Smoked Chow Mein.

It's been a while since I last blogged. I guess I was too free to do so. I need some activity, I need to be busy, and I need to be running out of time to do something else for it to be perfect for me to do random, pointless things like blogging. As I have a poster to finish and present on Tuesday, it is just so.

This was... 2 weeks back, I think. Yes. July 11. And why do I remember that date? 'Cos the new Potter movie was out, and we were going to watch it that night. In little more than an hour. I'm feeling hungry... as I usually am, thanks to 6 o'clock dinners, and decide to cook a packet of those wondrous, delicious Chow Mein noodles, the ones I try to empty the nearby Walmart of.

Instructions to cook? Delightfully simple. Open box partially, empty the veggie pieces into carton, fill water till shown line, and heat in the microwave for 6 minutes. I open the box, empty the veggies, and shove it into the microwave. A minute and a half goes by.

All hell breaks loose.

There is a brief moment of enlightenment, amidst the incessant blaring of the fire alarm and smoke emanating from my microwave.

Crap. I forgot to add the water.

What should have been boiled, had instead combusted. Not explosively, thank heavens, they were after all noodles... but in a way which stank and produced immense amounts of smoke. Me, apart from experiencing that singular revelation, I was still clueless. The noise, that earsplittingly (Hmm... is that even a word?) loud alarm, was so loud that I felt that it was coming from everywhere. My first thought was that the microwave had gone bust, and it was producing the noise. I realised otherwise only after someone else told me that it was the smoke detector making all that noise.

Cursing softly, I tossed what was left of my precious noodles into the trash (which, as was pointed out later by the nice fireman, wasn't one of my brighter ideas... as garbage bags are made of plastic and burn quite easily).

And yes. You read right. The fireman. I go downstairs to tell the person in the lobby that my smoke detector went off, and what do I see? A splash of Fire Engine Red outside the glass doors. With lights blazing. And in come two of them with armour, axes, rope and hose... the whole shebang. And up I go, sheepish as I can possibly be, to show them that pesky smoke. Pointedly ignoring the blatant incredulity directed at how I could have possibly burnt noodles, I do so.

The smell, obnoxious. And the sound, 'twas quite something else. Incessant, trilled, something which 'loud' cannot even come close to describing. The sound which one could hear behind multiple closed doors, 60 feet away. The sound which was determined to continue till the next morning.

Real shoddy, that alarm design. No freakin' off-switch! Could it not have at least been designed to turn itself off once the smoke was cleared? Nope, not this one. The security company had to come in next morning and turn it off.

I did manage to see the movie though, average as it was. It was quite good for a Potter movie, that I'll have to admit. And I did have to sleep in someone else's room. And manage a bath in the morning amidst the hellish blare.

On the bright side, the microwave still works. Stinks a bit of roasted noodle and plastic, but not too bad. It let me make noodles the next day, so I'm all happy.

Pad Kee Mao

Pad Kee Mao. Thai "drunken" noodles.
Broad rice noodles, soy sauce, garlic, bell peppers, veggies, and tofu. Traditional Basil and Chilli seasoning. Mmmm. In spite of the tofu.

I ♥ Thai food.

Pain. If only it were so simple.

Gastroesophageal reflux disease. Acid reflux, in simpler words. Stuff that the old, senile and the weak suffer, and even they only after they take inordinate amounts of NSAIDs or downing gallons of coffee or wallowing in alcohol (and vitamin C supplements, curiously enough). The Disease of the Ancients. That was the diagnosis.

I am 20 years old. I am not old, I think I am not yet senile, and I don't believe that I am so weak. I don't have a pain problem or a pain-management problem (now those who recognized where that came from, give me an Amen!). I am not nuts about coffee or alcohol. And I don't get kicks out of downing vitamin pills either.

I would usually snicker if someone were to prattle on about something so cliched like how they were in the prime of their lives and how they would never be able to best their ahem, current brilliance. But really, could this be me at my very highest? I've been asked to take medicine for the next two months, doesn't one have to be at least 60 for such a thing to happen? And pray, how bad would it get when I turn 60? Do forgive my involuntary shudders. Unpleasant questions with unpleasant answers. Much better if we assume them to be rhetorical.

In related news, I had a tube stuck down my throat today. Yep, that's how they confirmed the diagnosis. Esophagogastroduodenoscopy. Apparently the word endoscopy can be used in the pretext of sticking a tube into any of your orifices, as he quite fondly let me know. (:P) So Esophagogastroduodenoscopy it is. The procedure was not really necessary (their words, not mine!), but it would be nice to get it done. Nice was the word used. Harrumpf. It isn't among the better ways to spend your day, take my word for it. Well, maybe if you are deviant. Maybe not even then. The fact that the tube was as thick as my index finger didn't help all that much. And here I thought that they could fit a camera on the head of a pin. Not the same 'they', clearly.

Oh, and there's more! Dietary restrictions. That has such a ring to it, doesn't it? Amongst other boring things, no CHOCOLATE!

Monsters.

I will not pretend to possess the same lust for chocolate truffles and milkshakes, black forest cakes and snickers bars; that some of my friends have... but life without chocolate!

Me, I'm speechless.

OK, I am off... to go sleep on the regulation two pillows. It's alright to herniate one of my vertebrae as long as it can stop a li'l stomach ache, eh? Ok, not so little. Even then.