So I’m sipping some coke and lemon water, which my nice-enough waitress served me. I took the day off because I got sick on Friday, worked on Saturday (committee meetings … woop!) napped most of the day Sunday, and I struggled all through Monday. Today is Tuesday.

I go to the restaurant which is nearby the neighborhood (Singaporean-based) medical center. It does western fare but the owner speaks Chinese and so their staff are quite used to yapping it up with a laowai.

Five days of the common cold. Could have been just shaken it off. All of this rough-and-tumble get-on-with-it ethos which I picked up somewhere from the dedications and hunched-back syndrome that is the marking, teaching, and reflecting schtick.

I asked for warm water but she insisted that this sugar brew is better. This is the waitress. No expectations, though, if I didn’t like I could still sip on the warm water. There were two glasses.

Who serves coke to someone who is sick? With lemons. Okay, there’s like five hunks of lemon in there, so at least she didn’t skimp out. So, I perked up (all that sugar, you see) and in my politest voice “I’m not quite used to it.” Smile. Return to ruminations.

We must have all heard about teachers spending their vacations in the classroom. Or preparing their lessons at night. Because, much like doctors, we’re never actually done. I mean, you never run out of livin’ and you never run out of learnin’.

The headache I got is because if I had just taken the afternoon off … gone home early … just the afternoon … or hadn’t worked on Saturday … I’d probably not have the headache. And it’s from undervaluing the economy of my time.

The kids deserve you at better than 90%, not 5.