and then you were gone

c'est fou comme tu me manques.

a garter snake with osteoporosis has more hip

The femur articulates with the pelvic bone via a socket called the acetabulum. This hip joint is lined with cartilage, a connective tissue, that provides protection and cushioning. The wear and tear of this cartilage causes the bones to be more exposed and will cause pain, particularly in large weight-bearing joints.

So the dull ache in my left hip joint was making me walk all stiff and funny, unconsciously shifting more weight on my right... and somehow it turned into something called erosive arthropathy. Turns out erosive arthropathy is just a nice way of saying 'precursor to osteoarthritis'. Hooray for a lifetime of hip pain weather forecasts!

Osteoarthritis??

I'm too young for this! How could this have happened? I drink lots of milk, am turning vaguely French about my fromage, and adorrre yogurt. Ok, so maybe it's not lack of calcium, it's a problem of calcium absorption, lack of Vitamin D? I get plenty of sun, no? With the Mediterranean and all. Oh dang. One year in the wintry depths of hell that is Montreal. Should go stand in the sun and drink milk like Tim told me to... Oh wait. That's osteoPOROSIS. Wrong osteo here.

There is no cure for osteoarthritis, because cartilage cannot just grow back. In the meantime, I'm taking glucosamine, which is a precursor for glycosaminoglycans, major components of connective tissue. Glucosamine has not been conclusively proven to help rebuild cartilage but is said to delay the progression of OA.

In 2005, scientists at Imperial College managed to grow cartilage cells from human embryonic stem cells. Yet another reason to support stem cell research! Will people like Bush and the Catholic Church realise this before all we can do is to wave our canes and wiggle our replaced hip at them?

it all makes sense to me now...

Some of you have probably heard the story of how my Acer laptop has been ruined by the combined f***wittage of a plane passenger sitting diagonally to the right in front of me who somehow managed to spill a full cup of water backwards and diagonally to the left, and of course myself who failed to notice anything whatsoever.

I am now the prowd owner of an IBM Thinkpad.
Yup.
IBM Thinkpad as in spill-proof, shock-proof, everything-proof, big black boorish brick box bread box. A hunkajunkachunkapunkathunkathingamajig if you will. In fact, so prowd that it's making me spell it with a W and alliterate with Bs.

And prowd as in mum gives birth to baby goose daytime soap storyline type of prowd.
Happy. I'll still learn to love it. Eventually.
Shocked. What the hell happened?? How the hell did I convince myself to buy an IBM?????

And then I realised...
The universe as we know it is no more. My friends, we are now living in a world with 8 planets. We have lost Pluto, cast away from the exclusive planetary gang to sit with the dwarves. It's history in the making! Books to be re-written, maps to be re-drawn, minds to be re-brainwashed (or is it brain-rewashed?) It's a new universe.

I foresee a fourth law of thermodynamics, a philosophy (called Maxolivism) that suggests humans are nothing but leprechauns with holograms, the end of world poverty and the discovery that the holy grail of laptops is the IBM Thinkpad.

a tale of two cities

It's a pity I didn't like Bucharest. It's too chaotic a city, too chockful with dodgy homeless tramps who try to touch you in the middle of the streets, young children exploited by syndicates to beg and generally some ignorant people who find a way to be very impolite while doing so.

Some random guys just went 'china china china' at us in a complete mocking tone. Or better yet, this random guy at a otherwise nifty bar who first approached Gwen asking her how to say i love you in chinese. When Gwen told him that our native language was English, he didn't believe her one bit and continued harassing her a little. He promptly came over to my end of the bar and this is how our conversation kinda went:

IB (Ignorant bastard): Your girlfriend is being really mean, she doesn't want to tell me a few words in your native language.
Me: Maybe because it's ENGLISH?
IB: No no english. I look at your face and you can't be speaking english!
Me: Maybe when you were colonised by the English, you end up speaking ENGLISH?
IB: No no it's not possible.
Me: F*** OFF

At first we thought we might be a little sensitive about being 2 lovely *snark* Asian girls in a strange Eastern European country. But we received so much undesirable attention that even Claire, the french girl we were travelling in Bucharest with, got really disturbed. As a result, Gwen and I almost cancelled our trip to Belgrade, Serbia in favour of Budapest, Hungary.

Thank goodness we didn't!!

Belgrade is a looooove-ly city. Serbians are a delightful crowd. No weird leering men, mocking teens, just full of fun and helpful people. It helps that our hostel is party central too. Everyone's always smoking and drinking, regardless of the time of day and they're always going out to party. Language is a tough barrier though, even if alot of them speak English, alot of them don't. Plus the Serbian language is written in Cyrillic alphabet, so getting around is really not easy.

I'm not sure if we're gonna go party with them tonight. We didn't last night because I was feeling a little under the weather, which was a pity cos 2 of the crazy German guys have left! But we have an early train to catch tomorrow to Budapest. We originally wanted to catch the train to a town in northern Serbia called Subotica and spend the whole day there before continuing northward to Vienna where Gwen and I will part ways. But another German guy told us that Subotica is reaaaally small. So we'll be stopping in Budapest for a good party for a night!

Won't get a chance to update before I head back to France, or actually Singapore. I'll be home 10th August everyone!

the great fish-o-filet robbery

We had just spent 5 agonizing hours standing in the train from Sighisoara. It still amazes me how they dare cram their trains full with passengers paying the same price for a seat and for standing room. Standing trains are the pits of hell no one told you about.

So we arrived at the Gara de Nord in Bucharest pretty late at night, hammered and hungry, with not much in sight except McDonalds. Everything is edible when we're hungry.

Filet-O-Fish in a bag, we trotted along the perimeter of the train station looking for a taxi to bring us to the hostel. Not only did most taxis not know the way (even though it was not a terribly long way off), but a whole bunch of dodgy homeless people were harassing us, trying to get some food or money of us. They pull all the stops to rip you off, either by sending a really cute kid to give you the puppy eyes, or by feigning pregnancy or handicap.

These two girls approached us, gesticulating in the general direction of the taxi line when suddenly FWAAAPPP!!! They lunged at my McDonalds bag, ripping it right out of my fingers and grabbing the burger box off the floor. WTF??!!