Shiyan is like Cape Town. Often, unless you’re busy, there is nothing more to talk about than the weather. It’s a fairly pleasant day today, except for the bone chilling temperature. 4 layers in shirts, two in trousers, am I warm? No.
I have some unwanted genetic traits of my dad. He used to have blisters all over his hands, and nobody could tell him what it was or how to get rid of it. He did discover though that when he was taking health suppliments for cycling, it would get better.
My sister and I inherited this from him, although we have it a lot less severe than he did, and we hardly consider ours ‘problematic’. We get it along the sides of our fingers only. I’ve also discovered that it’s stress related, or if I have a stretch of drinking the wrong stuff (like spirits, or beer, not both, but I’ve never discovered which), or consume regular amounts of coffee, it appears. When the nasties are purged from my system, the dots dissapear.
So, here I was in Shiyan without coffee and Rooibos tea, until I discovered coffee and my mother mailed me some rooibos tea, and who shall appear? The Dots. It’s also cold, and I’m under a bit of emotional stress, so it could be a combition of these factors.
The connection with the coffee struck as I was having a cuppa just now, finally, as the origin of the dots have been in the back of my mind since they resurfaced about 2 weeks ago. I have been trying to figure out what I have introduced into my diet which made them reappear now after they had been gone since I got to Shiyan. So from tomorrow I will abstain from the coffee and rooibos to see if they are the culprits. If yes, I will re-introduce the rooibos only, because it’s apparently good for you, not bad.
I also reconsidered buying a computer. Not really, really needed right now, so I will maybe suspend such purchases for a month or so and see if I can save some extra cash. I really long to have a permanent connection to the outside world though, but I have better things to do with the money.
Had a spat with the xyf again yesterday. Not about anything significant, and as was the theme of our marriage, not about anything that really warrants an argument. Same old topics really. We just can’t help ourselves. With us, either both are pulling or both are pushing, it’s never one that pulls and one that pushes. Tsk tsk.
I’ve got class in half an hour or so. Yesterday they nagged me to teach them an English song. A grown up song though, because this class is aged 12 to 13. My collegue, King, has been teaching the other classes the Celine Dion title track to the movie Titanic, and the whole school is talking about it. So today’s class will teach them, and analyse the lyrics a bit. Heaven forbid they absorb the lyrics into their daily use vocab.
Xiang Ke!