Saturday, 28 January 2006

San Francisco - America's Vaccination Destination

After waking up at 5AM and sitting on a plane for 8 hours, we hopped on the subway and headed into the middle of the city for the San Francisco Dept. of Public Health. As I mentioned earlier, the price of vaccinations here are about half the cost compared to Connecticut. And it's a damn good thing, because between Fiona and I we wound up dropping almost $1200 on shots yesterday.

The bad news, of course, was that it cost a shitload of money. The good news is that I have a much better chance of not dying of the following diseases:

• Meningococcal Disease - This one is some scary shit. The juice was precious at $110, but after I read this I was all sweaty and pretty much stopped worrying about money:
  

  Meningococcal disease is an acute bacterial disease characterized by sudden onset with fever; intense headache; nausea and often vomiting; stiff neck; and, frequently, a petechial rash with pink macules. Formerly, the case-fatality ratio exceeded 50%, but early diagnosis, modern therapy, and supportive measures have lowered the case-fatality ratio to about 10%.



• Polio - Maybe I'm naive or something, but I was under the impression this had been taken care of. I seem to remember hearing how through the "miracle of modern medicine" mankind had wiped out Polio. Apparently, this is not the case. Polio, it seems, has reached epic proportions in Africa. And that's fucked up because the shot only cost $44 and you know that includes the standard 500% markup on all pharmaceuticals sold in America.
• Tetanus/Diptheria - At the bargain basement price of $28, how could I say no?
• Hepatitis A & B - These vaccinations are actually administered over the course of six months. Luckily, Fiona talked me into starting the tract back when we were in Bangkok, so I got my third and final booster yesterday.
• Typhoid - This one comes in oral form, so I didn't need a shot for it, which was fine with me. Three in each arm was enough, thanks.
• Yellow Fever - This is the big bad mama jama of exotic tropical diseases. The one where they won't let you in to the country if you don't have the International Certificate of Vaccination for Yellow Fever.
• Rabies - I got the first of three rabies exposure shots yesterday, and at the price of $182 per shot I'd be lying if I said I didn't hesitate. I was on the fence - I mean, when's the last time you got bit by an animal - until the nurse started explaining the options. If you get bit after you've been vaccinated, then the treatment is two booster shots which are widely available even in third world countries. However, if you haven't been vaccinated then you need to get a different kind of injection made from human product which is not widely available and would require evacuation to South Africa. And what kind of psycho would inject himself with blood from THAT population? You'd probably be better of with the rabies.

Luckily, Fiona had already been vaccinated against most of the aforementioned stuff so we saved some money there. Apparently it's a "good idea" to get shots before you go to Southeast Asia. Not being one for "good ideas" I had to stock up yesterday. Fiona, on the other hand, had a different issue to deal with.

Five years ago she was in India and she started playing around with a monkey. To make a long story short, the thing bit her and (having had the pre-exposure) she went to a clinic to get the widely available booster. The Indian doctor was not, um, well-informed, so he gave her the wrong fucking shot. Not only did Fiona get a shot of human product in India which was neither effective, nor, shall we say, the best idea, but apparently the doctor also had trouble opening the vial and wound up shattering the glass before he drew it into the syringe.

Basically, Fiona allowed some Indian quack to inject her full of broken glass and third-world country juice. Which was pretty funny considering the grilling she gave the nurse in San Francisco about "how do you know the meningococcal vaccine is safe".

The effect of this episode was Fiona sitting in the Department of Public Health with a gaggle of nurses around trying to decide whether or not my wife has rabies. After a call to the guy who's currently rewriting the CDC guidelines for rabies, they decided that she should get the two booster shots ($182 each) just to be on the safe side.

And that's pretty much that. Right now my shoulders are sore as hell, but I'm told that will pass after a few days. Of course, for those of you out there who like to have things to worry about there's also a .001% chance I could die of Yellow Fever by next Thursday.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 28, 2006 at 12:58 PM in Africa, Little Stories, Me, Travel | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Saturday, 26 March 2005

Going, Going...

We got our plane tickets yesterday! We'll be leaving Melbourne and flying into Bangkok on April 14, where we'll spend a few days organizing an apartment for the month of May (while we take the CELTA course). When we get that sorted we'll take off for a tropical island somewhere and relax for a few weeks. Then it's Bangkok until the end of May.

After the course we'll travel around Southeast Asia for about six weeks. Like anywhere else, the region is in a state of constant change. When I was there in 2002 you could walk down the streets of major Laotian cities and people would come running out of their houses to check out the white guy. That's probably not the case now, but I'm sure there are still pockets where tourists are the exception rather than the norm. Obviously, this is where we want to be.

We'll leave SE Asia on July 10 and fly to Osaka, Japan where we'll hang out for a week before going to LA for my family reunion in Laguna Beach. After that I have no idea where we'll go, and I wouldn't want it any other way.

The past few months in Australia have been important. Spending time with Fiona's family has shown me a part of my wife that I would otherwise have never understood, and our relationship is deeper and stronger because of it. But it's definitely time to move on. For me, the worst thing in the world is stagnation. Too much time in one place with nothing to do makes Jeremy a dull boy.

I can't wait to be travelling again. There is no way to describe the feeling of standing in a marketplace and being attacked by a barrage of foreign sounds, colors, and people. It inspires a level of existence that causes every molecule of your body vibrate with excitement, and now that I've felt it plain old Brownian motion simply will not do. I need the full-on rush that comes with sitting on an overcrowded bus with somebody's chicken squawking between your legs as you go careening across the countryside.

I can just smell it now...

Posted by flow Frazao on March 26, 2005 at 08:30 PM in Travel | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monday, 21 March 2005

Looking Forward

The airshow is over. I'm glad I did it - I learned a lot about planes and more importantly I learned that I absolutely do NOT want to be a professional photographer. Watching those clowns crowd together at the edge of the media pit elbowing each other out of the way was pathetic. I can't imagine there's much joy left in photography when you have to scratch and claw just to get a shot of an F-16.

Fiona's also done with work, so we're trying to figure out exactly what our next move will be. We're looking at leaving Geelong around the 13th of April or so and heading up to Sydney for a week. After that it's on to Southeast Asia where we'll take a TEFL certification class in Phuket, Thailand. That'll give us around two and a half months in SE Asia before we have to be in LA for my family reunion in July.

Originally I was planning on doing a dive at the Great Barrier Reef, but I don't think it's going to happen this time around. One reason is that it would wind up costing around $1000 when you factor in plane fare up to Cairns and back, and another is that I don't think I'd appreciate it properly. The truth is, I've been in Australia for almost four months now and I'm ready to leave. If I'm going to do something like dive the greatest reef in the world, I want to be able to appreciate it fully - I don't want to spend my time itching to get it over with.

We're going to buy our plane tickets today, so in a few hours I'll have a much better idea of what's going on. It's pretty exciting - today we'll make a decision that will affect the next four months (at least). Will we fly into Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Ho Chi Minh City, or somewhere else? Exciting stuff.

Posted by flow Frazao on March 21, 2005 at 05:00 PM in Travel | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Wednesday, 01 December 2004

We're Off

Leaving is the hardest part of traveling. Saying goodbye to people you love is absolutely brutal, isn't it?

But, on the flip side, I guess without leaving there'd be no such thing as coming home. So it all works out in the end, I suppose.

Posted by flow Frazao on December 1, 2004 at 10:32 AM in Travel | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, 16 November 2004

I'm Back

As you may or may not have noticed, I took some time off after the election.  I didn't stop reading the news entirely, but I cut way back, and obviously I stopped blogging entirely.

It was nice.

I spent time with my family, went for a few long runs, and did some other stuff which I can't seem to remember now.  Most importantly though, I stopped making myself crazy over stuff I have absolutely no control over.

Anyhow, the short of it is that this blog is now about to undergo some changes.  For the past few years, Fiona and I have been planning on doing some travelling, and I put this site together so that we'd be able to keep in touch with people while we're gone.  I've been using it to spew propaganda, but soon it's going to become a collosal egotistical exercise.  A veritable shrine to yours truly.

I offer you the following pictures as a thank-you for all your comments, emails and whatnot over the past few months:

Finally, Fiona and I would like to wish each and every one of you a belated Happy Halloween:

Posted by SmooveJ Zao on November 16, 2004 at 12:34 AM in Travel | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monday, 25 October 2004

Buen Camino, Peregrino

I'm in a coffee shop in DC, so it's kind of hard to concentrate, but I'll try to keep this coherent. I was at a party on Saturday night and I started talking to this girl. She seemed perfectly nice, and we chatted for a while about the usual nonsense. After a few minutes we wandered away from each other and wound up on separate sides of the room talking to different people.

I was in the middle of a conversation with somebody when I hear this girl yell out "Oh my God! You walked El Camino??" I couldn't believe it. In three years of living in America I had met a total of ONE other person who had walked El Camino de Santiago.

I ran over to her and we started flipping out remembering different parts of the walk and some of the characters you meet along the way. She showed me the tattoo she got when she reached Santiago de Compostela and I told her what it was like to keep walking to Finisterra.

It was great because I don't get a chance to reminisce about El Camino that often. Some of the things she mentioned I had practically forgotten about. It was actually a bit sad, and it made me grateful that this time around I'll be travelling with Fiona. As you probably know, an experience you share with someone else is much harder to forget.

Anyway, we talked for a long time about El Camino and eventually the conversation shifted over to the Knights Templar (as it always does). I mentioned that I had just finished The DaVinci Code and I told her how I read it cover to cover in one day. I'm not sure how it came up, but at one point I said something about Opus Dei.

It turns out she went to an Opus Dei high school! I couldn't believe it. I thought Opus Dei was a fictional organization that Dan Brown made up! Not only is it real, but they actually do all that crazy stuff! They wear those cilice belts and everything.

For those who are as naive as I, Opus Dei is a SUPER conservative catholic group. Here's a snippet from the Opus Dei Awareness Network:

If you've got some time (I'm talking to you, Kenric), check out the ODAN page on corporal mortification:

As I'm sure you can imagine, I was pretty interested to hear what her high school experience was like. Needless to say, it was a lot different from mine.

We kept chatting for a while, mostly about her Opus Dei experience, and at one point I looked at her and I just started laughing. I couldn't help it. "I'm sorry," I said, "but you are just absolutely blowing my mind right now."

"You want me to really blow your mind?" she asked.
I just laughed. "Sure," I said.
"You're not going to believe this, but Robert Hanssen is my uncle."

I almost passed out.

"THE Robert Hanssen?? Like, the spy???"

She nodded. I was absolutely dumbstruck:

As I sit here typing this, I feel confident that this will go down as one of the most surreal conversations I will ever have. I'll never forget eating cheese dip with a former Opus Dei member who has walked The Way of St. James while she tells me about growing up four houses away from one of the most notorious spies in modern American history.

(Curiously enough, it turns out that Robert Hanssen was a member of Opus Dei as well, but that's all I'm going to say about that.)

Posted by flow Frazao on October 25, 2004 at 07:26 PM in Travel | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Thursday, 21 October 2004

Off To DC

Posting will probably be light for the next few days. I'm off to DC to visit some friends. I was really hoping I'd get a chance to write about what I've been up to, but I've been pretty busy.

You'd think what with not working and everything I'd have plenty of time, but you'd be wrong. Somehow time just goes away.

Posted by flow Frazao on October 21, 2004 at 05:14 PM in Travel | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Monday, 20 September 2004

O Canada

We're off to Canada for a couple of days to check out Quebec City, some New England foliage, and a mystery cloud or two. Should be a good time, assuming we don't run into any problems at the border.

Posted by flow Frazao on September 20, 2004 at 11:39 PM in Travel | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sunday, 19 September 2004

Glenys In The Big Apple

I've posted a few shots from our trip to NYC. We had a lot of fun, and it was really cool to see New York for the first time with Fiona's mom. I've been there so often that I'm used to the overwhelming hugeness of the City, but seeing the look on Glenys' face at the top of the Empire State Building filled me with awe.

For me, New York City is something I've grown up with all my life. I was born two hours away, and I went to University about 20 miles outside Queens. But for Glenys it was literally a dream come true to see it with her own eyes. After a lifetime of watching movies (Sleepless In Seattle, specifically) it was almost incomprehensible for her to be there in person. At the top of the Empire State Building with tears streaming down her cheeks she kept repeating "I can't believe I'm here, I can't believe I'm here."

Posted by flow Frazao on September 19, 2004 at 12:19 AM in Travel | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack