Yesterday afternoon we had internet problems in our office, several hours without internet thanks to China Telecom. This really hinders my work (an understatement), therefore I decided to do something else, and work from home at night. So I drove to the hospital to get a flu shot, something I had planned to do for two weeks already, but never found the time to do.

Last February I came down with a pretty nasty flu, and had to spend most of Chinese New Year week in bed. I don’t like laying in bed, because it’s a total waste of time. But I was so sick that I did not even realize I was in bed most of the time. Kind of scary, I cannot remember I had ever been so sick before. At least I was lucky that it happened during my vacation, instead of during a normal working week (although now I could not go skiing, which is also a pity of course). But in order to avoid the flu this year I decided to get the flu shot.

The nice thing of living in Shanghai, is that there are private clinics that you can go to. You just call them and you can come right away. No waiting time, friendly staff and good English speaking doctors. Not cheap of course, but I don’t mind paying for good service (and my insurance normally pays most of it anyway). I normally go to WorldLink, they have several clinics in Shanghai, and I am quite happy with them.

The flu shot itself was a two-minute thing, but I am having some side effects now. My shoulder is sour, and I am feeling a bit lousy. But this should go away within 24-36 hours, and then I’ll hopefully be protected from flu for the rest of winter (knock wood!). Well, as long as bird flu does not reappear of course. But I am not too afraid of that: that was a typical media scare, and the journalists are too busy writing about global warming right now (finally).