The sun never sets on the British Empire

The scale in my hotel room doesn't work, and anyway it's in kilograms which wouldn't mean much to me without a mental calculation. But I'm still pretty sure I've lost weight in China.

At least one contributor to this has been a few bouts of intestinal problems, common enough I guess. After a weekend of feeling like hell I went out to look for some drugs - I did have some Chinese medicine offered by a colleague, but I wasn't too sure about it, especially since I can't understand the label. I have a suspicion that it works on the "cleansing" principle though, which could just make things worse.

Western drugs proved hard to find, although further googling has given me some options to try. But on the way, I did run into the ubiquitous street DVD sellers. My interest was piqued, as the TV selections on offer at the hotel are meagre to say the least - I have never watched so much CNN in my life. Satellite TV in general is highly restricted although it seems tons of people have illegal feeds from the Phillipines or elsewhere.

Jeny, the neighbourhood intellectual property bandit, had "The Wire Complete Five Season" in a box - only 20 yuan! A pretty good deal for 5 seasons I thought. Of course it was too good to be true - it was "Season 5", not "5 Seasons". But my new friend Jeny did have all 5 seasons for 130 yuan. Though all I had on me was 110, Jeny said "no problem, bring me 20 tomorrow". Incredibly trusting for a pirate.

So far the DVD's work (not a sure thing when buying on the street), and after watching Season 1 Episode 1, a lot more things from the odd episodes I had seen before made sense. Always good to lay the groundwork.

Given my stomach complaints, lunch today was a tough decision. In the end I went for familiar, which meant the Flying Fox pub, which is ....pretty much a pub. I guess a pub is a pub anywhere you go - one of the more benign legacies of the British Empire.

I had the Irish breakfast which contained all possible varieties of cured and fried meats. It was not bad and the coffee was a lot better than you'd normally expect. Still I couldn't eat too much. Hopefully I will soon be back on the bandwagon of eating more interesting food.

And on the way home, I ran into another imperial legacy:

Chinese Word of the Post

拇指 mǔ zhǐ - thumb

Context The mall where I ought to be able to find some Tylenol etc. is called Thumb Plaza. I'll try this out on the cab driver and see if it gets me there tomorrow.