Disease Bag

Patient Zero
Originally uploaded by billmcgonigle.

After Jolin, one of our Chinese staff, hopped in the back seat of our driver's minibus the other day, she asked me how my trip to Beijing fared.

"Oh, it was great. I eaven brought you back a present, baby" I sleazed out in Chinese as I put my arm around her.

"Oooooh! What did you get me!?!?" she returned in squeal.

Then, in perfect Chinese, as I had practiced all day: "Conjunctivitus."

She jumped back against the side of the van, sprawling against the window. "What?! No! We don't have that in Haerbin!"

"You do now, babe, you do now."

Turns out that the pollution can be so bad in Beijing that one may contract pinkeye simply by walking around in the capital's oh-so-fresh air.

2008 is going to be hysterical for those of us in the know.

I did force an immediate trip to the hospital as soon as I settled on my self-diagonosis Sunday morning. This, too, was interesting, as as soon as the doc took a gander at my peeper she couldn't help but proclaim she had never seen an eye like mine.

"What do you mean? Because they are [such an intoxicatingly beautiful] blue?"

"No it something else, I don't know how to explain it to you [with your stupid white boy Chinese], but my friends will want to see this."

At that point a line of doctors took turns examining, ooh-ing and aah-ing, and debating the oddities of my pussy oculars.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't like the attention.