The Swiney in Taipei.

So apparently H1N1 is like frighteningly rampant here in Taipei. NBD right?

Until I started getting a sore throat and other BS last Sunday. Then I woke up Monday morning, not feeling too bad, and made the poor decision of googling "H1N1 symptoms." Like I said, bad idea.

As my eyes moved down the screen, I got more and more scared: sore throat? yes. headache? yes. coughing? yes. HOLY CRAP I HAVE H1N1 WHAT AM I GOING TO DO OH MY GOD OH MY GOD. This is exactly what was going through my head at that exact moment. But I stupidly decided to read on: "Doctors suggest staying indoors, and staying away from others for at least 24 hours until your fever goes down." Fever?!?!?! OH MY GOD I DON'T HAVE A THERMOMETER WHAT AM I GOING TO DO. So obviously, I googled "how to tell if you have a fever without a thermometer" duh, I mean I DID go to USC.

Unfortunately, the people who answered all the Yahoo! message boards didn't seem to have gotten the same education I did... because answers ranged from: "put a cold glass of milk on your stomach, I say milk because afterwards if you still can't tell at least you'll have a cold glass of milk to drink" to "THERE IS NO WAY TO TELL. THE HAND ON THE FOREHEAD DOESN'T WORK" to "put the back of your hand against your forehead." Bottom line: there is no way to tell without a thermometer, jokes on you retards!!!!

So, freaking out, I made some quick calls to excuse myself from class--I mean, they should be THANKFUL I wasn't going to infect them, right?? And decided to spend the whole rest of the day indoors. The only time I left my tiny, tiny "apartment" was to get food & ravish the nearby 7-11 for any vitamins I could find... and also look for something, ANYTHING, resembling emergenC (oh, how I miss you, Pink Lemonade EmergenC...).

Totally thought this was a good idea.. until two hours later, at 12:00 PM when I flipped through all the channels on my TV and realized there was NOTHING GOOD ON TV BECAUSE IT WAS A MONDAY AT NOON. I subsequently had nothing else to do. for the whole freaking rest of the day. AWESOMEEEEEE, can you say cabin fever??

Anyway, the rest of the day was extremely boring: I took a nap because I literally had nothing else to do, woke up, watched the last half of Braveheart on TV, watched some CSI:NY, ate, went online... ate again.. slept..

Update: one week, a lot of rest, and lots of medicine, and NO PARTYING later, I feel much better. I found out later I did NOT have the Swiney, aka H1N1, because I never had a fever. This would have been useful information at around 9:30 last Monday morning, but ah well. C'est la vie. It was just a cold... actually more just a cough than anything else... Thanks to all my friends for enduring the coughing sounds coming from my body.. that sounded like I was going to cough up a lung... :)

David with his safety mask

*fun fact: these masks don't prevent you from GETTING anything, it is actually to keep you from SPREADING anything. So I suppose I should have been wearing it..... haha