Months prior to leaving for China I was beset with the usual tiny paranoias that plague anyone travelling to a new country; I should do such and such thing before I go, because it will difficult/impossible to do it when I get there. At the top of my list was clothes shopping, as I am a rather large person and find it to buy clothes anywhere. I assumed China would be even worse regarding this, as the common conception is that Chinese people are as a rule pretty small. But I figured before I do any of this I should focus on losing some weight, for the sake of vanity and having clothes that will fit on me nicer than the ones I currently have.

Well, whenever you are getting ready to leave a country everyone you know, even those people that you have not seen in months, decide that they want to take you out to a nice meal, just to spite your best intentions. And so you don’t lose any weight whatsoever.

But stubborn as I am I insisted. One person I insisted to was my then boss, who really wanted to take me out. ‘Relax dude!’ he told me. ‘You’re going to lose plenty of weight in China. In the first few months alone you’ll have some much dysentery that you’re going to shed pounds whether you like it or not. 10-20 lbs guaranteed’

And so you say ‘fuck it’, pig out with your buddies, and decided to leave the weight loss job to Chinese food poisoning.

Except now you have been in China for more than two months and realize that despite some sudden and urgent trips to the restroom, the promised dysentery and resulting weight loss have completely failed to materialize. So you look yourself in the mirror one morning and realize that shit, you haven’t lost any weight and where the fuck is that dysentery I was promised?

And then you realize what thought just passed through your head. It’s really not normal to have thoughts such as these.