Achoooo!

People overseas are often surprised to hear that you can catch the good old common cold here in the middle east. But you can. It's actually more common in summer, when you have the environmental situation of repeatedly moving between a hot place and a cold one. In temperate climes you get that when you leave a heated building and enter the unheated and very cold outdoors. Here, in summer, we leave our air-conditioned houses and cars, and make a dash through the stonkingly hot outdoors to reach the sanctuary of another air-conditioned fridge.

But hey, guess what! I developed a cold this morning, and it's a stormer. I am so pleased. I might have picked it up at the hospital yesterday. I hate going to hospitals and clinics, they're full of sick people and you could catch anything. But I had to go the hospital to give them a bit of my precious blood because my residence visa is up for renewal (damn things only last three years) and the Government wants to know if I have HIV/AIDS before I can get a new visa. If I am infected, I will be deported faster than you can say a really fast thing, so watch this space. Result due tomorrow morning...sniff.