Week Four

Hi all!

Sorry for the big gap in blogging. Had a trip to the hospital yesterday and today I'm feeling much better. Still wobbly and in a bit of pain, but definitely an improvement on recent history! To cut a short story long (don't know about you, but I have plenty of time)...

You know me, I tend to undersell myself when I get sick, especially since one of the fun benefits of my variety of chronic fatigue is a weak immune system. I say it's because I don't like to complain and that there are plenty of people far worse off than me. Tari says it's because I'm a stupid, stubborn man with an irrational phobia of doctors and hospitals. Either way, by the weekend when Tari was around me all day it was pretty clear to her how sick I was.

If you want slightly too much information (don't worry, I won't give you the far too much version), highlight the next bit of text with your mouse, I coloured the text white so you can't see it unless you do.

It was kinda cool, though painful, when my gut was doing some massive crampy gymnastics you could actually look down and see it jiggling around, it looked just like that bit in Aliens before the chestburster jumps out!

Anyway, Tari called one of her lovely doctor friends, Dr. Diah, (who is mentioned in the original series from the last time we were here). She just wanted to ask for a doctor to go to. Instead we got picked up by Diah, who had taken the morning off, and driven to the hospital to see a... well actually, I was on the verge of passing out most of the time, so here's an extract from Tari:

"We saw a general medicine specialist and a gastroenterologist today. Sim is a little hypotensive (90/60) but no other major problems.
The provisional diagnosis is enteritis post either viral or bacterial gastroenteritis.

He has been given anti-emetics, anti-diarrhoeals, anti-inflammatories and antibiotics; in other words, the complete armoury of available pharmaceuticals.
No doubt one of those or the combination will fix him right up!"

All I really remember in that three/four hours was that on TV in the indoor waiting area one time was a show called 60 minutes. Yay, dry current affairs in another language. No. Wait. There was a video clip that looked like (Tari says) Bad Bon Jovi late 80s. Talking massive hair, lots of leather and, my favorite, a light chainmail shirt on the lead "singer". After the video clip it cut to, how to explain this, some sort of competition with two hosts standing by a pool being very excited.

Five contestants who were eliminated one challenge at a time. The challenges? Well, very high tech. The first one we saw was diving into a pool to get a t-shirt, shorts and socks and then putting them on while sopping wet. The second was spinning around and around then being told to "go!" where they had to sprint off to a big tub full of polystyrene bean bag chair beans and sift through it for some flippers.

That's all I remember of that. Sorry.

After getting out of the first doctor, going to the lab, waiting for lab results, coming back to see the doctor again and being given some drugs, Diah had a chat to him (she's a doctor that has worked with him before AND they both play tennis) and while we were waiting at the apothek (pharmacy) one of the nurses came up and said that the gastro specialist was wanting to see us. Some wheels had been greased and a phone call had been made and he came down to see me. Anyway, the drugs seem to be working!

My foot was painful again this morning!  Most of you know that my foot hurts all day every day, but when something is more painful I don't notice it. It's always a good sign when I feel it again, 'cos it means that whatever else it is must be far less painful. Diah is a legend! Everybody is so nice here! I know I've said it before, but there you go.

Well, since I've only been semi-conscious I don't have anything more coherent for you. Here's just a random sampler of stuff since the last post...

In Melbourne, when using my laptop without sufficient airflow, and playing any half decent game, it would sometimes heat up to shut-down point. In Singapore I got one of these...

USB powered, curved with a fan. Keeps the air circulating nicely underneath and completely essential over here! Haven't had it shut down with that going.

Tari played tennis on Sunday. Yes, as I mentioned above, people play tennis here. Sure, it's 35-40 degrees and culturally you have to wear pants and long sleeved shirts and cover your head, but hey, why not run around and around!? I didn't go (for the above reasons) but she had a great time. They had a trainer there who was very good. He'd hit the ball right to Tari, who'd hit it off on some wild angle. He'd sprint after it and hit it back... slowly... right to her again! Rinse and repeat. I think all tennis should be like that, personally, someone should hit the ball to you so that you don't have to run but you're still allowed to hit it wherever you want! (Kinda like wii tennis I guess!)

After that, while the others were playing a proper game, Tari befriended a little girl (I can't remember how old, but maybe 3 years old?) She played fetch, catch, etc. The little girl knew more English than Tari knew Indonesian, but at some stage she started babbling away in Indonesian. Tari tried to explain that she didn't speak Indonesian, but the little girl was confused by this. After the little girl talked quizzically to an adult, followed by laughter, Tari had it explained that the little girl had asked if Tari was an alien or a dinosaur? What other bizarre creature wouldn't understand Indonesian?

I think that's kinda cool, I like both aliens AND dinosaurs so it's win win really.

We also finally saw Mt. Merapi...

I tried to use the Windows image processing software, but you'll need to click on the image for the full size to even vaguely be able to see it. This was the least hazy day we've had so far. Still no rain and the temperature has been right back up again. People here now just shrug and say "the world has gone crazy". The wet season is soooooo overdue now.

Some more randoms... The place we're staying at used to be three separate buildings, the place people stay in, the conference hall and the place people eat. They're all joined up now, but the renovations are always just additive, rather than removing anything old. So you might not be able to make this out, but this is guttering that is now INSIDE the building.

And there are plenty of places where the wall just sort of stops half height and there are big open gaps to the outside. It's not like it matters from a temperature perspective, it's hot outside, it's hot inside! This means you get many visitors...

In the big mall we've seen many amusing things, but I don't usually get the camera out for them. For example, they have lots of very cute T-shirts here with slogans like:

"I am wrong"

"I love her ->" with a matching "<- I love him"

(you'd have to make sure you stood on the right side of each other for that combo to work!)

"Phis Ed"

"I am happy and oh-so glad"

Unfortunately it's hard to get t-shirts that fit me. Awwww. However Tari managed to find one that fit her (she went for the Phis Ed one) because she needed a long sleeve t-shirt for tennis.

We also saw an evil corporation at work. You know, the sort that tell mums that they really need to feed their babies and toddlers special food and antibacterial, pro-V (or is that shampoo) etc. stuff. While Tari was foaming at the mouth and working out whether or not she would internally combust, I was laughing at the "around the world" section. Here's a picture of my favorite one!

The kangaroo was, unfortunately, behind one of the pillars at the time. You can see the security booth in the background. They are all over the place. You actually get searched by armed guards before you're allowed into the mall in the first place.

And on the way to the mall, we were stopped in traffic next to this store:

We expect profits to be in the tens of thousands! Unfortunately the profits will be in the local currency. (7000 to 1 ratio, or thereabouts.)

And speaking of outrageous monetary things. The UC Resto has almost literally doubled it's prices! They now have a larger menu, which looks fabulous by the way. They've done a really nice classy job compared to the old menus they had, which must have been printed 10 years ago (and hence, the prices were 10 years old). So now we pay outrageous prices for our food.

We both had dinner last night with enough food to not quite finish and fresh squeezed cold fruit juice in big tall glasses for 45,000! That's a lot of money for a dinner! Until you divide by 7,000. So I guess we can't compain too much huh. It's going to be a shock to come back to Melbourne and have a Maccas lunch (we're back at the airport at 1:30pm and flying the el-cheapo option means we'll be hungry!) that costs way more than twice as much for way more than a halving of food quantity and quality.

Actually, I just did a check, it's currently a factor of 8,600 so I REALLY can't complain.

Well, that's all I can think of for the moment. It's about half past eight in the morning and while I've been sitting here the temperature has been a relatively pleasant 36 but I'd rather be up in the 26 degree room where there's less humidity!

Just waiting now for the internet connection to click back on so I can hit send. Under two weeks to go!