The Ox Updates! Part Three

Friday, December 17th

I woke up - and I instinctively knew the worst was over. Sure, my head felt like someone took a lopsided brick and introduced itself repeatedly and vehemently to the side of my face, and my throat didn't fare much better - but I could think, and that certainly counted for something.

As I managed to swallow what meager morsels of breakfast I could stomach (and to no fault of the hosts - the Pan Pac breakfast spread would have made me giddy on any other day) I realised one very horrible thing:

I had virtually no voice.

Whenever I opened my mouth to say anything - this hoarse wind would come out, and nothing else. Fearing the worst (the worst being that I'd end up fixing some sort of a gadget to my throat in order to talk), I figured the best way of going about it was to keep bloody quiet.

Thankfully, the staff at SAL were ready to take over. With me residing as head invigilator, they pretty much did everything, leaving me a very thankful Ox at the end of the day. Even Pakcik Nik (my JB taxi guy) was used to my being ill, and he whisked me back to the hotel in no time. Thanks to the antibiotics and other meds the doctor prescribed, I was able to enjoy a somewhat normal dinner, before plonking off to bed at about half past eight.

Yeah, I think I need to rectify that too. Anyway - this is Saturday, I'm feeling much better, and I have a whole day to myself tomorrow. Too bad I'll be switching hotels - but the new one has a spa....and WiFi, which means I can probably blog without resorting to borrowing college PCs (and the pr0n, think of the pr0n).

So God willing, I will be rejoining all you other sods online the moment I get there. God knows this has already turned out to be one of the least normal work trips I've taken - but then again, this IS my life we're talking about, and normal jumped out the window back when I was ...oh..5?

Catch you around, people. Have a good weekend.

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I REALLY have to recommend Susanna Clarke's first novel to any fan of fantasy and magick. Neil Gaiman calls it "the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last seventy years". Though I may not have Mr Gaiman's unquestionable experience in the writing world, I am inclined to believe him - simply because it is unputdownable in its humour, wonder, and sheer Englishness of it all. I'm barely through a quarter of it, simply because I have to force myself to ration it out, hoping it will last the week.