Waking up without my morning pee-pee hard-on is a confirmation of last night’s suspicion that I would be sick. Symptoms indicate it that it's flu, a reminder that I’m a mortal in spite of me.
The ceremony is not so unfamiliar: notify HR, let you friends know of you erection malfunction and go back to sleep.
Then it struck me—realizing that June (school fee time) is nearby, the last thing my mother needs is his son inside a wooden coffin and the red, yellow & blue flag of the republic. I need to take medication. And there’s none in the cupboard.
I did what’s unthinkable to do back home: drive to the grocery and the pharmacy flu and all. I didn’t actually drive myself. I was too weak to do that, so I asked one of the company drivers to take me there. I could have asked Jerry to do the grocery for me but I wanted to grab the right thing.
I brushed my teeth, hated my braces, checked my hair and with a mental list of things to throw in the cart, off we went.
Worried that people can tell that I haven’t had a shower yet and that underneath my green A&F sweater I was wearing what I slept in last night, hurriedly got myself these (except the R-18 stuff ofcourse):
K 1.50, K 9.00
K 19.80, K15.50
PGK 1.00 = PhP 16.20
The experience of getting sick, alone and away from my family and my partner is not uncommon in my years of working overseas. In fact I don’t make a fuzz of it anymore—an attitude that’s so not me three years back. Then again, there’s so many things that’s not so me no longer…
"A permanent state of transition is man's most noble condition."
Juan Ramón Jiménez
17 May 2006
