Well, six days following the onset of the mystery illness, I’m feeling a million times better. I’d say, operating at about 90 percent. I should be pretty pleased about recovering, but for the most part, I’m pretty damn bummed. My honeypot left this afternoon. He had a recurrence of nausea yesterday, so until this afternoon, we were desperately trying to make that go away. Certainly didn’t want him to sit aboard a crowded plane for 12 hours feeling ready to vomit. Poor thing. This bug really killed our plans for a final happy week together. Boo hoo.

This morning, I made an important discovery though. Some homeopathic sites claim a teaspoon of tumeric in water is just the antidote for the runs, among other discomforts. Desperate, he agreed to try it. I know, I was totally surprised too. I took a sip before giving it to him: it was like drinking sawdust water. Haha, you should have seen his face. Within an hour, though, the gurgling belly was quiet. He still had trips to the bathroom, but they seemed a bit more controlled. An hour before the cab was slated to arrive, he was back to his usual annoying housemate ways: James Brown and Bruce Springsteen polluting my formerly quiet and peaceful room.

I like to think the tumeric worked. John’s still a bit skeptical. Guess we’ll never really know since he refused to take a bottle with him to continue drinking the sawdust elixir, and well, if his condition persists, he’ll be seeking professional help. Oh well, another thing to try the next time.

I’m going to stay away from the television tonight. Feeling especially fragile; definitely don’t need some tearjerker drama or cheesy romantic comedy the next few days. Perhaps a massage or stress-releasing acupuncture session (hurray for my gift certificate)…

At the end of every month, the management office posts a form next to the elevator. Every apartment writes in its current gas meter reading. My neighbors are all in the thousands. My reading? 305. On the low side, but hey, we are the first occupants of the unit.

So the other day, while John and I were on the brink of death, the gas dude knocked on the door. Usually, he knocks because I miss the deadline and forget to write in my reading. This time, I was surprised to see him. He said he was here to get my gas reading. “Uh, didn’t I write it in already? 305. It’s 305.” He gives me this incredulous look. “Are you sure? It can’t be right: it’s too low. It hardly changed from last month.” “It’s right,” I counter. “I don’t use the gas much… but if you don’t believe me, come on in and see for yourself.” Jesus, do you need me to spell it out or what? I DON’T COOK! Why? Because I can’t, ok? Are you happy now?

So the dude comes in and sure enough, the meter reads 305. But he’s STILL not convinced. He proceeds to light both my stovetops to watch the meter run! Finally, he accepts that my reading is legit. As if to lessen the blow, he suggests that I was overseas last month. Uh no, I wasn’t. Sigh.

This evening, John explained my whole culinary disability like this: he likens my ineptitude in the kitchen to his incompetence with assembling furniture. He tries to do it and he wants to do it, but it just never works out. Nice comparison, except that I actually look at directions, whereas he just assembles straight out of the box. Oh well, gave me a laugh to think about that time he assembled some piece of furniture, and the shelf couldn’t pull out right because he put the face on upside down.

Sorry about all the doom and gloom earlier. I know my cussing has really kicked up a notch too lately… those of you who know me probably haven’t even flinched but for the others, sorry if it offends you. I offer no guarantees that my outbursts will subside, so well, I guess you’re free to move onto cleaner pastures.

Man, today is my first day feeling quasi-normal. I’d nearly forgotten what it was like to NOT have a chronic headache and overall physical discomfort.

This morning started out early. Had psycho dreams again and woke up at like 5:30. By 6, I started worrying again about the damn plane tickets for uh yeah, the day after tomorrow. Sorry, but I’m a control freak so when I’m up to the wire like this, I’m not at my best. John had an important meeting at 7, so he was up at 6 preparing (possible foreshawdowing for his days to come…) for some business presentation. I crammed a few extra bits of sleep and then got up to start my day. Standing in front of the mirror, I felt my tummy gurgle; naturally, a small passage of gas was in order. Pbbbbt! No big deal, right? Next thing I knew, something warm was dripping down my leg! You are fucking kidding me! I ran to the bathroom, and goddamnit, it was like diaper slop. Not cool, man. And certainly not part of starting the day off right! Ahh, but who’s complaining? Today I’m actually ambulatory.

Well I guess things are looking up. It’s just before noon, and I’ve managed to call a bunch of travel places and book a ticket for Friday. Thank goodness! Elong is going to deliver, I’ll pay with visa, and we’re good to go. IBM contacted me this morning as well. Remember that glamorous voice work they wanted me to do for Disney? Well, Disney ended up shelving the audio component of their project. Since then I’ve been hit up by AT&T. That’s right. Move over James Earl Jones. There are bigger fish in the sea now… Haha. Usually, I’m supposed to head 90 minutes out of town to record my parts in the IBM “recording studio,” but today I only had a pagelong script, so the PM actually suggested I try recording from home. I think he felt sorry for me too, because he happened to call me when I was on my deathbed the other day. Anyway, I was totally skeptical about this home recording stuff. After all, been there, done that. Last year, I recorded shitloads of audio at home and in the end, all of it was scrapped due to poor sound quality. I wasted hours and hours of my life. Today, my first clips had this annoying clicking noise in the background. You couldn’t hear it normally, but on playback, it was unavoidable. I don’t know what made me think of it, but I decided to try turning off a powerstrip in our bedroom. What do you know, that actually solved it. The clicking noise disappeared. Thank god, because I wasn’t about to carry my erupting ass all the way out to Wai Gao Qiao just to record like 30 minutes of audio.

I skipped class this morning, but I plan on heading over in the afternoon. Gotta get back in the saddle and make up for lost time.

Well when it rains, it certainly pours. Just as John and I are struggling free from our close brush with death, I receive a call from my travel agent, yes the one in NY whom I lavished with praise last time. Well, no more praise. John’s tickets for Friday are cancelled. It’s Tuesday night and just like that, he’s stranded. Wtf? Some bullshit about never receiving my check. Jesus. First, they didn’t accept Visa for travel originating in China. Then, I couldn’t pay their rep in China, because they haven’t set up their Shanghai office. I called my bank to wire money but I have to authorize my account for wire transfers in person. So, as a last resort, I had Bank of America cut a corporate check and mail it. The funds were withdrawn a week ago, and of course, just my luck, the check apparently got lost in the fucking mail. I could curse USPS a billion times over. And the bank doesn’t freakin’ track the checks that ship out??! So here we are, major SOL. Rental car, housing, utilities, everything is lined up and now no freaking ticket.

Tomorrow was going to be my first day back in class. Screw that. I’ll be on the phone all morning, scrambling for last minute tickets. Next thing you know, I’ll become pregnant or Remy will jump off the balcony. Man, I was so pissed at the travel agent. Poor thing. Normally, I would handle such a situation with utmost civility (ha, ha), but come on, I’ve been sweating my brains out for three days. John and I are so desperate, we’re popping pills whose drug information we can’t even read. Yes, I went to the nearby pharmacy this evening and just said, “sick, tummy aches, possible food poisoning, fever, nausea, antibiotics.” They directed me to two drugs. No idea what they are, but at this point, who the hell cares. We need SOMEthing. Screw the sketchy quality control standards. What can you do, man. We’re dying. Just so you know, I did apologize to the agent. I know it wasn’t her fault (she’d been burned before by an asshole customer); it’s just been a bad couple of days. Doesn’t look like it’s gonna get better any time soon either.

Yeah remember what I said earlier about my luck changing for the better? Well strike that. All of it with a big, fat, juicy marker. John and I are both just barely back from the dead. In fact, I don’t think we’ve actually set foot in the land of the living just yet. Since Saturday, we’ve been on this insane rollercoaster of illness, extremely sick at times, moderately coherent at others, and then totally loopy in between. Jesus frickin’ Christ. I was so out of it, I think I was asking John whether the H in “Jesus H Christ” stood for “Hey-sus.” See what I mean? Completely out of it. I even skipped classes for this bullshit illness, so you know, this is some serious shit.

On Sunday, I was so delirious, I couldn’t even remember if I had taken the pups out in the morning. I dunno what bugs we caught where, but John and I both got nailed and it knocked us out swiftly. We were fine Friday night: we had a very nice dinner with our friend Joon, who himself was just recovering from a weeklong bout with food poisoning. The dinner was excellent, nothing unusual or odd tasting. That night though, John started getting the runs. Saturday morning, I couldn’t get out of bed: I felt really tired and ended up sleeping in to the uncharacteristically late hour of 3pm. We then met up with some friends for dinner and were back in bed by 10 pm. John had to keep going to the bathroom, and I was just all achy and hot/cold. Monday, we were bedridden. He with a fever, aches, and major runs; I continued with a fever, a headache, and muscle aches. At some point, Remy came up to me. I thought she was trying to console me in my moment of misery. Wrong: she simply proceeded to barf up some undigested potato chunks. Our apartment was a goddamn infirmary. John and I were convinced someone was going to find Remy and Martin next week feasting on our rotting bodies.

I don’t think John and I have ever been sick at the same time. It really sucks: I pity people who live alone… no one’s there to pull you out of the sinkhole. We popped all kinds of pills Sunday, and thank goodness our fevers finally broke around 8 pm. Of course, I thought that meant the worst was over. Nope. For the next 48 hours, I would go in and out of fever. I didn’t even bother taking my temperature… whenever I get a fever, the mercury climbs way high. I likely suffered some brain damage. I mean, I got all kinds of freaky dreams about Dallas (JR and Patrick Ewing… major old-school drama), my college roommate, and some friend starting up a doggie shop. Random, crazy shit. I dunno how I did it, but I managed to haul my ass to class Monday morning to take my quiz. God forbid I miss an evaluation, right? I know, I’m psycho, what can I say. Well, I thought I was feeling better, but as soon as I got up and moving, the dizziness hit. Probably tanked the quiz. I headed home afterwards, skipping my listening class. Tuesday (today), I stayed home again. Everytime I stood up, I got a massive headache. Around lunchtime, we went to the store to get some soup (nothing in the house) but by the time we came back, it was back into the bed. Two lifeless, pathetic souls paralyzed for three whole days. I don’t understand really. How can I be so physically weak and unhealthy? This sickness is really doing a number on us. I don’t have any explanations (although my friend Pamela insists it’s mental… gee, thanks), but we better get over this soon because I’m tired of being an invalid. I’m going to try to do a phone teaching thing this evening. Been trying to schedule it for three days now, so tonight I hope I’m up for it.

Hmm, is it possible I’m actually on a roll? Today, I won 5 RMB scratching off the restaurant “fa piao” (receipt). I know, just 5 kuai. Totally small potato, but hey, better than nothing. Plus, I can almost buy a Dove chocolate bar with that.

Yesterday was a good day too. I attended the LifeLine Shanghai 2nd Anniversary party. The org’s been up and running two years now. Kudos to them. Completely volunteer-run. So last night not only did I win a 500 RMB raffle prize for a stress-relieving acupuncture session at Body & Soul (I’ll be using that ASAP), but I also received a recognition award. Funny thing, when I went up to accept my beautiful red lantern, the executive director asked if I wanted to say a few words. I chickened out and declined; I’m into computer stuff, not public speaking. But after I left the stage, I read the message on my lantern: LifeLine Award for Communication. The award was technically for my web work, but how ridiculous was I? I won the award for communication and I couldn’t bring myself to speak? I’m an idiot.

Aside from my retardation, the party was very nice, a pleasant ending to my time at LifeLine. I recently relinquished my role there (Technology Manager) to concentrate on my Mandarin studies. Fortunately, the ED found a replacement in record time, and I was still around to train her. And thank goodness for the hand-over! In my true neurotic, control-freakish form, I forced myself to put together quite a lil’ tech manager handbook, containing documentation on job responsibilities and protocols. God forbid I transfer the job the way I received it (with zippo guidance). Ah well, prepping the info was a necessary exercise in sort of quantifying my contribution. You see, I have really weird selective memory. I’d volunteered for LifeLine since last March, and somewhere along the way, I had convinced myself my work wasn’t even worth mentioning. Putting the info on paper, I realized I actually did a decent bit of stuff. The docs are a nice reminder too, considering I’ll be back in the US job hunting again soon… Yes, the big news: John and I are moving back to the States. Shocker of all shockers, right? Actually, the decision is several weeks old but well you know, sometimes with the blog you go a little overboard with the information control (just because you can). Haha, just kidding. Anyway, yeah, my Bubbey is a real superstar. Moving up from programmer to manager. He’s very excited about switching out of hardcore coding, and I think management is a good fit for him… I just worry about this different kind of stress: dealing with people ain’t easy, that’s for sure.

Last time I wrote, I was in a foul, foul mood. My apologies. Since then, I’ve had a week to cool off, so I think it’s safe to say I’m over the incident now. Although, I should be honest: getting Furby back up and running has certainly helped me move on. Mind you, replacing the 40-lb battery on my ebike was no easy feat (surprise, surprise). I called the manufacturer a billion times. The number on the website was wrong, or just no one frickin’ answered. I don’t even remember how I ended up getting a working number. When I got a live person, I was routed and re-routed and re-routed. It’s a miracle I even got the number of a “licensed” Forever dealer near my home. I tell you, though. Getting the phone number was the hard part. Once I had the secret number, it was easy breezy there on out– just a matter of forking over the dough, really. So I called the local dude up, he arrived at my house 15 minutes later to see what battery and casing I needed (apparently, giving him the ebike model number over the phone wasn’t enough), he came back two hours later with a new, fully charged battery, and just like that I was back on the streets whizzing past the pedestrians and bicyclists. Bicycles, smicycles… who has the time and energy these days to pedal?? Haha. Furby’s back with a vengeance. I got my wide, cushy seat (sure beats the hard-as-rock bike seat), the strong sturdy hunk of metal (albeit already rusting) between the legs (don’t be gross), and 30+ km/h at just the flick of my wrist. Home to school in under 10. Damn, gotta love the simple conveniences– they make all the difference.

But enough with all the warm fuzzies. I’ve been burned multiple times, so these days I’m more guarded. How so you ask? Well, I’ve got the battery locked in, plus I’m going to wrap a ridiculous thick cable lock around the baseboard of the bike (where the battery rests) just in case. U-lock on the front wheel. U-lock on the back wheel. And I’ll probably add another one just in case. Yes, four locks. I’m not getting shit stolen again man. Enough is enough. I’d rather look like a paranoid OCD psycho than go through having to replace crap again. I can’t be inconvenienced. I mean, I’m almost willing to smear dogshit… well I guess though that would involve me having to touch it. Ok, guess that won’t work. Anyway, keep your fingers crossed for me.

For fuck’s sakes, my bike got stolen again! Yes, my cute lil’ 2-week-old Bodyline folding bike :(. I am so pissed, man. What is up with this repeated bad luck? It’s that damn stretch on Tian Yao Qiao Road, south of Nandan Road. Don’t be fooled by it’s prime location next to nice shops in downtown Xujiahui. There’s something going on there. Some gang activity… SOMEthing seriously fishy. I think the street sweepers or construction workers are in on it because when I left my bike today, there was a laborer hammering bricks on the sidewalk. When I came out, bike was gone. The dude was nowhere to be found. And laborers here don’t take breaks. Their supervisors work ’em to the bone. Ok so maybe now I’m getting a bit paranoid. I know, I probably shouldn’t start randomly accusing people…

Still. Something is not right. John and I were at the same exact place where John’s bike got lifted. In his case, we had attributed his bike theft to it simply being evening. We had locked his bike and gone into a restaurant for dinner. When we came out a couple hours later, Merida was gone.

Today though, it was noon time. Broad daylight. And I locked my bike to the frickin’ railing! Ate lunch at the same restaurant (a Taiwanese joint), came out, and the damn thing was gone. I know, it’s not like the bike cost me hundreds of dollars, but still. I mean, I use the thing everyday and to not be able to continue using it, I’m peeved as hell. Like today, I had class this afternoon and clownie’s disappearance put me in the foulest mood. So much for getting to class in 10 minutes, you know? So much for riding with Bubs around town, exploring Shanghai in the spring.

John was sweet enough to give me his bike to ride to school this afternoon. Guess I’ll be riding that from now on. It’s a little on the big side, but better than nothing. I don’t think I’ll be replacing the folding bike. Was fun while it lasted.

From the beginning, I assumed my Mandarin textbooks would be on the dull and plain side, meaning unconfrontational and PC (at least by CCP standards). So, as you can imagine, I was taken aback this week when a passage broached the subject of sex discrimination in the workplace. This particular passage centered around a 20-plus y/o female, unhappy with her current job, and on the prowl for a new opportunity. She went on three different interviews. The first interviewer mistook her for a secretarial candidate. When she corrected him and explained she was actually interviewing for the department manager position, he acknowledged her experience and qualifications but explained bluntly that they wanted a man for the job, because “women have trouble managing both work and home responsibilities.” The second interviewer also acknowledged her credentials but then asked her her height and weight measurements. In the end, he rejected her application because she didn’t meet their physical criteria (less than 100 lbs. PLUS 160 cm tall). “I’m looking for a job not competing in a beauty pageant,” the woman argued. You tell ’em, woman!

Pretty weird though, huh? The textbook really caught me off guard with it’s telling inequality like it is, you know? And the woman! Unfortunately, she didn’t land any of the jobs she interviewed for, but her character was so feisty, confident, and assertive. Overall, a pleasant surprise for my Mandarin books.

Bubbey got back to Shanghai Friday night after a four-week stint in States. Perhaps you wondered how I was getting all my shit together… kinda helps when my buddy’s out of town. I have to keep myself super busy, otherwise I’ll just sit and sulk.

So I asked John to bring back just a few items– Airborne, dried berries, Cetaphil. Of course, he brought back what I requested and then some, including a whole lot of junk food: homemade rice crispies, chocolate chip meringue cookies, Dove chocolate cookies, key lime cookies, crackers… an entire stash. I’m not called a cookie monster for nothing. I chided him for thwarting my month-long run of healthier eating and then I proceeded to cram three squares of rice crispies treats into my mouth. Now, forty-eight hours later, the entire box of homemade treats is gone. I’m a piggie a heart. Still, in my defense (am I feeling guilty?), before Bubs came home, I had gone about a mouth without chocolate. (Not intentionally, but since I was playing my cheapie game, chocolate wasn’t on the list of essentials.) Oh well, that’s all in the past now. These last two days, my body has definitely made up for lost time. Unfortunately, it’s not just the junk food either. I’m feeling the need to come totally clean here: yesterday we went out with some friends to all-you-can-eat Brazilian BBQ. Yup, I’m back on the meat-eatin’ bandwagon, and it’s full speed ahead. Truthfully, the flavor of meat wasn’t quite as heavenly as I had remembered. Maybe now that meat isn’t a forbidden fruit, my mind doesn’t fool me into thinking I’m missing out. Something like that. Mind you, I packed it in regardless. In fact, I ate so much, my belly hurt. And this morning, I woke up with a ton of bricks in my stomach. Who knows how long that stuff will remain in there undigested. Ugh, gross. After last night, I think I could probably go without meat for another while. I know, I’m a control freak. I’m always trying to control some aspect of my life.

Speaking of which, I’ve been quite good about going to the gym a few times a week. I still strongly dislike the gym, but now that I’ve developed moderate endurance, the workout is no longer the 90 minutes of complete and utter misery it used to be. I’ve also made some changes to the routine, which I think help me squeeze it in and curtail the time. For one, I no longer shower at the gym. Too much work to pack the towel, toiletries, change of clothes, etc. I live just 10 minutes away anyhow… might as well just do all that stuff at home (without having to see the naked woman lounging on the lawn chair, eating her apple). Also, I’ve cut back on the weights. My arms were starting to beef up again, so I decided to just lay off on that stuff and concentrate on cardio. Finally, I’ve changed my schedule. Because of class, I no longer go in the morning. After trying a number of evening times, I found the sweet spot: one hour before closing. Whadya know? The gym actually follows the same trend as Carrefour. One hour before closing, the place is empty. Awesome. It’s all mine!