Sickly

I've had a persistent cold that's plagued me since China. I'm going to blame the air pollution (awful), the fact that people smoked indoors everywhere we went (I needed to go outside and breathe sometimes, because the smog was slightly less irritating than the indoor cigarette smoke), and the fact that I was on two planes in three days (planes are just self-contained germ factories, recycling all that stale air continuously).

I gave up the fight on Friday, because the two other people that I went to China with were also rather ill and we were all sniffly and coughy, and went to the pharmacy. Pharmacies in Korea are not like pharmacies in the States. I mentioned this from my trip to Korea last year (when I caught a really crazy cold), but one must always speak to the pharmacist when one enters a pharmacy. There aren't boxes of medicine (over-the-counter meds) just lying about.

I went into the pharmacy on Friday night after work, a little woozy from the cold. My wooziness meant that I was a little slow (slower than usual), and the pharmacist looked at me pityingly when I totally couldn't understand the Korean word for "symptoms" (which I still can't remember now). I explained that I was a foreigner, and I don't know hard words, and he switched to very proficient English.

Once he heard my symptoms (sore throat, coughing, feeling a bit feverish) he gave me two packages of pills and two pouches of herbal medicine (that blasted herbal medicine seems to be a permanent part of my life!), told me to take two pills from each package (four pills a dose is a LOT) and one pouch per four pills every four hours on Friday (hence only two pouches of herbal medicine, as I could only take two doses on Friday before the day was over), then take four pills three times a day on Saturday, which would deplete all the pills that I bought.

Whew, that was a lot of pills. They did make me feel better, but they wiped me out. I dozed all day on Saturday and was useless on Sunday. I'm mostly recovered now, with a minor case of sniffles and a bit of a headache (though that could be attributed to work).

I came into work on Monday morning to see the above. This isn't my desk, but I would've laughed if someone had stuck little sticky tabs all over my monitors. I just think it's funny that no matter where you work, office pranks remain largely the same.

My favorite office prank, by the way, is licking the back of gummy bears and sticking them on monitors. They really stick! And it's super gross to get all the gummies off, because they leave a sugary residue.

Sorry about the lame posting this week, but between work (and some in-fighting at work) and the cold, I've been treading water just to stay afloat.