Friday 30th October, 2015                      1700

Where to start?

Well I had been taking pills for the bungedupness, one night I took one but not even a shiver so the next night I took two, which is what you are supposed to do anyway. The next day as I mentioned, all that was produced was wind and so I took another two in the morning because by now even a cup of tea made me throw up. By Wednesday night all five pills combined with devastating effect. From 2200-0400 on the morning of my second visit to the dentist my woes progressed from a Colorado rock slide to a Himalayan avalanche, culminating in Niagara falls. The aftershocks are still rippling as I type.

It is my belief that the dentist never had any intention of carrying out the procedure, for when we arrived yesterday morning my mouth wasn’t even looked at and the dentist kept going off and treating other patients, then coming back to speak to Joan. Bear in mind I had stopped drinking and smoking as they had asked and you may imagine my blood was beginning to simmer. Then when the dentist was again talking to Joan a disgruntled customer came in and started talking loudly. Instead of being told to wait until I had been seen, she switched to him. Boiling, I waited a few minutes, during which time there has an explosion (no idea what it was) by one of the other chairs where a patient was being treated, they had to move him elsewhere.

In the end I said to Joan (the dentist was still dealing with the queue jumper) let’s go. She has no interest in fixing me up. Two entire mornings wasted for Joan and me and not surprisingly she is now too busy to accompany me to the hospital, which is possibly the only place I will get done. All my other possible translators are either busy or went home for the holiday so I can’t go tomorrow either. Who would have thought one tooth could present such problems? The only good thing is that whatever muck was put on it on Wednesday is still keeping the pain at bay.

The weather here is as freakish as ever - last week we were as high as 28C and this week they are forecasting 14C. Being unable to get my gob fixed I decided to utilise my time by getting my batteries checked. It was freezing on the bike. From my recent experience I knew I wouldn’t make it back again without stopping to charge up but when I got to the repair shop it was heaving. I explained using body language and a pen and paper what the problem was and I am pretty convinced they tried to get me to come back tomorrow. At this point I still held out hope of a translator for the hospital. There are advantages as well as disadvantages to being a foreigner because I simply said “tim bu dong” - I don’t understand. It worked. Someone was detailed to look at my batteries and as a result an hour later I rode out with five new 12v ones. Hopefully they will perform better for longer.

Having not been to RT Mart in a week I took the opportunity to do so and at the checkout I won a prize. I had to go to the prize centre downstairs to collect it. It was a tombola affair and my ticket awarded me any one of five glittering prizes. I was rather hoping one would be the electric lidded saucepan seeing as it was the most expensive but my choice was between a bar of laundry soap, two toothbrushes (apt), some odd sausages and two other items about which I hadn’t a clue. I took the toothbrushes.

So now the sports festival is over and I never saw a second of it and the only useful thing I did was get my bike fixed. It seems to me that since Chinese new year I have lurched from one medical problem to the next - maybe I’m on the way out!