Last night I took a cab over to the Tongqing Chine…
Last night I took a cab over to the Tongqing Chinese Clinic opposite the Xingtian Temple on Songjiang Rd. Since the best the best western doctor at Adventist Hospital could tell me was “stop looking down”, I thought I would go to the other end of the spectrum. I went to Tongqing ten years ago after I busted up my knee practicing Wushu. I thought that, since Chinese medicine tends to be more about nerves than Western medicine, I’d give it a shot. It’s been a while since I have walked around that area of town; it reminded me that I need to visit other parts of the city and even get out of the city more often.
The doctor, who turned out to be the head of the clinic, examined me, telling me to grab his hands and squeeze. I took it easy the first time, and he told me to try harder. I did and he grimaced, shaking his hands to get the feeling back. He said I probably had a nerve infection from my last cold. He prescribed some powdered medicine in little packets, and then stuck a bunch of needles in my hand and face. Then he stuck a roll of something on some of the needles and lit them with a lighter, and then told me to wait outside for a bit.
Outside I amused myself by reading through the latest issue of “S&M Baby” and taking pictures of my acupunctured self in the mirror. The needles seemed to help, although I didn’t feel completely better. Still, I’ve got 5 and a half more days of powdered medicine to choke my way through. We’ll see. It doesn’t seem to be getting worse, in any case, so I suppose I should stop worrying about it. A visit to a reputable dentist might not go amiss, though. Something tells me that my reputed tendency towards Bruxism is one of the main causes behind this apparent temporomandibular disorder. But what do I know?
I met Mindcrime for lunch today at Chili’s. He and H.G. Janice have found a nice, large apartment near Rongxing Park on Longjiang Rd for a mere pittance, and they are going to start moving up to Taipei next week. By happy coincidence, they will be living just a short way from the 70’s Airport Love Palace, so we will be able to go there for barbeque, reptile feeding and plane spotting should Graham and his flatmates host any such activities in the future.
Tonight is the Oriented Nominally Happy Hour, to be held at Saints & Sinners, near the Far Eastern Hotel. Dean, Alien and Anthony might be there, so I’ll stop by, but I doubt I will stay too long. I’m more looking forward to a nice, quiet evening at home tonight.
