This morning I finally came face-to-face with the antagonist in this ongoing soap-opera that is my blocked sinuses.
On March 7 (I remember, because it was my birthday), I came down with what I thought was the H5N1 strain of bird flu. Having survived through 5 days though, I realised it was in fact just a Spring attack.
One of the many cruel jokes that nature played on me, was my nose-and-sinus system. Just one speck of dust or a mere grain of pollen and all hell breaks loose. Runny nose, blocked sinuses, more tissue than what a small country can wipe their asses with in a year. It’s terrible. It’s murder. It’s an environmental catastrophe. My parents are partly to blame. They smoked when my mother was pregnant with me. But it was the 70′s, what did they know.
Anyway, ever since I got hit by what wasn’t the H5N1 virus, I’ve suffered the Snots. Sure, it’s Spring and yes, Shiyan is sort of in the mountains, but it’s not like flowers abound. So my theory was that pollen couldn’t be the culprit and it’s more likely the dry air and vast amounts of dust flying about. I have witnessed with my own eyes, clouds of dust being lifted from the playground and carried around by the wind.
I tend to believe in logic, until proven incorrect by facts. And facts landed on my balcony during the night.
This morning, expecting visitors, I cleaned my house – and a house is only as clean as the shit your visitors will kick into it from the balcony, so obviously cleaning the balcony is a must.
As I opened the door, I saw it. Yellow dust trapped there by last night’s rain, which has, in the meantime, dried up. It could be two things really. Either it’s the pollen I thought didn’t exist, or the friendly coal-based-power plant has been burning nachos in lieu of coal. Although I quite like the idea of latter, I fear that the former is the truth.
At first, I did the stupid thing. I tried to sweep the muck away from my door. This of course had the counter-productive result of kicking up a cloud of the stuff, which sent me running into my apartment, slamming the door in the face of the ever-expanding, Yellow-Dust Monster. After the breeze pushed the Yellow-Dust Lemming over the edge of my balcony, I opened the door to asses the situation.
It was clear that I had to make this somebody else’s problem. The yellow dust had been trapped there by water, so logic suggested that water would be the vehicle with which to transport it.
Then I did the clever thing. I poured a bucket of water on the balcony, spreading it evenly over the now-paralyzed yellow-dust. It worked famously. The water first turned coal-power-plant-brown before it took on an aerie yellow glow because of the pollen that doesn’t dissolve and sits on the outer edges of the puddle. I proceeded to push it to the far end of the balcony using one of those squeegee-type-sponge mops.
I laboriously pushed it towards the run-off pipe’s opening. The run-off pipes are spaced evenly across each floor. It’s a really clever idea for getting water off the balcony, but as it’s just a short 1-foot pipe that extends away from the balcony, it just dumps whatever directly below it. And directly below it are some 5 or 6 steps that runs the lenght of the block.
So, actually, it’s a really stupid idea for the poor lady who cleans those steps. Incidentally, I think she just finished mopping moments before I started. I have no doubt that she now hates me.
After a short ten-minute interaction with my puddle of brown-yellow sludge, the problem was ejected 3 storeys down and was lying motionless on the steps below. I peeked over the edge and could already see the water drying up. Soon, I dreaded, the wind would pick up that gunk and might just deposit it right back where it started; my doorstep.
Luckily, the lady who moments earlier had cleaned those steps and now hates me, stepped closer and briskly mopped up the mess, saving the day.
My Yellow-Dust Monster is now dormant in a mop-bucket somewhere, laying in wait for someone to release it from it’s watery prison, so that it can once more ride the breeze and inflame the sinus tracks of poor schmucks like myself.