Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Spring break gripes

I'll limit these to only a couple, since no one likes a complainer:
  1. I told my students a few days before the break that I'd probably wait for the vacation before I got the flu that they were passing around. Well, so far I've avoided getting sick. Instead, I fell on the stairs the first day of spring break and twisted my ankle pretty badly (sorry, no pictures, but you can look at this from Earth Wide Moth to get a general idea). The good news is that I survived my first experience being acupunctured [is that a word?] without freaking out. I get the second treatment today. News at 11.
  2. Because of 1., I've spent a bit of time on the sofa during the break. Besides moaning and groaning (like a typical male, I didn't go to get any treatment for my ankle until a couple of days after falling), I started watching 好美麗診所 on TV. It's fairly entertaining, but why'd they have to make the bad gal (Peng Chunmei 彭春妹) a Hakka? (And why did they choose A-ya (阿雅), who's about as Hakka as Ma Ying-jeou, to play a Hakka?)
  3. On the bright side, I managed to hobble down to the travel agent yesterday to pick up my tickets to Belgium. Now if the NSC would just hurry up and approve my travel grant before the government disbands the NSC...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Clyde said:

Sorry to hear about your fall, but glad you have discovered acupunture. It is very well done here and with our insurance a great deal. I was won over a while back. I find it even helps with just general being burned out!

Travel grants from the NSC don't pass until the very last moment, its kind of a rule.

Jonathan Benda said...

The second acupuncture treatment was quite interesting--the doctor put some sort of herb? (don't know what it was) on the end of the needle and lit it on fire. Would have been a less painful treatment if he hadn't accidentally lit some of my foot's hairs on fire... (sorry, no pictures of that)

I finally got notification that my travel grant was approved. I guess this was fairly early, since the conference isn't until April 20...

Jonathan Benda said...

Oh, forgot to add that I did finally get sick yesterday, after spring break was over. Came down with some 24-hour stomach virus and felt wretched all day.

senioritis said...

Bum foot AND flu? Amigo, my sympathies!

Jonathan Benda said...

Thanks for the sympathies, Becky! The stomach is getting better, though I'm still avoiding the stinky tofu. My third acupuncture treatment proceeded without incident (no flaming foot, that is). I found out the herb they burned at the end of my needle was moxa. (Didn't know before that that's why it's called moxibustion.)

Clyde, thanks for the tip. I think I'm going to need some acupuncture treatments for being burned out pretty soon... :(