Viruses and ‘Phrase of the Week’

I’ve been ill. Had a bloody awful cold, which pretty much floored me Thursday through Sunday. Feeling a tad better now though. It could have been the beer, crisps and Max Beesley on Saturday night, or the Chinese flu help that I’ve had down me neck every hour on the hour since Friday. Suffice to say, feeling a whole lot better.

I hate being ill. Not cos of the usual reasons: feeling like shit, not wanting to get out of bed (no wait, I never want to get out of bed), sneezing, coughing, having a voice like Al Pacino sucking razor blades. No, it’s cos I’m in Hong Kong, and everyone believes that the moment you feel a wee bit unusual (please, no jokes – yet) you must visit the doctor straight away. He’ll give you anti-biotics and you’ll be right as trivets in the time it takes you to get back to work.

And it’s not their fault ~ it’s just that English people don’t go to the doctor until they’re dead. Or at least, my family never have done (and that were before we found out the hard way why you should never trust the local NHS GP to diagnose someone in serious need of effective medical help). And we had to get through SARS a while back an’ all – kinda puts the fear of sneezes into you fer a bit, does that. I do remember students disappearing one by one round about the end of my first Christmas in Hong Kong. Only one student known to me, a school friend of one of my favourite students, actually died. But it certainly scared the rest of us.

Whenever I have a cold, I go through familiar motions:
“Have you been to the doctor yet?”
“No.”
“Why not? Don’t you feel awful?”
“Bloody floored, ta. But he’ll take one look at me and send me packing wi some Paracetamol and instructions to drink more water, sleep more and get adequate rest in future.”
“But he can cure you.”
“Really? So he’s the only man in existence that has (1), managed to persuade the cold virus to stop mutating the moment it’s released on a fresh victim, and (2) found a cure? Wow ~ he should sell his story and the cure to the world! He’d be a millionaire overnight!”
“Sorry, what?”
“You can’t cure a cold. You can only alleviate the symptoms and help speed up your natural recovery.”
“Yes you can, everyone knows that the doctor gives you anti-biotics and –“
“Anti-biotics can’t touch colds.”
“Yes they can! Last year when I was sick, my doctor gave me some, and after a few days I was better!”
“What a coincidence ~ last time I was sick, I stayed in bed for two days, drank gallons of hot tea and read about six novels, and I was much better in a few days, too!”

I hate the arguments and wars. What I hate more is the “just lie and they’ll go away” routine that I always end up doing:
“Have you been to the doctor yet?”
“I will do.”
“Ok.”

Anyway, a while ago (actually, about six months ago) I posted a Phrase of the Week. As I recall, it were “I collect perfect teeth from dead frogs”, from Captain Frederickson (a bally hero, that man!). So onto a new one I’ve been having fun with this week….

It happened like this: I were in a lesson wi’ six fourteen-year-olds, and we were talking about future careers and suchlike. It got onto stuff like “do you have questions about the world?” etc, and one smart-arse said that he’d like to meet God and ask him a few very searching questions of his own. I said summat like he’d have a job, seeing I don’t believe He exists, and there were laffter all-round. The student then asked me if I had questions I’d like put to some kind of supreme being. And what “just popped in there”?

“If you were two extraneous wires, where would you want to be connected?”

Bizarre, random, and yes, completely me. And no, I’m not telling you where I heard that said this week. You’ll just have to think.

In other news, saw National Treasure, and have to say it sucked balls. And they weren’t even chocolate salty ones.

Soopytwist.

Tags:
common cold ~ cold remedy ~ SARS ~ anti-biotics ~ Sharpe ~ National Treasure