I hate it when a plan falls apart

Finals may be done but not in the style I would have liked. Continuing from my last post, all I had left to do was my Cognitive Psychology final on Monday and a paper for my Social Influences class due on Wednesday. Easy enough, especially considering how I was almost done the paper already.

The plan was: exam Monday morning. Go home, finish paper, send it to the Professor to review, date with Theresa Tuesday, revise paper after date, submit the paper Tuesday evening for grading, enjoy my winter break on Wednesday.

I know my limitations so I'm able to fairly accurately know how things should occur days if not weeks in advance. I'm generally able to account for hiccups and delays and factor them in as well.

Well, I didn't expect a hiccup of this variety or this magnitude.

Let's go back in time for a moment. Monday afternoon. I've just finished my exam, I'm excited, I'm almost free, all is well. I'm really tired having barely slept in the last few days but the adrenaline from the exam is still keeping me going.

Either that or the 710ml of Coke I drank to keep me awake during the exam.

I stop by Safeway to grab a bowl of soup and a bread bowl for lunch because I love soup and I love bread bowls. Decided to treat myself. Got home, and half way through my bread bowl I feel oddly full and more tired than usual. I decide to take a quick nap and then get started on my essay.

I wake up a few hours later wanting to vomit, my intestines were cramping up and I'm still as exhausted from before I took the nap.

Yep, stomach flu. That's just great. Well, fairly certain it was stomach flu and the soup that did it to me. Last time I checked, Coke doesn't cause stomach problems of this magnitude.

I then spent the next 48 hours huddled up in bed, feeling terrible, not eating anything solid. Liquid in, liquid out to say it nicely.

Note that this doesn't change the deadline of my paper.

So come Tuesday evening when I finally feel coherent enough, I  drag myself to my computer, finish my paper and send it to my prof early Wednesday morning in hopes that she'll still take a look at it.

And then waddled back to the bathroom to have my insides explode.

The good news is that a few hours later I do get an email back from the prof. The bad news is that because I sent it to her on the day its due she won't provide any help with it.

Well, gee thanks.

And it pisses me off even further because I could have had that stupid paper in her inbox for review on Monday if I didn't get sick. Or at least, Tuesday evening if I wasn't so sick.

So I looked over my paper several times in hopes that my own editing would be good enough and submit it for grading. I probably looked something like this:

Tea is soothing for the stomach.

I'm still slightly sick. The thought of eggs and greasy foods still makes me queasy. But who cares? I'm finally done now.

Just, not as elegantly as I would have liked.

Memories of China: Food Poisoning

I ate a lot in China. A ridiculous amount of food, things that I would never normally eat but I simply had to just for the spectacle, to say that I've tried it. Other times I grabbed something from a street vendor so I could take a picture of it.

I never claimed to be a smart man, my motto often times is "Do it, just because you can do it".

This leads to me eating things like this deep fried bird thing. I have no idea what it is, some kind of chick? For all I know they grabbed a bunch of chickadees. I hoped that the oil was enough to burn away any bacteria.

Seasoning salt kills bacteria too right?

But that didn't give me food poisoning. No. So I guess that if you deep fry something enough, it makes it safe to eat. Good knowledge for any traveller.

Now for anyone who remembers, one of the tours I was in a city called Chengdu. For anyone who cares, it's in the province of Sichaun. Now why this is important is because the people in this province are known for cooking in a particular way.

And I hate it.

It's overly spiced and/or spicy with food that ends up being especially oily/fatty/greasy. They even have their own type of "spiciness" which is characterized by your mouth going numb. That's right. Having your mouth numb = Spicy. It's caused by these special peppercorns that they use. And I can't say I care for them. Most of the meals provided by the tour group were unappetizing to me.

But one meal stuck out. And that was the Sichaun hotpot. Hotpot is basically where you have a pot of boiling broth or water at a table, and everyone cooks food in the pot at the same time. What made the Sichaun hotpot different was that the broth was Sichaun style. Lovely.

And there was one meat that I had to try.

Yes those are brains.

Maybe if I ate it in a different environment I would have enjoyed it more? But the brain was very gritty and yet, mushy. There wasn't much taste but I couldn't bring myself to eat the whole portion.

But, the brain didn't give me food poisoning either.

Later in Taiwan when we were in the night market I would find more interesting things to eat. My friends told me to find a dish which literally translates into "Small intestine in large intestine". In reality it's just small and large intestine sausages. I did find a stall selling it and it was extremely greasy and oily.

I tried giving some to a wandering stray dog and he ignored me.

I don't really blame him.

But no, this greasy mess didn't give me food poisoning. Neither did the offal that I got from a street vendor in Hong Kong, or the chicken cartilage from Macau, or the questionable peanuts on the boat ride in Guilin, or the riceballs from 7-11.

None of the things I ate in China gave me food poisoning.

So you ask, what did? What did I eat that caused me to puke for the first time in probably a decade? That made half my family sick and gave my Dad intestinal problems for half a week?

Airline food from these guys.

I hate these guys.

I apologize in advance if anyone reading this works at United or has loved ones working at United but I cannot stand this airline. Fairly poor service, barely mediocre flights, and seriously, when your food is worse than everything I ate in a country with questionable (if any) hygiene standards, something is wrong.

I hope to never fly with them again. I was lucky to be bedridden for only one day, my Dad was still vomiting and have diarrhea over half a week later.

Probably not a good idea to eat the vegetarian option either.

I'm Back and Somewhat Alive!

Hello! To anyone who may still be following and reading my blog I am back safe in Canada from my trip to China! Unfortunately, this will have to be a really short post. I got food poisoning and I'm still not feeling that great.

More on that story later. I'll see you guys on Sunday when I should have fully recovered.