...To say the remaining entries may be a little delayed while I suffer through the inevitable: I feel like crap. I knew this would happen. I knew I was playing Russian roulette with my homeostasis (did you know I'm the kind of person who uses the word "homeostasis" in conversation?) with the bar, the China trip, et al... I managed to hold it together physically for months on end, but I knew this medical house of cards would come tumbling down at its first opportunity, and it has. China, and the 31-hour commute home, completely did me in. I don't think I'm suffering from some dread Asian disease (or even simply jetlag), but rather some opportunistic bug seems to have taken up residence and is using my body as its personal playground. Eviction proceedings consist of lots of sleeping and flooding my system with fruits and vegetables - well, any sort of real food, actually. I may have been a little underfed in China. It was really hot, so that killed my appetite, and then there were food safety issues, particularly regarding water since you can't drink what comes out of the tap. So that foreclosed all sorts of cold dishes (including lots of fruits and vegetables), and also screwed up anything that involved ice (frappucinos, anyone?) since I couldn't ascertain the source of water the ice was made from. Maybe I obsessed over it more than I needed to, but I was already so worn that I knew I'd needed to dodge the germs rather than leave them to my exhausted immune system to fend off. Unfortunately, there was the communal eating* to confound my plan...
* (Plus public spitting, amusing sanitation facilities... Chinese culture may be really good with the concept of holistic medicine, but it seems really weak on epidemiology. No wonder it's where things like SARs and bird flu get rolling; China is a giant vector...)