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Food poisoning is a very effective, albeit uncomfortable, diet plan.

In the last 48 hours since I’ve been afflicted, I’ve lost over 3kg. If this goes on, I’ll be back to my old army physique in a month (oops, I think I just gave out how much weight I’m supposed to lose).

The doctor also told me yesterday, I am suffering from food poisoning not amounting to diarrhoea. I thought he was reading me a criminal charge, like “negligent act not amounting to culpable homicide”, or “culpable homicide not amounting to murder”, or something; I felt just as guilty when I called the office to report my medical leave.

I’m not the only one who got poisoned though; my wife’s got the runs as well. She’s been running to the toilet about 5 or 6 times each day for the last two days as well. While this would be quite worrying for any parent-to-be, through our dear friend Google and our trusted gynaecologist whom we paid a visit to yesterday, we were told as long as there’s no fever and no bleeding, my wife is free to run as many times as she wants without harming the baby, as long as she doesn’t mind the pain and inconvenience that comes with it, which she does, so we’re gonna try not doing it too often.

But we’re not the only ones either! Apparently there are 2 people in our office that have also been food-poisoned. While one (who was celebrating Deepavali last week, thus will probably have a lot of curry wreaking havoc in her system) is understandable, the other would make 4 people in the office who have eaten something wrong at some point over the weekend. This might seem too much of a coincidence to anyone who’s watched enough TV (i.e., too much CSI/X-Files and the Final Destination Trilogy).

Is it something we all ate at some point in the office? Or did we all go to the same hawker centre next to the Esplanade over the weekend and ordered the same fried oyster for dinner? Or were we all poisoned by Chinese food manufacturers?

Regardless the conspiracy, good things have come out of this little debacle. For one, I lost over 3kg. I’ve also got to spend a little more personal time with my wife and our about-to-be-born son (even though I was delirious with fever half the time) and we even got to watch the Coffin (against both our parents’ advice for horror content, and our friends’ advice for its low rating), which isn’t really scary… unless you know for a fact how these Thai coffin rituals are really performed (again, another story for another post).

Update:

Looks like my China conspiracy theory isn’t too far off. I was drinking a pack of Vitasoy honeydew-flavoured milk when I realised my wife was drinking a pack the night she got her diarrhoea ( I realise diarrhoea may not be an immediate symptom of melamine poisoning, but then who knows anything for sure?). After doing a search on Vitasoy and melamine, checking out the AVA melamine-tainted product list and subsequently looking through our pantry, we realised this China food crisis has hit closer to home than we so wrongly assumed. We’ve had to throw out some biscuits and other (already expired anyway) items, as well as the rest of our Vitasoy stock, though the warnings against the Vitasoy Honeydew-flavoured Soy Milk seems suspiciously hoax-ish. Oh well.

Not even born yet, but already he knows how to do kawaii poses complete with V-signs plugged in his ear.

Ah, technology. So advanced that 3 dimensions are no longer enough. It used to be 2 dimensions are all you’ve got when it comes to looking at your child before it makes its debut into the world from its mother’s womb. Add another dimension and a 3D ultrasound scan will yield the images you see above, and then you add yet another dimension and call it a 4D scan just to make it sound like paying S$250 for it is justified (actually the 4th dimension is movement; I’ve got videos that show him fluffing his pillow and digging his nose in his sleep too).

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. Say hello to Xander. See the way he’s waving back at you like a superstar, eyes closed and nose turned up like he’s just nonchalantly acknowledging your presence with a flick of his pudgy little fingers? That’s my boy…

As I mentioned, I got videos too, but after describing it the way I did, putting the video on will just seem a little contradictory (he’s just sleeping, and his hand isn’t even facing palm out, which just goes to show a little imagination can go a long way).

And as usual, the doctors and technician never cease to be fascinated by my boy’s fast-growing genitalia. Our ultrasound technician showed us this wonderfully indecipherable prepubescent porn picture confirming Xander’s status as a miniature manly male man complete with man-thing (which I have explained graphically in red and green circles).

Balls to you! (Proudly brought to you by Thomson Medical Centre)

Personally, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s a boy, girl or other, particularly after the world around us found out. In fact, reactions around us upon hearing that it is a boy made my wife and I wonder why everyone thought it would be more of a good thing.

We’ve gotten responses like, “Great! Now the carrying on the family name is out of the way…” and “Wah, so lucky! First time is boy already…” and “Boy ah? Your parents must be pleased.” My wife has always responded to these comments with, “Actually, it doesn’t really matter to us if it’s a boy or girl,” which will lead to one of two outcomes: awkward silence, or change of subject.

The truth is, it should no longer matter. Having a kid of any sex will be fun in its own way. With boys, you probably get to play a little rougher, get a little more exercise (with all the running around chasing him), and potentially less problems with the opposite sex (a misnomer by all counts, but worth looking into as a valid theory for another time, possibly the next blog post). With girls, you get to play dress-up more (80% of the retail market is built to cater for girls), life tends to be more peaceful, and they tend to be more loving too.

So as far as we’re conderned, gender bias shouldn’t ever be an issue; we’re dealt with the cards that we’re dealt with, we’re gonna play those cards as best as we bloody well can. My only real concern here is not how my child will fulfill my expectations, but how I’m going to do as a father, and it’s going to be a concern for me from when Xander’s born until the day I die.

That being said, I know we’re lucky. People can try for years and years and still get nada, and here we are, a boy on the way after just thinking about trying for a kid. There’s a lot of “what ifs” that can be raised if Xander turned out to be Xandra, but at the end of the day, they’re just “what ifs”. The questions that present themselves through reality are what’s really gonna screw with us now.

Finally we’re on our way.

Our leave has been approved, the tickets are booked, our hotel room is reserved, the relevant authorities have been informed… we’re going on our first vacation as a family (Xander included).

There are worries of course. My wife said last night we are apt to do things unconventionally, and to take a flight when she’s 27 weeks into her pregnancy might seem a little risque. We have been assured by our ob/gyn that travelling will be perfectly fine during this time; we just need a letter endorsed by the doctor that the wife is good to go. But then there are other things to consider.

For one, there’s probably going to be a lot of walking involved. I’m contemplating bringing a foldable stool along and stopping every 500 metres for her to catch her breath en route to wherever it is we’re going.

Someone also told me about in-flight radiation. I may need to wrap my wife’s belly in aluminum foil before we get on the plane.

Food may or may not be a problem. We’ve always been akin to the street-side food there, but at this point, we’re not sure if exposing Xander to the beauty of haphazard cooking is such a good idea.

But despite all these concerns, I think the most important thing on our minds right now is that we’re going on vacation. A proper, full-fledged vacation to another country where we don’t have to deal with the bureaucracies of daytime Singapore life. Sure it’s just 4 days and 5 nights; that’s why this time, we got to make it count.

Hopefully Xander doesn’t decide he likes the place too much and decide to pop out for a good look, otherwise we’re gonna have a hell of a time doing paperwork at immigration.

It was a dark and stormy night.

No, really. It had just finished raining, and it was already about 7.30pm so the sun was nowhere in sight.

Anyway, my wife and I were on our way home and we were on the final stretch of road approaching where we stay when we caught a red light as we were turning into our estate. So we stopped, and my wife was halfway through talking to me about something (don’t ask me to remember, that’s not what this story is about), when she suddenly starts screaming. One split second later, there was a huge crunching sound behind us and a spine-jolting bump in our seats.

Apparently my wife was keeping an eye out on her rear-view for this car that had been driving erratically behind us. Her instincts were right. We had gotten into our first accident as a couple.

As my wife came out of the car in a flying rage, screaming her head off (literally to the tone of “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!”), the guy who banged into us (who turned out to be the same age as my wife’s dad) also stepped out of the car and halfway through those first 30 seconds her screaming dropped to a irritated, albeit panicked, murmur (hooray for the Asian value of respecting the elderly, even though its application may seem rather late at this point).

Later on, we brought the car to a family friend’s garage, and were told to check ourselves out at a hospital in case further medical damages needed to be claimed (my wife also started getting slightly paranoid about that spine-jolting bump jolting her spine). We first got to Thomson Medical Centre’s 24-hour outpatient clinic, but were told they didn’t do accidents and emergencies because of a hospital policy to protect patients’ information (in case it turns into a police investigation, etc.). So we trudged down for about a half-hour, jolted spine and all, to Tan Tock Seng Hospital where we registered, sat, waited and mused at the stoic, unfriendly nurses running around the A&E trying to keep hearts pumping and keep legs from kicking (midnight in Tan Tock Seng’s Emergency ward can be a bit messy).

1 1/2 hours later, we finally got our consult, and were told to proceed to the X-ray room for a photoshoot (forget anorexia baby, bones are the new black, uh, and white). This is where it gets little interesting, because everyone knows when doing an X-ray, you got to remove all your jewellery and metal objects. So I told my wife, “Pass me your necklace, rings and earrings before you go in.” She starts taking off all her jewellery then freezes with her head down for about 3 seconds and then turns to me, saying, “What about my navel ring?”

What about her navel ring? To explain, many many years ago when my wife was still a young, pretty dancing lass who went to clubs as frequently as my mother goes to the wet market decided to get her pretty little belly button pierced. Said piercing involved a semi-permanent steel hook with balls covering both ends which is neither removable without the use of a pair of pliers, nor has it been removed since said piercing. About 15 years later, said piercing was starting to get nervous because both its owner and its owner’s husband were staring at it as though it was wearing pants and its zipper was undone.

And then the radiologist called my wife’s name. I told my wife calmly as she got up to go into the X-ray room, “Look, just ask the radiologist, she’ll know what to do.”

Apparently the radiologist did NOT know what to do, because 10 seconds later, the both of them were out of the X-ray room again, and the radiologist was frantically walking around the whole lab asking for a pair of pliers.

Our saving grace was when our consulting doctor suddenly appeared at the X-ray room entrance (kinda like in dramas where the father suddenly walks into his son having sex, except without the need to turn away his eyes in disgust and shame) and asked the radiologist if the X-ray was done. As it was, no beautiful photos have been taken of my wife’s inner calcium-formed structure to grace any issue of Bones Illustrated, and it was explained to the doctor the circumstances to which lead to the delay. After one look of bewilderment from the doctor, a shrug from the radiologist, two embarrassing looks from us, and a chuckle from the doctor, the doctor tells the radiologist “OK, can you cancel the X-ray? Patient needs to follow me back to the consultation room.”

Oh, that’s curious.

The fact that the doctor had to actually fight the radiologist off from keeping us in the X-ray queue (while about 3 more people were waiting in the same lab wondering what the hell is up with these two) was not what was strange. The strange (and wonderful) thing, well, in this case 2 strange and wonderful things greeted us as the doctor arrived at his consultation room and presented to us 2 pregnancy tests, both marked positive.

It was now 2.40am on the 25th April, 2008, and my wife was suddenly pregnant.