A 'cold' weekend

It seems the upcoming cold that had been hanging around me for the past 3 weeks finally managed to hit me in full force. The cold suddenly turned from quite innocent to pretty nasty, which is a major headache (both literally and figuratively). The fact that I had a flu shot does not make any difference to this virus.

It started Thursday night during drinks at M1NT with the China Web 2.0 crowd. During the evening my legs felt more and more tired, and I first thought that was because I had done a 1.5 hour spinning session right before the drinks started at 9 PM. But when I got home I realized I was really not feeling well and I took my first Advil. The next morning I felt worse but because I had a busy schedule I got up early anyway and went straight to the office. At 11 AM I gave a talk to the bloggers on the China 2.0 Tour which I barely managed to do (Tylenol kept me on my feet). I don’t think any of them realized I was sick (I tried not to show it), but I was happy when the talk was over and I could sit down again.

During the afternoon I went to the Lunch 2.0 event at Tudou and later on followed the bloggers to Web 2.0 language learning site italki.com. When that session was over I literally crashed on the backseat of my car. While my driver drove me back to the office I was sound asleep. I had no aspirin left, so he bought me some on the way and I did not even realize he had stopped to buy it. Back at the office I put some water on my face (which felt overheated because of fever) and then picked up my wife for a shareholder dinner at M1NT. I had some vodka passion fruit cocktails, that helped to make me feel a bit better temporarily. I enjoyed the food at M1NT but was feeling so sick that I left as soon as I could. At home I went straight to bed and slept for 14 hours.

Saturday I mainly spent in bed, until the early afternoon when I felt so useless that I pulled myself together and got up to do a bit of work. I even managed to drive Scott, my wife and our nanny to Gymboree for Scott’s baby class there, but was glad when I was home again. At 5:30 PM we had some guests visiting, and I felt a lot better while they were there. I had a couple of glasses of Argentinean Malbec and got the idea that the worst of my cold was over. Not. As soon as they had left I started to feel cold again and an hour later I was in bed for another long sleep (this time I managed 12 hours of zzz-time). I missed M1NT’s Grand Opening Party because of this, but it was impossible I could have made it out there (let alone enjoy it).

Sunday was similar to Saturday, except for the fact that I managed to go out for a walk with Scott. Not a good idea, afterward it took me an hour to warm up (and it was not even very cold: I was wearing a winter coat but I met some neigbors wearing just shorts). We had tickets for the final of the Tennis Master’s in Shanghai, but there was no way I could have gone there so we gave them away to friends. I spent quite some time working on emails and reading my RSS feeds, but in the end I realized I did not accomplish very much. We went to bed early and watched a movie, but I was feeling so bad that I did not really enjoy it. Not a weekend to remember, that’s for sure.

Today, Monday, things have not improved much. I am sitting in my office with the air conditioner heater at 30 degrees Celsius trying to warm up, but that does not help much. Hot tea helps a bit, but my hands feel like freezing. I probably should be in bed, but I don’t want to mess up my schedule too much. But I realize I am less productive, I cannot concentrate well on difficult things. At least writing a quick blog post is not too difficult 🙂 Hopefully one more good night of sleep will make a difference. Tomorrow night I will be traveling and being sick on a plane is something I would like to avoid.