Monday
3/17-Thursday 3/20/03 Big
Tom’s Ice Cream, 2nd Bout of Food Poisoning
Had dinner arranged by Tricia w/her very gay GQ
photographer friend ChunKai aka “Chunky” (very thin actually), Gin, Gin’s dad’s
architect friend’s son Lev who’s traveling around Taiwan and China, Jonathan,
and Niclas at a Korean BBQ place on Keelung Rd. It was pretty good but still can’t get over the fact Korean
tastes so different here than in US, so “Taiwanese’d”, and I still like it
better back home.
Had
ice cream at the famous Big Tom’s I’d heard about (where Gin and Jon had
ordered a shake from the menu but were told “[We can’t waste our high quality
ice cream making it into a shake]”).
The logo is a total rip off Haagen Dazs and they even have the B&J’s
cows out front where we had fun posing with them in all sorts of obscene
positions. The sign claims it to
be a famous American joint but none of us has ever heard of it. We tried ordering a shake again, but
this time they said their blender wasn’t working (a more plausible sounding
excuse). Most flavors were out,
but they said if we come tomorrow they’ll have NEW flavors. Excited we asked What? “[Vanilla and strawberry.]” Woo, crazy!
It was quite fancy, they scooped a pretty big scoop
into a fluted waffle cone in a dish then sprinkled two toppings of your choice
on top. My mint choc chip though
was all gooey from being scraped from the bottom so midway through I exchanged
for a chocolate and thus ate 1 ½ as much as everyone.
Then we went to lounge Modena which was empty (Monday
night crowd) where I didn’t order anything; Niclas (who’s off alcohol for Lent)
and I left first, I was beat and the only one getting up at a decently early
hour, and later we heard Chunky had given everyone massages, with special
attention to Jon and Lev. I said
I’m sure Niclas was sad he missed out.
Tuesday
Gin SMSed she was taking Lev to the CKS ShauLongBau place which I’d been
dreaming about and hadn’t gone since before my US trip, so I gave in. We ordered all our faves, GuoTie, 2
kinds of SLB, beef wrapped in scallion pancake, several small cold side dishes,
shrimp dumplings. Elsa and her
friend joined us later. Lev and I
shared a MaLa stinky tofu. After that
we walked to YongKangJie to Chocaholic café where we got hot chocolates since
it was a rainy cold night. I got
almond white chocolate which sounded good in theory but was eh (hot milk with
almond extract in it, I think I can make that myself). The frothy/creaminess of their stuff is
still impressive though.
Middle
of the night to early in the morning Wed I started getting nauseous and crampy,
my stomach queasy and even when I could sleep the nausea was in my dreams. Hoped it would pass but got worse, and
by 6AM I threw up. Remembered I
hadn’t drank any water last night.
Drank some now and immediately threw it up. Laid down and threw up again, then diarrhea. Now resigned to a repeat performance of
food poisoning I dragged myself to the ER of the clinic near me and was again
put on IV, plus shot to my butt. I
was shivering but they found I had a fever, so got a shot in my other butt for
that. Drifted in and out of
sleep. Hard bed. Cold. Totally miserable.
Lying awake and watching that drip, drip, drip slowly is maddening, you
want it to hurry, go through the bag so the doc can look at you and say hm,
you’re good enough to go. But
still crampy the whole time, the pain made me yelp sometimes. My cell didn’t have a signal but
managed to SMS Ginger about it and got her reply that Lev was sick too, thinks
it was the tofu. That might’ve
been it since I think I had most of it.
Finally after 3 full IV bags and 12 hrs and my fever dropped from
39-something to 37-something, they let me go with 6 different drugs.
That
night Mom happened to call and I told her I couldn’t talk much because I was
sick. She immediately freaked out
thinking of SARS, even though I assured her it wasn’t, and kept telling me to
“be careful.” I know everyone’s
worried about me being here with the SARS thing, but what can we do? The emails from AIT, and the CDC and
WHO websites aren’t much help:
“Hi, there is this sickness going around, we don’t know what it is
exactly, or how it’s transmitted, or what can be done if you catch it, or what
you can do to prevent it. Just be
alert!” Their vagueness is strikingly
similar to the terrorism and travel advisory warning emails.
Thursday
still queasy so skipped school, but called Dave since it was Match Eve for him,
and went to work where didn’t do much except reply to some job emails and put
my head on the desk and only ate a couple saltines. The doc had told me I was still dehydrated so to get some
Supau (Gatorade), and I was nursing those all day. I hadn’t had diarrhea all day yesterday, but after having
the combo of six drugs 4 times a day I was having it again. After I completely stopped the drugs,
the diarrhea stopped too, so I think they were actually causing it. Maybe after my course of drugs was
done, I was supposed to go, “Wow they worked, no more diarrhea!”
Dragged
ass to teach Steph, telling Erica not to cook me a meal this time, almost told
her the truth but didn’t want to worry her paranoid mind, so I said because I
was meeting friends afterward for dinner.
She felt sorry that I’d have to eat so late, so gave Steph her meal
(this time it was GOOD! Steak with
pepper sauce, doh) and me a big slice of chocolate cake which I couldn’t resist
eating. I tried to amuse Steph
with a new tactic, turning one of her stories into a Mad Lib. But when I read it aloud with the new
words she gave me, she didn’t laugh, just said haughtily, “That doesn’t make
any sense.” I sheepishly dropped
it and went onto something else.
Thursday
1AM: got the expected phone call
from Dave who just matched. “Hi,” I said, “What’s up?” like I don’t know why he’s
calling. Why can’t I think of more
creative things to say at these times?
“SF!” he says, which was
what we both pretty much expected, and we’re both very happy, and I hear lots
of whooping in the background and let him go enjoy and spread his news. Whew! Lately I’d started getting really worried if he said Boston. I’d gotten myself too hyped up for CA
already. It would’ve been very
hard for me not to say, “Doh. 6
years of Boston? Um, I’m going to
CA. See ya!” Then I thought, what if he says, “SF”
and I say, “Yay, thank God not Boston!”
and he goes, “Just kidding, I’m really going to Boston.” Then I’d be screwed. So I mentally rehearsed to be very very
happy no matter what.