paracetamol. pseudophedrine hydrochloride. dextromethorphan hydrobromide. diphenhydramine hydrochloride. not sure what they mean but they're all coursing through my system right now courtesy of the company clinic, after i went to go see the doctor in the afternoon asking if he could do anything about this cold i seemed to have caught (more about my clinic visit tomorrow, it's a weird story).

i took a pill about an hour ago and my head is swimming right now. i am going to pass out now, after uploading some more photos from yesterday. good night, i'll blog more tomorrow from the office during my noontime break period.

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could this actually be my 3rd week of work? when i say it like that it seems like the time has gone by pretty quickly, but every week feels like 2 weeks. i woke up in the middle of the night feeling nauseous. i was afraid maybe the stinky tofu or the barbecued meat i had earlier was finally catching up to me. but the feeling passed and i went back to sleep. when i woke up to go to work, i knew i had a cold. the coughing. the runny nose. the sneezing. there was no doubt.

i bumped into yuwei this morning. she was waiting for her shuttle bus after getting some meat buns. huey took the day off, as promised. i ran into ms.yu in the coffee room and she actually said good morning. that kind of surprised me, but i think she had no choice, it was either that or make it blatantly obvious she's trying to ignore me.

in the afternoon i decided to go see the office clinic, maybe score some cold medicine. i sat down and told the doctor my symptoms. he fished around in his desk drawer and took out a plastic box with a few dusty thermometers inside and gave one to me, unsterilized. i knew it wasn't going to be rectal, but i was afraid he wanted me to put the thermometer in my mouth. he said something to me that i didn't understand, which made it even more tense. "the armpit?" i asked, pointing to my armpit. he nodded. "over the clothes?" no, he said, underneath. i unbuttoned my shirt and sat there with the thermometer sticking out of my armpit, within view of a few office cubicles outside. he sat at his desk, surfing the web like i wasn't even there. i asked him how long i had to wait. 10 minutes he told me. 10 minutes? he told me i might have air conditioning syndrome, which is a feeling of hot and cold caused my the office AC. i told him about my symptoms though, classic cold symptoms. i told him i was afraid of being contagious and infecting my coworkers. "that won't happen," he said, as if he didn't want to give me an excuse to take a sick day. "you'll take some medicine and you'll be fine." a few minutes later he asked me to take out the thermometer. "your temperature is normal, you're fine," he told me. "so i don't have a cold after all?" "no, you have a cold," he replied, adding to my confusion. "where can i go to buy some cold medicine?" i asked. the doctor told me they have supplies in the office, and went to a glass cabinet to take out a box. it looked like cough syrup, which i usually avoid. "a lot of people in the office like this medicine," he told me. he also told me it was chinese herbal medicine, but i don't really believe in. "do you have any western medicine?" i asked. he thought about it for a few moments. "you don't believe in chinese medicine? we have some western medicine as well," as he returned to the cabinet to get something else.