told me that they looked fine, that maybe there was some swelling down lower but that she wasn't going to check, (she didn't actually say this last part.  She just didn't check and I got the message).  She said that the anti-biotics I'm on will make it feel better.  I pointed out that they'd begun to hurt and had gotten worst over the last three days, during which I've been on the drugs.  She told me it must therefor be viral and that I should drink tea and wear scarves. This is the sort of advice I take as a green light for self medication.

Monday's Snack Food Wrap Up: Strawberry Ice Cream

Is it good?  Of course it's good.  It's five dollars and it comes in a container sized just big enough so that you feel like a depraved man for eating the entire thing in one sitting even though every body does it.  It tastes like strawberries and expensive things that I usually deny myself in favour of the bulk option.  It numbs my sore throat at makes my constant companion, the boring glass of water, feel extra warm in my mouth by comparison.

But then if it seems like I am taking the doctor's lack of attention to my throat as a sign that I have slipped in her eyes from legitimate medical concern to "whiner", then it's because despite the evidence under my own chin I'm so tired of being sick that I can't even stand to hear me come back with a new left field symptom.  Who gets tonsillitis while they're already on a slew of medication?   Not me, I'm not a sick person.  Getting habitually sick is, in my opinion, generally left to people who complain about their bad day like they never heard the words "starving" and "Africa" before.  And yet I'm drinking lemon tea and chicken broth like my name's Nancy.  (Nancy the sort of name for someone who gets sick more than most.  Nothing personal Nancy's). 

Someone remind me that I have to make a doctor's appointment in February.  I spent 70 bucks today because it turns out I'm not immunized for Hep A and they need to give me the other half of that needle six months from now or else I'm only half immune or super un-immune or something.  Until then I'm not talking about being sick ever again.

Of cosmic relevance

We were watching 'Armagedon', a movie that I had never seen but knew featured an asteriod, a herioc death for Bruce Willis and the song by Aerosmith about not closing your eyes.  As the two space shuttles took off from Earth and headed towards the asteroid, Brittney posed this little gem of a question:

"How do they avoid crashing into other stars?"

This question hurt me severely and called a lot of things into question and I told her so.  Don't worry though, I chastised her until she stopped caring what I was saying and then hurried here to inform you, the internet, so as to keep a record of her complete lack of understanding of the Universe for future generations to marvel at.

This Kyle D.C. Stevenson, the date is August 29th, 2010.  Hello to you, brave generations of the future.  Did you cry during Armagedon?

You've got to be kidneying - sorry, I'll stop

I love doctors.  Anyone who can hand you with a small cylinder, like a  old film canister cut in half, and without any hesitation ask you to put a little bit of your poop in it is one of the good ones in my books.  We're all people, people and I am not afraid to tell you that every time I am asked to give a urine sample I produce it Right. A. Way.  I am the put-me-in-coach-I-got-this at the National Finals for urine samples and I do not try and hide the container as I make my way from the bathroom to the sample drop off table because everybody pees, at that moment I just happen to have some of mine in a cup.

Yesterday I went back to the hospital.  The very nice doctor explained to me that I currently have an infection in my kidneys.  It has a long name that begins with a 'P' that I meant to ask her to write down for me.  Apparently this kind of infection usually puts people in the hospital, so she was surprised to be treating me as an outpatient,  she was also surprised that I had this kind of infection at all.  It is mostly for the ladies.  I have tough lady kidneys.  So I'm now on a lovely regime of pills which make me feel much better, and a gell that numbs my mouth and tastes awful (I refuse to believe it is contributing). 

Doctor out.

A handy set of instructions

Here is a good idea.

First, you're going to want to travel Taiwan for two weeks.  Gorgeous.

Then, get home, I did it on a Wednesday, but be spontanious, choose any of the seven.  Next, wake up on Thursday morning feeling awful.  Feverish, a headache, dizziness, the works.  It's best if you feel really really terrible.  Now go to work.  You sure aren't going to enjoy it.  Have only three of the ten kids that are registered for your two hour conversation class show up.  Repeat these initial steps on Friday.  Now, Friday after school, go to the doctor.  If you're doing this right, your symptoms have suddenly downgraded themselves to a mild headache.  Feel silly telling the doctor how you were feeling two hours ago and fill his prescription for what is probably the equivalent of Advil.  Imagine the doctor thinks you're a wuss.  That evening, heat up to what feels like a thousand degrees, then suddenly become so cold your teeth chatter together.  Who's the wuss now doc?!

You're going to want to repeat this trend until Sunday.  Remember it's important in the moring to wake up from strange repetative and really annoying feverish dreams where people shout things at you over and over again.  Enjoy the lull that'll begin around 11am and last until anywhere between 8 and 11 pm.  Really think you're getting better, and start to feel guilty about not tackling any of the things you need to get done before school starts.  Once this starts to happen, you're going to want to have that fever come back and take a 30 minute shower, the hot water being the only way you can feel like there aren't icepacks stacked behind your ribcage. 

Now on Sunday, the small private doctors are going to be closed, so you'll want to go and take a cab to a hospital to try and get looked at.  This is important: DON'T PHONE AHEAD.

When you get there and everything inside looks closed, take a walk around.  When you find the admissions desk, ask if you can see a doctor.  When the ask you "emergency?" be sure and try your best to convey that you aren't an emergency.  She won't understand you, but it will help your concience when the emergency room doctor tells you that you aren't an emergency.  

When you get home, phone your co-teacher and explain to her that you need to go to the international clinic at the hospital and that only three kids have been showing up for your two hour conversation classes. 

Congratulations!  You've just gotten a sick day off work in Korea.

P.S. Don't worry Mom and Dad, I'm not dying.

All I know how to say in Chinese is 'You are a small mouse'.

Boy would I like to tell you all how confusing the conversion of Won to New Taiwanese Dollars is or how awful N.H., one of Korea's national bank's, is (DAMN YOU NH, DAMN YOU TO HELL) or how glorious the south Taiwanese islands of Penghu are and how strange it was to see an old woman throw bags of garbage over the storm wall and into the sea over and over (alright I didn't see this but it was reported by a credible witness), or how apparently I'm going to a waterfall today, or so I've just been told, but there is

just

not

Time!

A night in which I gave the same answers a lot of times.

The Nice Men and I went out for drinks awhile back, to celebrate the end of the semester.

I feel I aught to warn you now that if you live in Korea this evening is going to sound so remarkably like the stories you hash over with your friends every week that it's probably not worth going through.  Otherwise read on.

I arrived at the bar on the back of one of the Nice Men's, (a P.E. teacher who spent several years as a FIFA referee), motor bike because no one's English was sufficient to direct me there on foot.  I sat beside the teacher I speak the most with, coincidentally the one with the most English, double coincidentally the one who was drunkest.  "Kyle," he said to me, his conspiratorial tone letting me know it was us against the world, "how many times have you kissed your girlfriend."  I told him that I couldn't count, but whether he took that to mean the number exceeded my ability to estimate or that these daliances took place so infrequently that the number had escaped me in the interim I can't say. The six of us were attended to by the two women running the bar.  We were their only business and they were very attentive to our empty glasses.  As always, I was generally inattentive to the hierarchy around me and for better or worst the presence of these women lifted the bulk of the intricate pouring etiquet off my shoulders. 

The other teachers slid into an easy conversation in Korean while the Nice drunk Man to my left monopolized me.  For a long time he put his arm over my shoulders and rahpsodized about the admiration he had for the teachers at the table who were older than him.  His regard fell especially heavy on the math teacher, who was both the oldest and, as he told me, the only holder of a P.h.d. in our school. 

"Do you respect him?" he asked me, motioning to the doctor in our midst and catching his attention.

"Yes, I respect him.  He must be very smart," I said, sounding more than a little like the robotic English that plays off the 7th graders English textbook DVD. 

"Do you respect him more than the principle?"  Something in the way he spoke, it sounded as if he were goading me.  I sensed a trap.  I paused for several beats, trying to let time disconnect his question from whatever I said next.

"I respect him lots."

"Yeaaahhhaawwww," he exhaled, so that the sound started at the front of his mouth and finished back in his throat.  He put his arm around me and rocking us back and forth a bit.  I had answered the question to his satisfaction.  

Throughout the evening he told me lots of interesting things.  He himself studied in Japan for his University career, and his two children were now in University and about to enter one respectively.  He told me about how he wished that his children would go abroad and learn not only through school but through experience.  He told me that he wished they could study how to accomplish their dreams instead of studying to memorize math formulas.  And he told me he could not tell them any of this.  I tried to get him to explain why this was, why he could not say anything despite his passionate feelings on the subject, (believe me, they were passionate feelings), but he'd only screw up his eyes and hold his fists in front of himself and say "I can't!"

When things wound down at the bar, we headed across the street to the ZEUS norey-bang.  Only one of the Nice Men opted out and headed home.  In our private kareoke booth we drank beer out of tall plastic cups and I was shaken many more times in affirmation.  I feigned singing Korean songs by looking ahead to the end of the line on the screen and holding the last sylable as they got there.  Everyone appeared to be taken in, or at the very least they were impressed by my efforts. 

At midnight, it was time to pack it in, but the drinkiest of The Nice Men had a litre of beer left, and he wanted me to finish it with him.  The others filed out of our room.  He offered to pour me another drink from the bottle.

"We're best friends now, yes?"

"Sure," I told him, and then "I think everyone is leaving."

"They're just going to the bathroom," he said.  "So we're best friends?" and on and on.

The ex-FIFA referee popped his head in to back up my 'leaving' story.  Outside, I was offered the bottle again.  Now it is not kosher to refuse a drink from your elder, hence my following stall tactics.

"Where will we drink it?"

"In the park."

"Isn't I getting late?"

"Ha ha, yes.  Maybe I will sleep at your house."

The other teachers had left, save for FIFA.  He stuck his helmet on his head, tied his bandana over his face and asked if I'd like a ride home.  I told him that I was ok, that my house was only 5 minutes on foot from here, but he asked again and then asked again.  I realized that maybe he was giving me an out from a late night and a shared bed with our friend the encouragable Nice Man.  So I took it.  I did promise my new best friend many times that it was ok for him to call me whenever he wanted, yes whenever he wanted, that he really shouldn't worry about it, just whenever he wanted, absolutely whenever he wanted, because of course we're best friends now, yes I mean best friends, sure we're friends, best friends.

So we'll see.