Dripping


I’ve got a big bottle of Tylenol Cold Multi-Symptom SEVERE siting on my desk as I type this. It feels as though there are too many nouns in the name of that product, but I suppose that’s less unsettling than the bright blue liquid within. It’s working, though; after a day where it was painful to speak and my head hurt so much that I wanted an end to everything, 30 mililitres of acetaminophen, phenylephrine, dextromethophan and guaifenesin seem to have done the trick. No longer does it hurt to swallow. My nose is now dripping, but I think that’s a small price to pay for being able to think again.

One problem I had was that I couldn’t swallow; my throat was ragged and raw, and my mouth seemed half full of mucus. At the same time, I kept salivating, so I had a huge amount of spit building up. To my great chagrin, I had to pause every few hundred yards and expectorate into a bush. That’s just the sort of thing that I don’t like seeing people do outside my apartment block in Singapore. Perhaps they’ve all got foul colds and no handkerchiefs, and I was meant to travel to Washington State to learn sympathy for other people.

No, come to think of it, I was meant to travel to Washington State to sit in an air-conditioned room and discuss strategies with people from around the company. But I suppose it’s easy to make that mistake.

Although I can now swallow things, my nose has begun to run. I should be sanguine about this (I’ve been phlegmatic enough the last couple of days : green phlegm, brown phlegm, grey phlegm …) and hope that it’s a sign my body is purging all the rotten toxins from itself, but frankly it’s a little bit inconvenient. I’d prefer to be properly dried out by now.

Anyway, the hotel room I have is slightly larger and better-appointed than my flat in Hong Kong was; for that I can be happy. It’s right by the freeway, so it’s a bit quieter than Hong Kong was as well, and there’s what it bills as a ’24 hour market’ downstairs, which turns out to be some microwavable meals that depressed salarymen with bad colds can purchase and take back to their rooms to heat up, when they can’t face dealing with humankind and menus. So pretty perfect for me today, then.


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