Oct 1/ 08 Health & Neighborhood Part II

Health & Neighborhood Part II
October 01, 2008

Like the Wall St investors who risked more than they could handle, I gambled with my health recently by buying and eating whatever looked good on the street. Like the greedy investors whose appetite seemed boundless, I also ate more than I could handle, because everything was so cheap. And now, my health failed, keeping me inside the house sleeping on and off all day.
Last night I had gone on a midnight run to celebrate our no-school day for October 1 Chinese Founding Day inside the apartment complex, underdressed in just t-shirt and shorts although the weather was gettiing chillly. Afterwards, I ate the pizza bread I had bought earlier and finished off with ice cream. And the night before, I thought my body had become immune to street food by now and bought some street food (mostly sticks with meat or vegetable on them) after my evening run.
For whatever the reason, I had to go to the bathroom right before I went to bed (around 3am), woke up some time in the morning to go again, and had to go twice after I woke up. I had finally hit the dreaded one. My head and stomach were hurting like the last time I had high-altitude sickness, and all I could was lie in bed with occasional readings.
Nevertheless, the house was not a suitable place to sleep in the afternoon, as my baby brother was crying for more than an hour in the living room as I was trying to rest in my room. My homestaying mom was trying to potty-train my baby brother, and it seemed like the the concept of going to the bathroom discretionately was hard to master. Chinese walls are thin and sound travels easily, and I just walked outside in hopes of finding a place of peace.
I remembered passing by a massage place nearby, and headed there. Althogh I loved getting massaged, it was too expensive in Korea and the US and I had very few chances to get it- but it was 25 yuan ($3-4) for an hour here! I laid down, and for an hour, all my head and stomach pains disappeared. Then graciously, the massage place let me sleep there for a while to rest after the message, and I could find some peace for an hour.
(Actually, there were still drilling sounds coming from somewhere nearby- it seems like noise pollution is quite a big issue here in China, as even when we did Yoga at the 24th floor in the middle of the city, we could still hear the sound of honking and shouting below. The Yoga was impossible by the way, and all the guys (the worst was me) struggled while the girls seemed a little bit more graceful.)
Then I woke up and unfortuantely, the head and stomach aches were back, and I hobbled out the door looking for a new place to rest. I was on my way back home in the hopes that the potty training was done and the baby brother (Huo che) would be asleep, but I found another distraction from my pain on my way back.
I heard the sound of an instrument close to a classical guitar, but a little bit more metallic, and when I followed the sound, I ran into an old man playing a traditional chinese instrument similar to ukelele. I watched him for a while, and afterwards asked him if I could play around with it for a while, as I play the bass guitar. The old man kindly accepted, and I played around with the ukelele while we talked. He was a 58-year old math teacher who was visiting his daughter in the apartment complex, and he asked me various questions about me which I gladly answered.
It was a pleasant conversation, and after we parted, I ran into another young guy playing flute-like instrument. Chinese people love music, and I remembered the Green Lake Park which was filled with melodies from various instruments ranging from Chinese traditional ones to saxophone, guitar and the human voice.
Now I'm back home eating baby food for dinner (called zhou- it's basically a rice in some hot soup with very little vegetables and meat), and hopefully a day of atonement for greed eating very little (as this is Jewish season of repentment) would help me feel better tomorrow.
Love to home and friends although I doubt my English-phobic parents read this.