Joke of the day: “What is the deadliest sea in existence?” - “Hepatitis C.”

Which brings me to an incident which occured two days ago. I am on a University course that requires its students to work around and in a laboratory environment. Incidentally, there is a chance that my fellow students and I will come into contact with blood samples, so we are required to have vaccinations for immunity against the particularly nasty microscopic Hepatitis critters. “Eh-oh!” some of you may be saying (like an overgrown Tellytubby). I guess I’d be right in assuming that the general population is not fond of getting injections, but for me, they don’t bother me too much. After all, it doesn’t hurt. I was scared though, of something else… something more scary, more painful than the jab itself. I went into the clinic yesterday morning and got my jab. All hunky-dory, put a plaster on it, leave it on for a few hours, don’t operate any heavy machinery, etc. I forgot all about the injection and went out and enjoyed the rest of the day. The next day, I went to work and suddenly remembered the plaster on my arm. I decided to remove my plaster. Let me tell you this: the scary part is not getting the jab, it’s removing the plaster. My arms are not covered in thick hair, they’re covered in fine thin strands of hair that wouldn’t hurt a fly. In comes Mr Sado-Plaster and clamps onto each of these hairs in some form of hairlock (which is similar to a headlock) and tugs at them, removing some of the weaker ones in the process. Cue the tear-inducing pain. This isn’t your conventional psychological type of pain that you feel when thinking of the thin piece of metal from the needle piercing and entering your arm… it’s the very literal, very real pain. Why didn’t I stop there? Because I was in denial. I refused to accept that the plaster could bring with it more pain than a puny needle. Hair-ectomy is a cruel procedure and I have since then gained a lot more respect for our leg-wax opting female friends.

After work, I saw the bus I had to catch about 50 metres away from the bus-stop. I made a break for it under the fire of mercenary rainwater. I reached the bus-stop and the bus hadn’t moved an inch! Was I of Olympic standard in short-distance running? Was I worthy of being an apprentice superhero to The Flash? No, and no. What had happened was that the bus had crashed into the back of a car and had stopped indefinitely. This instantly doubled the waiting time for my bus to half an hour, which when raining feels like an hour. Made me start to wonder about bus drivers. I’d been travelling on buses since I started middle school and I’d only ever seen one bus crash. It was barely a crash too (I was sitting towards the back of the bus when a car collided into the back. Everyone got away okay; the car got a crumpled bumper, the bus driver was in the clear - not his fault). If you’re involved in a bus crash and you survive the ordeal, count yourself lucky, especially if you weren’t on the bus. The lady whose back-of-the-car got totalled must have been counting her lucky stars last night. However, if she had been counting them the night before, her car might not have been the recipient in a game of bus-tag.

Anyways, the take-home message for the day: Jabs = pain? Plasters = Pain!