Japanse New-Girl Monkey Network
How to Ruin Your Australian Vacation - Lesson One: Too Much Seafood
It's been a rather solemn week here in Oz (or as I affectionately like to say-- "Bizarro World"). Bush fires through three states have cast a haze over Sydney, making the sun and the moon a spooky orange at times. The fireworks canceled on New Year's and rescheduled for Australia Day have been canceled again due to the hot dry weather and out of respect for the firefighters struggling to keep homes from burning. Australian military troops have been sent off to Iraq by John Howard, inadvertant pawns in George W's "I have a bigger penis than Saddam" game. Tearful relatives watched them go.
And then there's me. I had the barramundi.
There have only been a couple of times that I've had serious digestive tract problems. The first was in Puerto Vallarta, part of a nice vacation package my family had gone on after getting 5 numbers out of six in the California Lottery. We had been given pills by our doctor to help with the unfamiliar bacteria in Mexico. We'd survived just fine the week before in Guadalajara, bolstered by bottles of distilled water to drink instead of tap water. But in PV, my dad and I got impatient, and decided to use the tap to take our pills upon arriving at our hotel (whose walls were fascinatingly bedecked with tiny little gravity-defying gecko lizards). Poor mom, who decided to wait until there was bottled water available, missed out on the grand Mexican tourist tradition of "Worshipping the Porcelain Idol." I think my dad and I were out for a couple of days at most.
After that, the only major problem I'd had was when I contracted mononucleosis and my fever got high enough to cause my stomach to reject anything that was put into it. Fortunately the hospital had many wonderful drugs to treat both my serious dehydration at that point and my nausea. Thank you, hospital.
Well, this Sunday, Mr Wiggins took me to the home of his friends Dan and Belinda, who decided to treat us to a nice little meal. They had asked ahead of time if I ate seafood and suggested that they were going to make crab. Crab in small amounts I can deal with. I don't ordinarily eat fish, especially not in large amounts, because I don't eat much animal-related stuff in general, with the exception of an occasional chicken broth, lots of dairy products (mmm... cheese...), and once in a while a few bites of shellfish or chicken. Well, when we turned up, there was no crab, but some scallops, which I usually quite like. Belinda kept putting them on my plate, one and two at a time, and I kept eating them, because of the liking scallops thing, and also because I must have gone into some Good Girl Guest kind of mode. I had about six of those, and assumed that this was the sum total of the "seafood" they had been talking about.
But no, after a third kind of wine (red with the appetizers, chardonnay with the scallops) came this whole filet of barramundi on my plate, and already tipsy (I normally handle about one glass of wine tops), and in this silly must-eat-what-I'm-given-and-please-my-hosts mood, I attempted about half the barramundi. It was a pretty nice meal, and even for fish it wasn't too bad. We took a cab home.
The next morning, I felt awful. I decided that I didn't like the fish so much, and it didn't like me either, so after a quick dash to the toilet, it exited the way it had came. At first, I thought that had solved my problem, so I got ready with Mr Wiggins to follow him to uni so I could do some paperwork related to my visa and mail it off. My initial relief wore off slowly and descended into another series of stomach cramps and all-around malaise, but by this time we were already down at the ferry terminal, waiting for the ferry. I kept waiting for it to wear off.
As I had walked down the ramp to the ferry's dock, I had felt this breeze of sea air blow into my face that recalled a day when I had been really sick with mono. My dad had been driving down from Concrete nearly every day to take care of me, and this was before we really knew that I was seriously ill-- we just knew I had a high fever that kept lingering. I think finally on the first day that I had been sick to my stomach, he drove me out of my apartment and down to the beach on Whidbey Island and just parked. I rolled down the window and lolled my head out into the clean, cool sea breeze coming off of the Sound. It felt so delicious on my baking, aching skin, for a moment I felt like it was curing me. I just kept breathing it in, feeling restored, but it wasn't enough to overcome the virus. Down at the ferry terminal on Monday, I felt the same way for a while, that lovely sea air tricking me into feeling better than I was. But I just kept getting more tired and uncomfortable, until halfway to Circular Quay I knew I wasn't going to make it all the way to Randwick.
I managed to get home with only one series of dry heaves, where I left my very unhappy mark on the side of the road in Kirribilli. I spent the rest of the day nauseous and aching and sweating in bed, and managed to stop trying to evict the non-existent contents of my stomach by that evening. Thought about going to a hospital, but opted for just having Mr Wiggins contact his doctor via phone, whose advice was, in the end, pretty effective. Was feverish for two more days but managing solid food by Wednesday evening, and somehow in the middle of it managing to make it to Newtown to sign the lease for the house and mail off the last of the visa forms.
And the moral of the story is: pass on the barramundi if you can help it, Jamesey. Seafood is off the list for at least several months.
{ link me }