Israd: I don’t think I have the flu (I don’t feel that bad) but am on the verge of having a cold. I think stress definitely plays havoc with your system - I hope you don’t get sick when you arrive in the US! As for bee propolis drops, I have no idea where I would get them… I will keep gargling with salt water, I think.

This month I’ve had 2 flu bouts can you believe it? Probably due to stress. But the ginko biloba and echinacea tablets I’ve recently started popping seem to make this round much less severe.

I try my best not to take any antibiotics although weathering the flu storm is really taxing on your body (and soul too!)

And here’s a sen’s worth of a tip: My mom gave me those 100% bee propolis drops to apply on my throat. It stung like anything but it really got rid of the inflammation! Try it! That’s if you’re not allergic to bee products though.

Sorry - bet you regret asking this librarian now

Hahahaa…..nice one.

About computer games being a blackhole of time - agreed.
About shopping hours being announced now - what the hell?!
About being sick - ’tis the season for it.

About navel-gazing - nothing wrong with that. If we weren’t reading your so-called consequentless thoughts, we’d be navel gazing ourselves.

Navel-gazing.. hmm.. Here’s the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition (I took some bits out as it’s very long):

to contemplate (also regard) one’s navel: to engage in (frequently profitless) meditation or contemplation; to spend time complacently considering oneself or one’s own interests at the expense of a wider view. Cf. navel-contemplation, -contemplator, -gazer, navel-gazing.

I like how the OED always gives you examples of how and when the word or phrase was used:

1854 Harper’s Mag. July 257/2 Therefore..every man who has contemplated his own navel until he is solemnly convinced that he has seen to the bottom of it..is cocksure that he can help the world.

1891 R. W. BUCHANAN Outcast 14 And like a dervish contemplate My very navel till it grows The central whirligig of Fate.

1933 E. O’NEILL Days without End (1934) I. 21 His letters..extolled passionless contemplation so passionately that I had a mental view of him regarding his navel frenziedly by the hour and making nothing of it!

1966 Listener 24 Nov. 770/1 One sits in a New York traffic jam, contemplating, as it were, the city’s navel, and the conclusion is inevitable that death from a combination of congestion and suffocation is not far off.

1975 Times 2 June 12/8 Lift our eyes for a moment from the contemplation of our own unlovely navels and look out to where..our fellow human beings live.

1991 Guardian 13 May 4/8 Mr Cockburn said the Post Office ‘could not stop the world while the unions contemplated their navels’.

So I really mean I am just ruminating on, or pondering, things that are really of no particular importance or consequence to anyone but myself.

Sorry - bet you regret asking this librarian now