i finally got some drugs to fight my persistent cough. medicine in china is sold only through dedicated drugstores. what's confusing is the medicine can either be western or chinese. seen through chinese eyes, both are equally effective. my personal feeling towards chinese medicine is much of it is hogwash. as for western medicine, you find drugs in china that aren't available in the US, particularly medication that are much more potent than they should be. there's also the running rumor that sometimes the medicine is fake. given that chinese medicine for the most part is essentially worthless, it's no surprise that some of the western medicine stock don't work either. basically, buying medicine in china is very unpredictable.

i had some leftover maximum strength mucinex-dm while i was in chongqing that i took to fight my cough. it sort of worked (even though the drugs had a 2010 expiration date), but left me feeling so medicated (side effects: antsy, sleepy, detached from my body) that i only took it at night. i did try to buy some cough medicine when i was in hainan, but the stuff i bought was for treating the flu, had nothing to do with coughing. and sunmeng was adamant that i bought some counterfeit drugs and when i tried to return the unused medication the next day, the pharmacist wouldn't take it back.

i ended up buying a box of maximum strength mucinex-dm from rite aid. mucinex is the brand i turn to whenever i have any sort of coughing or decongestion. there's also mucinex-d which has pseudoephedrine (you need to show id) but i didn't get that because it's for coughs/runny nose and my nose is fine. mucinex-dm is the same ones i took in china, but just not expired yet, which is a good thing. i took a tablet as soon as i got back home.

i went to go meet my mother at the cafe at 2:30pm so we could ride back to belmont together. i took my fuji bike, figuring i could turn on the light show when i returned home in the evening. it was another warm and dry day, so much so that earlier i watered the front and backyard. the sky was an explosion of different clouds. the fuji is so much lighter than my trek cargo, and has bigger 27" wheels compared to the 26" dirt bike wheels on the trek. all those advantages make for a faster fuji bike, that's why i like riding it.

i've been back for almost 2 weeks and i finally went to go see my plant seedlings, the ones my father took care of for me while i was away in china for 2 months. they were all stunted from lack of light, and many had multiple plants, which contributed to their overall miniaturization. they're useless at this point because by the time they're actually big enough to be viable the growing season will be over. this year i will just have to buy all my seedlings. ironically, it will cost me about the same, since with my grow closet setup i typically use about $10/month of extra electricity, so by the time i have transplants, it would've cost me $30-40.

my father didn't come home until almost 5pm. dinner came in the simple form of baby bokchoi and a bowl of steamed eggs. sunset today around 8:30pm, so by the time i biked home at 7:30pm there was still an hour left of daylight, which meant i didn't get to use the lights on my wheels.

after a shower, i watched part 3 of OJ: made in america chromecasting from the ESPN app. actually all the episodes are available online, so i might watch the rest of them later tonight if i can't sleep.