long chest hairs

July 1, 2007

On Friday I went to Optho again and helped with the yearly checkups. I saw a few interesting cases, but nothing with gore or anything that was an emergency. One guy in his late 20s had a small sand particle lodged in his cornea, which needed to be removed with local anesthesia. Saw several older men with bleeding in the conjunctiva. One older man, about 72, was an alcoholic but hasn’t had a drink in a year. His right eye was extremely red, but luckily no bleeding in the eyeball itself. His blood vessels were extremely enlarged in the conjunctiva which is indicative of high blood pressure. The doctor told him cold towel compresses for 5 minutes 3 times a day, and then sent him to internal to get his blood pressure checked. I wrote up some history taking questions for the nurse in English because she wanted to learn, which made me feel useful. They see a lot of foreigners because of altitude sickness so it’s good for them to know some English. Although two British tourists came in and I asked if they needed a translator, but they were fine. Sad to say I didn’t get to help. Most Tibetans speak some English, whether they are selling goods in the street market or they work in the hospital. It’s actually quite good because the pronunciations in Tibetan are closer to English than Chinese, so it’s much easier for them than Chinese people to get the pronunciations correct.

Friday night I met this Canadian kid from North Vancouver who was traveling alone and has been backpacking Asia for the past 6 months. He had got some great stories from his travels in Cambodia and Laos, like crossing the Chinese border by accident and being chased down by military men with AK47s. We went out to a bar a few blocks down from the hostel and coincidentally bumped into my tour guide from last week, who’s a super nice guy. So I figured it must be where the locals hang out. We chatted about traveling and China and the cultural differences. There is quite a difference between China and Tibet, that even I have to adjust to. People are slower, lazier, extremely money hungry. At the bar, we had a few beers but they gave us shot glasses for them because they didn’t have an bigger ones. So we were basically having a power hour, which can be a little dangerous, especially at high altitudes. After the bar, we took a taxi to the local disco, aka club, where we bumped into my tour guide again. He was on his way out because he said there is a lot of fighting at this club, but we would be fine cause we were foreign. Vince, the Canadian, and I were a bit skeptical, which was only emphasized by a guy wearing a bullet proof vest. Luckily we had no problems and saw a bunch of European kids there. The funniest part were the guys who would dance with each other. In China, I think guys dance with guys and girls with girls, but that doesn’t mean they are gay. However, every few minutes a guy would come up to Vince, grab his hand, and whisper sweet nothings in his ear. It was hilarious that for once the girls didn’t need help, but the guys did! I felt pretty good no one was harassing me, and laughing at my squirming friend. At one point, this little man wearing a mesh tank was dancing using his friend like a pole, it was so weird. Then there was this guy on stage doing a striptease performance the whole time, down to his underwear, which were like colored tighty whities hahaha. And on top of it all, they played backstreet boys and other house mixes. Unforgettable. Only the pictures I took can describe it accurately.

With the altitude and extreme dryness here, I was pretty hungover on Saturday morning where I had to get up early and go on an outing with the hospital. July 1st is the communist parties birthday, and every year the hospital pays for an outing for the employees which they invited me to. It was at a local resort in the suburbs about a 30 minute drive away. When I got there around 11am, I sat in the back on this big comfortable couch, which immediately made me pass out. In the morning, there were performances by different departments singing songs in celebration of the communist party. For instance, they sang country pride songs, songs about my communist party my country, and other stuff I didn’t quite understand. Can you imagine, I have no connections with this aspect of China, and I’m exhausted, add these up and you get me passed out through the entire performance until 12:30. Since it wasn’t professional performers, the singing was pretty difficult to listen to. Lunch was served buffet style, but even though it was all people from the same work place, everyone was still soooo pushy. I was on the verge of giving up and not standing in this massive line for lunch. People here only want to get ahead for themselves, I feel like there’s no sense of camaraderie at all. Since there was no bus from the resort back to the hospital until 6pm, a few of us hiked through the suburbs until we got to a main road and hopped on a bus. Most of the employees stayed in the afternoon to play cards and mahjong. The suburbs aren’t what you imagine to be, green with houses spread apart. It’s farmland, extremely dusty, random cows wandering around, small cinder block huts with single rooms and single beds, garbage on the side of the street, extreme poverty, and the smell is different every 10 feet. It probably took us about 1.5 hours to get back to the city of Lhasa. An experience, how many people can say they went to a communist party party? I was a little nervous going into it since my coordinator at the office told me not to take pictures and not to tell anyone I’m from the States. That pretty much slipped out of my mouth the 2nd question they asked me…oops. There’s really no hiding where I’m from.

Saturday night I went to get handmade noodles in the Islamic part of town. You walk down this narrow alley with little stores selling meat and vegetables for the locals, and all of a sudden you come to the end and every man is wearing a little white hat to symbolize their religion and most women have their heads covered. Quite a change from the Tibetan side of town. Vince and I found a noodle place and ate for 14rmb for the two of us, which converts to about $1.80. Amazing!

Today, I went shopping for a little and had an early dinner with my friends Vince and Matt. Matt is a 35 year old British guy who’s on his second month of a year tour of the world, except I think he’s skipping Europe, which he’s been to already. After his year long backpacking trip, he’s going home and marrying his girlfriend who’s sorting out a divorce. He’s a super cool guy who’s always done crazy partying on the weekends and during the week he’s a helicopter engineer which definitely requires him to be drug free, which is not always the case. Very chill dude. Unfortunately, the meal wasn’t as pleasant as my day. Vince found a piece of hair in his noodles, which was absolutely appalling, so we asked for a different dish instead. Of course they brought a new plate of noodles, claiming it was new, but it was completely cold, obviously they had done nothing for us except throw the hair out. So we told them we weren’t paying for his plate, which inevitably turned into a huge argument. Another girl brought back the noodles and tells me it’s not cold and puts her hand on it telling me to feel it. So I said, what the hell am I going to do with this plate now that you’ve touched it, even if it was warm, I don’t want this crap anymore. Ugh, this would never happen anywhere else in the world. We left, leaving money for the other two dishes, guess I’m never going back there again. They were pissed we didn’t pay for the hairy dish and told me she’d never met anyone like me before. Oh well! We joked that it was a long chest hair from one of the girls….gross!

I picked up a few pretty awesome things for great deals. I drive a hard bargain, there’s no other way here or else you just get screwed. The end.