Life in China   tthu & cathryn living it up behind the great wall

The big toe on my left foot is exceptionally painful today. I can bend it, but there it aches when I do. I don’t know if it’s broken and I don’t know if I can be bothered going to the hospital to find out. I mean, what will they do if it is broken? Tell me to stay off it? It’s not like they can put it in a cast…

So anyway, yesterday I was coming back from another factory visit and a return visit to the Australian consulate in Guangzhou. Unfortunately the visit wasn’t to pick up my shiny new passport, it was just to drop off the replacement photos after the epic fail of my last visit.

This time I had again allowed myself a few hours leeway to resolve any issues that might crop up at the consulate. Unfortunately this went out the window when I got a call from the airline telling me that my 1920 fight was cancelled and there were no later ones, only earlier ones, so I had been moved to a 1710 flight. That two hour window that I had allowed for fixing problems – gone!

So my visit to the consulate was a 5 minute job. They looked at my re-printed photos (higher quality as requested) and asked me if I could go to a nearby photo shop and get a new photo taken anyway, just to be safe! I explained the situation with my flights and they were doubtful that I could even get to the airport in time. So I literally ran out of the building.

Thankfully I made my flight with a few minutes to spare, and it wasn’t running out of the consulate or even running through the airport that caused my toe to feel like it might be broken.

No, it happened while I was falling asleep on the plane.

I had taken my shoes off and was trying to fall asleep in a reasonably comfortable position. I don’t do well sleeping in an upright position and airplane seats certainly don’t recline enough to help with this. So I was sitting with my head in my hand and actually managed to drift off…

…only to have a hypnic jerk that caused me to kick the bulkhead in front of me extremely hard with my left foot.

There was no going back to sleep after that. The pain was immediate, and although it subsided over the next few minutes, today it’s back again every time I walk.