Meningitis? Nope. Flu? Nope. Hmm, I guess a cold.

Yea, yea, I know I haven’t written in a while. I blame it on never ending midterm papers, feeling sick and plain ol’ laziness.

Believe it or not, I really was sick for a few days. This happened a couple of weeks ago. I was heading to Brighton Beach with a friend to a Georgian food restaurant and during the trip, these mysterious lumps developed on the back of my neck. They weren’t huge or anything but noticeable enough that I started to freak out. My friend inspected both and refreshingly assured me that they weren’t tumors. The following day, a Saturday, I woke up, sweating profusely. It was weird, I sat by my desk in a long sleeved cotton shirt and shorts and my face was covered in sweat and my shirt was soaked. Being a trooper, I went out that night and I am sure drinking didn’t help because the following day, a Sunday, I woke up shaking. And I continued to shake for several hours. On Monday, I woke up feeling really dizzy and nauseous but since the communists engraved forever their work ethic in my brain (which actually doesn’t make much sense - despite all the communist or socialist messages about how work does a person good didn’t penetrate most of the population in the Soviet Union as the majority lingered from day to day in their factory jobs while drinking home-made moonshine – no wonder communist planned economy failed miserably), I headed straight for work. I am not sure how I managed the hour long subway trip, several times, I really wanted to jump out of the subway and sit on the platform so that I would feel less dizzy. I also contemplated passing out on the floor of the subway but then I realized that I would probably mess up the morning commute for hundreds of other miserable subway riders. So the combination of being a nice fellow subway rider and communist work ethic lead to my arrival to work. Which lead to me sitting in on a two-hour conference call to Kazakhstan during which I fidgeted non-stop and drank insane amount of water so that I wouldn’t pass out. Then I went to the student health center where the doctor’s diagnosis changed from meningitis to flu to a cold with flu like symptoms. Yea, I have no idea what a cold with flu like symptoms really means, but heck, he told me to stay in bed, and I happily followed the doctor’s orders.

But that’s all a side note. Because the true story is that Georgian food really wasn’t so good. We ordered salad Olivier which had egg in it! I’ve never seen salad Olivier with egg in it! The khachapuri (bread with cheese baked into it) tasted like a grilled cheese sandwich and the khinkali (meat-filled boiled dumplings) must have sat out for a while because the part that rested on the plate was really mushy. Needless to say, don’t go to the Georgian food restaurant in Brighton Beach. There is another one on Kings Highway, called Tbilisi, one of these days, I’ll make my way there.