Wow that dog would be trying to run away for hours til his little heart exploded (or someone stopped him).
— Alan
Your Mission Impossible tonight, if you choose to accept it, is to mingle around an event at the Embassy of Sweden and look for the newly single Swedish princess. If contact is made, you shall try your damnest to avoid her bodyguards and make her fall for you. If contact is not made, actually talking to your date (I.e. Cover girl) is Plan Beta. This tape will self destruct in 10 seconds.
Acid
5404
This was interesting to me.
I’m iron deficient, which means I’m likely losing blood somewhere. After an upper endoscopy and a colonoscopy both failed to reveal anything, the GI doc checked my small intestine.
He did this by having me swallow a tiny pill that had a camera in it. Yesterday, for most of the day, I wore a receiver/memory unit on a belt, to which the camera sent images–two per second.
The pill was no bigger than a vitamin! It had a flashing, white LED that pulsed each time it snapped a pic it transmitted to the receiver.
I get the results in two weeks. To answer the inevitable questions:
No, I do not have to…er, retrieve it. I just flush it.
And yes…unless the battery dies first, I will get to see a magical, flickering poo sometime in the next day or two. Eat your heart out, Mr. Hankey!
Just 2 FPS, though? Man, even Crysis runs faster than that.
Nellie
5406
No, you can have a jar though. I bought a copy of GSB, and he’s quite close, so I might charge Cliffski for a jar, but anyone else who actually turns up in Bee-ristle (see what I did there) can have a jar.
[edit] Cliffski, sorry, you can have a jar too.
Strato
5407
Pics or it didn’t happen…
But in all seriousness, that is pretty friggin amazing what the combined efforts of miniaturization and medical technology can do. That said, I would have thought the Dr would have done a faecal occult blood first to determine if there was a GI bleed somewhere. Anyway Acid, I hope the cause of possible bleeding gets sorted out sometime soon!
Huh? Not really, no. Iron deficiency is a fairly common nutritional issue, and the simplest solution is to take iron supplements. Although I’m sure your doc is happy to sell you expensive internal body scans!
Pogo
5409
Acid’s doctor is just as curious as he is to try out this fancy disposable mini camera technology.
Rimbo
5410
sets DVR to record entire episode
So, I’m living in a middle-class Parisian apartment for the next 6 weeks, but I don’t speak French. Last night, when I take out the garbage, the door locks behind me and I don’t have the key. So there I am, no money, no cell phone, no shirt even (just a jacket), can’t get in apartment, in France, can’t speak French. So I look for a police – can’t find one, and this being France, all the local police stations close at 5 on a Saturday. Can’t take mass transit, so the nearest station is a 40 minute walk – somewhere, don’t know where exactly, cause I don’t have a map (its in the apartment). I wander around for about an 30 minutes, hoping to randomly bump into a police.
Then it dawn on me – right next to my apartment is a Chinese restaurant, and while I don’t I speak French, I do speak Chinese. I go in, and sure enough, they speak Chinese too (although with a cute French accent). So I explain the situation, they call a locksmith. When the locksmith says it’s going to take 2 hours to get here, they get a ladder and climb in a window I left open and unlock the door for me. Nobody on the street seemed to mind that they were climbing up a ladder to get into a open second-storey apartment window. As my new-found hostess friend explained to me: “most people here know us, and everybody here knows that the Chinese are good people.”
And then it dawns on me. I’ve been to some 30 different countries on 5 continents. And every where I’ve ever been I’ve seen a Chinese restaurant (including Warsaw, Prague and even Kiev). And everytime I’ve gone inside, they are able to speak (Mandarin) Chinese. And these means, that if you’re only going to learn two languages, make sure one of them is Chinese. Because then, no matter where you go, you can always find someone to talk to.
Chinese is the new lingua Franca.
Excellent story. Can’t fault your logic there - however it is my experience that almost all young French people speak some English and understand more. So any restaurant nearby should have been able to help call the locksmith.
But you saved a bundle and made new friends.
Alternatively, you could give us all your cellphone number, so if we ever get stuck in a country with a Chinese restaurant, we can ring you up and pass the phone over, so you can explain us out of whatever situation we’re in.
Actually, I’ve met a good number of people here, in this neighborhood at least, who cannot really communicate in English beyond what their job normally would require. And beyond that, there are some who even if they do speak English, simply don’t want to. (Actually, I kind of like the French arrogance in this regard, it reminds me so much of home (i.e., the US).) So it’s kind of hit-or-miss. But you go into a Chinese restaurant, anywhere in the world, I can pretty much guarantee you that (1) someone there will understand Chinese (Mandarin) and (2) they will be more than happy to speak Chinese with you, no matter how bad your accent.
I actually did something like this in Prague: Czech-Chinese doctor (immigrated in the 1970s) specializing in Chinese medicine; American tourist with a backache who wanted acupuncture but could not speak Czech; doctor’s husband is a friend of the family of my cousin’s Czech wife, the family I am staying with during a visit to Prague. I end up translating over the phone her American into Chinese for the doctor, except that I didn’t know the Chinese term for a ‘herniated disc’.
Reminds me of going to a Japanese restaurant in France. Neither my GF nor I speak Japanese or French, so the menu was not particularly helpful. However, she does speak Chinese (as do I a little bit), and we heard Chinese being used in the kitchen. When the waiter comes out, she asked if he spoke Chinese; he looked kind of surprised and then said he did, and we were saved from surprise dinner.
Acid
5417
Actually, as mentioned above by Strato (and as I forgot to include), they did a stool culture and found blood. So there is a bleed somewhere in my digestive system. I hope the little flickering pill found it.
Okay, that makes sense. Blood in the stool does need looking into. Well not literally because that’s disgusting but medically and stuff.
What’s funny is my brother is in France right now and he mentioned that the family he is with scoffs at his attempts to speak French, and just tell him to speak English, which they know. They don’t want to listen to him struggle to perfect the tone and pronounciation I guess.
My sister’s student exchange with France sucked, back in the day. They basically shunned her, refused to speak French with her (which was the whole point), wanted her to teach them English (which was completely not the point), and then acted like she didn’t exist when she refused. She spent her time there by herself at their house’s pool all day, alone, while they went off and did their own routine. The two girls that were around her age acted as if she didn’t exist. She eventually called up bawling and begging to come home, at which point the SHTF; and all sorts of phone calls and paperwork started flying around. Eventually she got placed with a couple with teenage boys and one of her classmates in Aix.
