A FIT CELEBRATION

And what, you may ask, are we celebrating? The one month anniversary of my appendicitis. Mensiversary, more correctly. As well as one month since my appendectomy. Both of which were learning experiences that I'm rather glad I won't have to experience again. Although I would know now what to do differently.


NEW WORDS

As you would expect, I learned how to say appendicitis in Cantonese: 闌尾炎 ('laan mei yim'). And Appendectomy: 闌尾手術 ('laan mei sau seut').
What I didn't learn until the very last day in the hospital was that there was a telephone in my room, because, frankly, I did not quite feel like chatting on the phone, and in any case I have almost no phone numbers memorized. Which also tells you A) cell-phones are not a major thing in my life, and B) my friends consider a telephone a tool for occasional necessary communication, rather than a social appendage.

Now, imagine that you are in England, visiting Stonehenge, and admiring the effort of placing megaliths into precise circles that the ancient natives of that region engaged upon. What you don't know is that a few miles away there is an equally impressive monument, created by individuals of far smaller stature, which is frequently overlooked.

A circle of majestic fecaliths!

The fecalith may also be called an appendicolith. Possibly there is a Chinese term for this, but none of my dictionaries have it. And I'm fairly certain that if I were to ask my doctor, he wouldn't know it either.
Neither 'fecalith' nor 'appendicolith' are common conversational matters, and as you can tell from my English example above, one struggles to find a context into which to cast these objects.

I'm not sure they're even relevant in my case.

Both words were quite unknown to me till five days afterwards, when I finally had access to the internet again. Which, if I actually owned a cellphone, would have been much earlier.

So today marks twenty two days since I started using the term 'fecalith'.
Conversationally I have been a bloody bore for over three weeks.


Did the protesters in Kowloon throw fecaliths at the police?
Maybe, or perhaps they were just thinking it.
Beware of flying fecaliths!


They're everywhere!




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