East VS West: Maladious Medication I

Now it happened that we weren't feeling well the whole day, in fact, we felt as if we were coming down with a slight fever. Skin felt slightly clammy and there were moments of perspiration (and us working in an air-conditioned office!).

Not to mention we were in the midst of BodyAche after Monday's back-to-back class of 'Jam and 'Combat.

So thankfully we keep our own medicine stocks everywhere (literally: in our backpack, in the kitchen, in our office drawer, in our gym bag...) and we happen to have some Panadol Extend with us. Pop a caplet and after a while, it does its antipyretic magic.

But you know lah, what Panadol does is just knock back the symptoms for a couple of hours.

Then the Chief happens to surprise us by dropping by in the evening with some herbal medicine called fu cha (literally bitter tea) which we were told is mm fa cha (five flowers tea) with some added Chinese medicine. The Chief warned us that it was quite bitter and might upset sensitive stomachs. A whiff of it and we thought about this powerfully bitter plant that Lemon has in his garden.

So later at night we decided to drink up the fu cha. Pours it into a bowl (to give it that more authentic Chinese medicine look haha), and takes a sip.

Immediately goes and take our cup, mixes two sugar cubes with a bit of hot water and Ribena. Sips a bit of that.

Yes. It was that bitter. Yet somehow we had the impression it was as if we were drinking brackish seawater. Ah well. We downed about three-quarters of the fu cha, and throughout that time the brain was actually drafting this blog post...

"Reminded of brackish seawater...needed to make ubersweet drink...our tongue is fighting against the taste and is rebelling against us too...this fu cha is giving us gas..."

It was a good thing the toilet was nearby. We almost missed the bowl when we spewed. The body rebelled against the overwhelming taste it seems.

Once we'd cleaned up we called the Chief to say that we were still alive (in case it was the Chief's intention to poison us). We were told that we were "too angmoh already". :) That's rather true. Still, guess the fu cha did the trick, although not in the way that it was intended. We were definitely feeling better.