Mysterious illness X.
written: 10:06 p.m. on Saturday, Apr. 11, 2009

Call me crazy if you must, but I don't believe that my recent bout of uncharacterisitic and unexplainable (to me, anyway) fatigue/loss of appetite/slight nausea can be explained away by the flu virus. Maybe I'm just paranoid after being subjected to ten million different people telling me I look like a stick/am under-nourished/will die if I don't eat meat/will die if I don't start gaining weight; but whatever it is, I don't believe it's just the flu.

Therefore, I spent half an hour today hilariously trying to diagnose myself using Wikipedia. I came up with:

1. Leukaemia
2. Anaemia
3. Mononucleosis (no, I'm not over this yet)
4. Some illness involving the spleen (whatever the hell the spleen is)

I could've gone on, but I got bored after a while, and my browser with all my Wiki tabs also crashed after I tried opening the Monte Carlo draw which is in PDF format; my browser ALWAYS crashes whenever I open PDF files (it was especially bad when I was doing the ICL exam because all the ICTY cases were PDF files). After that I was way too lazy to search for whatever it was I was looking at all over again.

Of course, it could very well be "5. The Fucking Flu", but I swear, it doesn't feel like the flu. I've never felt this way before my whole life, or at least, what I can remember of it. The most offending part is that I don't have a cough, my nose, save for 20 minutes this afternoon, isn't even running, and I have no fever, no body aches, NOTHING. I seriously don't see how I could possibly have the flu if I'm not suffering from the usual flu symptons.

To make matters worse, my eyes decided it would be fun to suddenly take turns swelling up from absolutely nowhere, no discernible reason, and at complete random on Thursday night. First my lower left eyelid swelled - it looked as if I'd been bitten by an insect. At first I thought it was an insect bite, but 30 minutes later, my upper right eyelid also started swelling and itching. 30 to 40 minutes after that, the swell spread to the upper left eyelid. Along the way the swell disappeared from the bottom left eyelid and the irritation/swell in the upper right eyelid also subsided. I spent a few minutes before I slept waiting for the bottom right eyelid to swell too, but it didn't.

Well, not Thursday night at least, but it sure as hell joined in the fun last night! I was just LYING ON MY BED, trying to fall asleep, when my right eye started feeling puffy and stiff, so I got up and checked it out, and sure enough, it was the same insect bite-looking...lump that I saw on the left eye on Thursday.

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SERIOUSLY. And today I woke up with my right eye feeling damn swollen. Miraculously though, it feels completely fine now. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IS GOING ON AND I AM DAMN ANNOYED. Maybe I'm allergic to the pills that the doctor gave me on Tuesday, but I've never heard of allergic reactions only manifesting themselves like two days later. (Besides, I've never been allergic to anything, except maybe dust, much less medicine that has the word "codeine" in it.)

In any case, because I have zero aptitude for science and because I am sadly a law student, I have decided to get over my fear of needles and give in to my fear of contracting mono/leukaemia (actually this isn't funny at all but yeah)/some other life-threatening disease - I'm finally going for a health screening sometime next week. It's probably the first health screening ever, not counting the ones I was forced to go through in school. I should've gone for the free one on campus a few weeks ago but I didn't even know about it. Even then, I doubt I would've gone; I'm really quite afraid of needles, to the extent that I copped out of a Hepatitis B screening in secondary school because I didn't want to go for a blood test. (In my defence, my folks told me I was immunised in Taiwan when I was kid so it probably wasn't necessary.)

Hopefully it all goes well. And hopefully the doctor wouldn't have to probe into my arm like 50 times to find a vein or whatever.

2. The weather is my enemy.

So I happily went down to Kent Ridge for tennis with Ben and Serene (and supposedly Baoyue but she fell asleep at her laptop doing her essay - poor thing!). I was already half an hour late because I woke up late, so I reached at like, 2.30 p.m. At around 3.15-ish we took a break, and it was quite a long one. The sun was blistering, as usual, and as usual I could barely open my eyes, and my skin was burning, etc etc etc.

At around 3.25 p.m., the sky in the near distance became overcast - dark, ominous, and worst of all, looming towards the tennis courts.

At 3.40 p.m., it started raining.

At 3.50 p.m., it started pouring.

Three seconds later, a thunderstorm ensued.

How fun. So I played tennis for maybe an hour and spent another hour waiting for the rain to stop. WHAT THE HELL. The worst part? NUS' facilities are utter shit. First, the nearest shelter to the tennis courts is the spectators' stand - which would be okay, except -

Second, the spectators' stand is SHIT. The design is utterly RETARDED. We were sitting in what was supposed to be a shade and we STILL got wet. Not only was there rain, there was also WIND. First it blew in our directions which prompted me to cover my face with my towel (which looked damn stupid I must say), then half an hour later, the wind started blowing from behind us, which got my back all wet.

It was just awful. I was cold, hungry, wet, and sticky, and after a while our area actually got flooded and we had to move all our stuff to another rung because whoever designed the spectators' stand was stupid enough not to include a wall at the highest portion to, you know, block out the rain and provide real shelter. It was just STUPID and BULLSHIT. This dude even opened up an umbrella to shield himself from the rain - AND HE WAS UNDER THE "SHELTER".

Screw NUS, seriously. They need to upgrade their facilities, stat.

And the weather can go KISS MY ASS! I hate you lousy weather. I really counted on tennis today to help me burn off the massive amounts of chocolate I ate last night, but it was not to be. GREAT. I HATE the weather!

3. TENNISSSSS.

So the draw for Monte Carlo is out! Roger gets Djokovic in his half, but I'd actually prefer Murray. Djokovic is better on clay if we go by last year's results...but then, Murray is not the same player anymore, so I guess anything goes.

In any case, I must say I don't really care if Roger somehow crashes out in Round 1 of this tournament. Sure, he got to the final last year (and lost to Nadal =( He's only beaten Nadal once on clay anyway, and the majority of Nadal's wins over Roger have been on clay), but he wasn't even going to play this tournament at all until he changed his mind like yesterday. This tournament, to me, is merely Bonus Roger Time.

Above all else I hope he has fun and doesn't put that much pressure on himself anymore. The good thing about the clay court season is that all the pressure is on Nadal, considering it's his best surface and he's also arguably the best clay court player currently playing. Nobody is expecting Roger to win anything (but I will always pick him to win every single tournament he takes part in in the ATP Challenge thing ha ha ha) which means there's much less pressure on him to do well, so hopefully it translates to him playing more loosely, more freely, with the joy and love that won him so many titles.

GO ROGER!

4. The end.

Okay I'm tired. I'm going to attempt to get some work done now, though I doubt I'd get anything done at all. ARGH. MY TIME MANAGEMENT IS UTTERLY ATROCIOUS AND NON-EXISTENT.

***

ETA at 11.36 p.m.:

FUCK THIS IS THE MOST HILARIOUS SHIT EVER.

WATCH THIS. IT WILL MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE.

THE JAPANESE AND THEIR WEIRDNESS! HA HA HA HA HA. I LOVE THE JAPANESE!

before sunrise // before sunset

Previously:
- - Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2017
I'm moving. - Sunday, Jul. 11, 2010
In all honesty - Tuesday, Jul. 06, 2010
What I want for my birthday... - Sunday, Jul. 04, 2010
On Roger's behalf. - Friday, Jul. 02, 2010