Last Wednesday night, I went to my favorite place, Coffee Society on Silom Road, to use their free internet. I walked in feeling fine, and three hours later walked out feeling dead sick: sore throught, headache, fatigue, and muscle pain. It felt like the flu. I stayed home on Wednesday. I felt better on Thursday, so went to work, but by the evening, my voice was starting to go. It was totally gone on Friday, so I stayed home again.

Since I missed a meeting, I'm anticipating that my boss will make a big deal out of it, and refuse to approve my sick leave, like he usually does. So even though I was feeling better by the afternoon, I went to Baumrumgrad Hospital, where the doctor said I had acute bronchitis, and prescribed a ton of different pills. The antibiotics were fine, but I should have just refused the cough medicine (I wasn't coughing much), the decongestant (my nose was fine), and the steroids (my voice was coming back).

It ended up costing $50, and I don't know if the University will reimburse me, since, now that I have a work permit, I am supposed to go to a crappy Thai hospital and use social security. But nobody gave me a social security card, or asked me to pick my hospital, so I'll submit my receipts, and see what happens. I made sure to have the doctor write my boss a note. Ridiculous; I feel like I'm in grade school again. But, terrorizing and harassing employees is the Thai way of managing.

At least my convalescence has given me lots of time for video gaming. I used to be on the forefront of gaming, with the latest hardware, but now I'm just finally getting around to playing Final Fantasy X, three years after it's been released. Only the Japanese can totally pull off having characters spend large amounts of time underwater without having to worry about breathing.