Day Thirteen – 12th Nov 2008
Beijing
23:10 – Emperor’s Guards Hotel, room A

Still feeling ill, I slept in late and spent most of the morning in bed.

We headed out late and caught the subway to the Lama Temple—as I didn’t feel the best, the smell of Chinese body odour, stale without much ventilation was unpleasant.

Today we could actually see a blue sky! There was not a cloud in sight. Incredible.

The temple is similar in design to many Chinese “official” buildings (temples, palaces) from the past 500 years. People there burn large sticks and bundles of incense (about two fists in diameter) in each of the small temples as offerings to Buddha. The highlight is a 26m tall statue of Buddha (18m above ground, 8m under) carved from a single trunk of a Sandalwood tree. You can barely see it all with your eyes at once when standing as far away as the temple’s meagre width allows.

I felt a lot better but the BO on the return trip was unwelcome. Weak from not eating (2-3 slices of bread, maybe) I spent yet more time in bed. As we were the only guests, we were upgraded to a much larger and nicer room, which would have cost us 2.5x the price (almost $250 a night).

Photos taken today: 52
Photos take to date: 3764

I don’t often get sick, and when I do it’s not particularly bad. That’s why I was surprised when I woke up with a sore throat on Tuesday.

Wednesday morning my sore throat hurt but only for 20 minutes or so — it was OK after my shower. Except that now I had a headache and my sinuses hurt.

Thursday I decided to give up and spent the day at home. Wasn’t much of a “sick day” though, since I ended up writing a report, and taking 4 calls from people at work, as well as sending and receiving a bunch of emails. It still counts as a sick day, what a gyp.

Today I figured that I may as well go to work, and ended up feeling worse than I did yesterday. The whole day was spent in a cloudy state where I was sort of feeling half asleep, though I was wide awake. My sinuses weren’t running but I did have a headache for much of the day.

Looks like the weekend is going to be a quiet one.

My favourite saying since Monday has been “urgh”. On Monday morning, I woke up feeling pretty sore (for no apparent reason, since I’d had a pretty relaxing weekend). Thinking I’d just slept in a funny position I went to work in a pretty normal manner.

By the time I got there, I wasn’t thinking particularly straight, and when I was asking Shane (the new IT guy, who is working on contract while Glenn is away) to restore a file from backup, I seem to recall not thinking very straight. By lunch time, I knew the day was a loss (I hadn’t actually managed to do any work yet) and went home.

I pretty much sat in front of the TV for a few hours, and went to bed early on Monday. Tuesday was, unfortunately, even worse. I called in sick (the third sick day in over two years, I must be slipping) and spent the day in bed and ont he couch. Again I went to bed early.

Which leads us to today; I’m still at home, not feeling too great (though not as bad as yesterday) — this is the first time I’ve had two sick days off in a row for probably 4 years. I’m too stubborn to go to the doctor, but I suppose I really should make an effort so I can pump myself full of drugs.

Oh yeah, “urgh”.

Justine made some super-muffins last night. They were chocolate mud muffins from a packet mix, and 8 or 12 were made from the packet. Justine decided, however, that chocolate mud muffins don’t contain enough chocolate. She proceeded to dump an entire large packet of Nestle Chocolate Melts into the mix.

We tasted one last night and they were quite nice. A little overbearing on the chocolate, but then again I’m not the chocoholic that Justine is.

So I take one to work this morning for something to munch on for morning tea (morning tea for me is mostly a time when others disappear for 10 minutes and I can work on their PCs without being bothered). I decide at around 11:00 I feel a bit peckish and eat most of this super-muffin. Well, it’s now three-and-a-half hours later and not only do I feel like I devoured an entire roast boar and a side of two young turkeys, but I feel indigestion coming on. I haven’t even felt the need for lunch!

Perhaps we could ship some of these things to Ethiopia or Bosnia or wherever food shortages currently exist. You could feed a small village on one of these things! The amount of sugar and fat that must be in one has to be astronomical. I think I need to eat a whole lettuce just to counter-act the darn thing!

Justine has the next few days from work off, as she is rather sick at the moment. I won’t go into details because it’s really none of your damn business, but I’ll be spending those few days with her, uhh, looking after her. Yes, that’s it. Anyway, the site probably won’t be updated for a while because I’m using Justine’s sickness as an excuse for me to be lazy. Deal with it!