Pollution and Records

The pollution this week was apparently the highest ever recorded in Hong Kong. It was 2.5 times the previous high, recorded in July 2008.

It may have been higher, but I don't think the cale went high enough to actually read it.

Yesterday I went to Filmart, to see what new movies are coming up and to hang out with fellow alivenotdead types. I got to do plenty of both, spending my entire day there.

But yesterday I started coughing.

Badly.

Deep, wheezing coughs that irritated my throat, made my head hurt, and made me feel like my lungs were filled with steel wool.

I sounded like the poster child for tuberculosis inoculation.

I was coughing so badly that people were expressing concern and sympathy.

ExceptBerton Chang, who looked at me and said "Dude, lay off the crack already..."

The coughing began to send my already-f@#$ed-up back into spasms.

Still, it was worth it to see people I hadn't talked to in a long time, and to meet new people, both inside and outside the AnD community.

I wanted to go to the Barbara Wong after-party at Rack's, but I knew that if I did, I'd wake up in even worse shape than I already did this morning.

So I came home, where I tried to drink lots of water. At one point, the water must have hit my throat the wrong way, because I coughed instantly. I coughed water across the room.

The whole room.

Across my TV.

Across my computer keyboard.

Across my midi keyboard.

Water was everywhere.

It was a record-setting cough.

It was so amazing I didn't even get mad. 

I woke up this morning with a voice deeper than Chrissie Chau's.My chest felt inflamed to roughly the same proportion as hers too.

That's what I get for sleeping with my bra on, I guess...I hope I'm not really sick, and just recovering from the pollution. It's the middle of the HKIFF, among other things, and I am unavoidably busy for the next week at least.I have better things to do than sit around waiting for my cough to produce something other than the taste of blood in my mouth.