My First Chinese Cold, a Trip to Hong Kong and the Four Pound Bag of Chocolate Chips

I have a confession. I am a miserable sick person. I do not like being sick. I am grouchy, pathetic and unpleasant. I want people to do things for me when I am sick, but I don’t want to ask for help, as that generally goes against my disposition not to ask for help unless trapped under a very heavy object of some sort that I am unable to move. I’ve embraced this independent woman thing and I’m good with it. Unless, that is, I am sick. It started last Sunday with a little tickle in my throat that turned into more of a scratching and then a burning. I knew what was coming.
I tried to fight it Monday by telling myself that I was only imagining it. Strangely enough, that didn’t work. By Tuesday I was feverish, my head was swimming and I was whining to my co-workers. The middle school secretary felt bad for me (as she was sick the week before and thought she may have infected me) and hooked me up with an herbal Chinese cold-cure. I’m not sure if it helped or added to the head-swimming. It was warm, if nothing else. Another co-worker took pity on me and offered Western cold medicine, for which I was grateful. I realized on Tuesday that I had packed medicine for half a cold, thinking that I would get to Hong Kong to stock up on medical supplies before I had a chance to get sick. Wrong. Wednesday I was still feeling like something stuck to the bottom of a shoe, but went in to work anyway. Thursday I stayed home and spent the day strung out on cold medicine and take-out. Bless food delivery services. Friday, I was still worse for the wear, but coming out of it. Plus, I had to be ready to go, as I had a date with a banker in Hong Kong.
I hadn’t really imagined that my first trip to Hong Kong would involve Kleenex and lots of nose blowing. Even though Hong Kong is only 100 miles from GZ, it is an international trip, as HK is its own special administrative region. So, I had to go through quarantine to get on the train. I have noticed in recent years that my resting body temperature is somewhere closer to 96 than it is to 98.6, which is handy when you have to walk past fever detecting cameras. I boarded the train, still doped up on cold pills, and started feeling very sensitive to every single sound. I tried to sleep, but my hearing was amplified. Everything was loud. The colors on the chairs were too bright, I wanted to curl into a ball on the floor of the train, but I was afraid I would have caught something worse down there. I plugged in the iPod, gritted my teeth and waited for the train to roll into Hong Kong.
I will state right now, that I do not have single picture of my trip. It was raining and it was hazy. Not the best picture taking conditions. Plus I had a fist full of Kleenex the whole weekend, and I certainly didn’t want to get any viscous bodily fluid in my camera. It took about three and a half hours to get from the train station in GZ to the hotel in HK. There were about 15 of us that went, as we all needed to open up bank accounts in HK, and we decided to go out for Mexican for dinner. It was a long walk and I was hungry. And tired. And grouchy. And when the Mexican place was full, I led the charge next door to the 24-hour breakfast joint and I was happy. It’s amazing how much you don’t miss something like a breakfast burrito until you see one listed on a menu. It got the works…salsa, sour cream and avocado. Plus a pancake on the side; blissful breakfast delight at 10 p.m. Saturday I opened a bank account, and went to a big shiny mall where I purchased a shirt, a pair of shoes and a copy of the best travel book ever written, McCarthy’s Bar. My best purchase of the day was made at another grocery store heavy with American imports: 4 pounds of chocolate chips!! Chocolate chips are somewhat hard to come by in GZ. I wasn’t about to let that one go, even if I had previously bought two smaller bags of chocolate chips at the big shiny mall. Have you ever met a chocolate chip you didn’t like? Yeah, me either. While I can’t say I saw much of Hong Kong on this trip, I can say I look forward to going back. Without a box of Kleenex. And with photographic evidence of my trip. And, let’s face it, with another four pound bag of chocolate chips in my suitcase.