Back in Taiwan. Back to reality. Back to my world.

(I - Nov. 25-present)
I got sick while I was in New Jersey. That makes this the third year in a row that I've gone and visited New Jersey and come back sick. Going to New Jersey to visit means getting sick.

It didn't feel too bad, truth to tell. I got it just as I got the house all to myself for the week. It was all just relaxing time. It's not like I had to go to work or tend to a family or raise kids, like my brother and sister-in-law. It felt like a great week. I remember it as a great week. I did what I wanted, ate what I wanted, went over to my brother's for dinner every evening.

Just in time for my flight home, the cold morphed into a nasty cough that at times was like I was either going to cough up a lung or wanted to cough up a lung. Or puke trying. I literally bought maximum strength cough suppressants at the Walgreens at Washington Bridge Plaza before hopping on the shuttle to JFK from there.

(II - Dec. 4-Dec. 6)
Aside from the cough, the flight home couldn't have gone more smoothly. Less than 24 hours from door-to-door. My brother drove me to the shuttle in Fort Lee which was ready to go just after I bought the cough medicine, no traffic to JFK, non-stop 16-hour on-time flight to Taipei, my luggage unbelievably came out almost right away, bus to Taipei proper, MRT to home. I left after dinner on Sunday night, and by the time I got home Tuesday morning here, my brother's family were probably having dinner on Monday evening.

My father on the greatest adventure of them all, godspeed his journey is as smooth.

(III - Dec. 7)
Cough notwithstanding, I wasn't feeling sick anymore otherwise and I went for a three mile run the day after I returned. My left Achilles tendon pulled within 50 meters of the end of the run.

I think that's pretty much it for running. It's over. The frustration of dealing with a running injury is not something I'm going to accommodate or deal with anymore. And it was going so well making it through the entire summer and even improving beating all expectations.

I don't know what that was all about. All that striving, all that nursing. Hopes arising, hopes dashed. Story of my life. Everything I've written about running since June is now simply negated.

(IV Nov. 17-ongoing)
Insomnia kicked in as soon as I got to New Jersey, but it wasn't a bother. Same as being sick. If there's nothing to bother (aside from the sleep itself), then it's not really a bother. Sleep was all bad the whole time I was there. There was a lot of waking up shivering cold soaked in a heat generated sweat.

No jetlag going there or coming back. Insomnia makes jetlag a non-issue, irrelevant. Maybe it's there, but it's completely overshadowed.

(V Dec. 12-13)
As long as everything else is going wacko, why not add a bout of epic hiccups? The most screwball of all the things that could possibly ail me. I know it's a bout of epic hiccups when I can't suppress them right away by my tried and true method of holding my breath.

When it's epic hiccups, I expect them to last for about 48 hours. Fortunately, this bout dwindled after about 40 hours. But what a reminder of how shit things can get. When it's epic hiccups, I consider it being sick. It's a feeling. It feels like something's wrong. It feels like being sick.

(VI - epilogue)
It doesn't bother me that my father died before me. I even think I'm benefiting from the experience. In the past, I maintained that I wanted to die before my parents, but actually it's just my mother. She's the one I think needs to experience the death of a child, not necessarily my father.

I don't mean that callously. It's an old discussion that I don't want to rehash. For some reason it may sound odd that my mother would ultimately benefit from experiencing the death of a child, but in the totality of considerations, it makes perfect sense to me.

I don't think my father would have benefited any from my dying before him. I don't think he would have been affected profoundly by my dying.

On the other hand, I'm glad to experience the death of a parent if only to confirm that I wouldn't get bent out of shape by the death of a parent. I never thought I would be affected by their deaths, and now I know it's true.

There wasn't any big turn around or revelation or realization what I lost or took for granted. Par for the course, dad. He didn't ever do anything to mean anything to me, and when he died, it didn't mean anything to me. It's an intellectual exercise to mull and contemplate.