sick as heck

you've been holed up in your tiny room all day, coughing and sniffling and feeling sorry for yourself. you want to indulge in some good old-fashioned weeping but realize that would just aggravate your cold symptoms. it's amazingly easy to to wallow in self-pity if you're down with the flu and everyone you love is 2,600+ kilometers away.

you want to call your dad or the stepmum or your sister or the love of your life but you don't have enough credit on your phone. and you're too weak to get up to eat real food at a real restaurant. when your phone rings, you wonder who it is, and feel half-happy half-disappointed that it's your favorite tibetan asking how you are, and not someone from home. then again, you never really get calls from them so you sniffle some more and tell yourself that the cold is just making your eyes all watery. you do not cry.

you're too dizzy to read pico iyer's erudite reading of kazuo ishiguro's novels. and you don't have the heart to trawl for what the love of your life calls 'free-floating net junk'. and there's nothing good on cable.

oh wait. after some desultory channel-surfing, you see project runway is on. snippy americans emoting on cam and pouting over sewing machines can be very amusing. there is hope on the horizon yet.