by Robert Bicknell

Ever had one of those day’s where your brain simply refuses to cooperate? You know what I mean, you sit in front of the computer and absolutely nothing happens. Your brain freezes, the fingers don’t know what keys to push and you simply have no idea whatsoever what is going on around you?

Bingo.

I went to the doctor yesterday and was diagnosed with “bronchitis”, yes one of the most common diseases / conditions known to foreigners in Vietnam. Perhaps it’s due to the pollution, trucks putting up clouds of dirt and smoke, factories not using pollution controls, or just from people coughing in your face. Yes, I know if you wash your hands frequently, or use those alcohol-based hand sanitizers, you cut down on the chances of getting sick, but when someone standing next to you hacks up his lungs in a major league coughing fit, there is little you can do about it.

Anyway, I was given antibiotics, but having been in Vietnam for 23 years and having gone through this situation uku-bajillion times, they don’t give me the usual Augmentin or Amoxicillin because my body has become so used to them they have almost no effect, so they gave me something stronger and it is really kicking my ass big time.

I can actually feel the drug beating the crap out of the little buggers in my lungs and it feels like a WWE Battle Royale going on. Thankfully, it’s not an “Extreme rules” match because chair shots and kendo sticks would be too hard to take.

Even so, it makes me sleep a lot, which is also good.

Yes, I am also drinking Orange Juice by the litre and will break out my personal favorite cure-all – Chicken Soup. Growing up, everyone called chicken soup “Jewish Penicillin”, only to find later in life that almost every culture refers to chicken soup as the great cure-all. Cést la vie. If the entire world uses chicken soup for this purpose, there must be a lot of truth to it, or a lot of Jewish mothers have been travelling the globe secretly.

Vietnam, at least, has Pho – which is substantially better than normal chicken soup. If I had Pho as a kid, I would have eaten an ocean of it.

To be honest, while on the way to the doctor, I actually worried more about the Big C (and I am not talking about the supermarket chain which never seems to carry anything I want to buy) because I smoke too much. Yes, I tried to quit and continue to try. I quit once for 10 years through hypnosis – but cannot find anyone over here I would trust to do it. My luck, I’d end up running around clucking like a chicken. I quit once for a year through acupuncture, but after one year, the craving came back 100 times worse. I still cannot figure that one out.

Forget patches, they’re too hard to light and I will not “Vape” because who knows what the hell is inside the oil. Here in Vietnam, we have to be careful of fruit, veggies, toys, booze and anything else which might have been smuggled in from China. 

DTA is my motto… “Don’t Trust Anything”.

So, that’s where I stand today…suffering from Bronchitis, but the good news is my lungs showed no signs of the Big C. Now, you would think this would be enough to scare me off cigarettes, bit NOOOOO.

I could also never understand why the insurance companies – especially mine, I have Blue Shaft – don’t pay for stop-smoking treatments. You would think it would be in their best interest.

As this is supposed to be a golf column and not just a cult of personality, did anyone see Tiger Woods drop three shots in the water at Congressional from 100 yards?

In the old days, he made a powerful downwards impact motion, but those three shots looked like he was trying to get under the ball…and he did. Major league chili-dips.

Sorry Tiger, maybe time to hang it up…or perhaps try Chicken Soup.

It couldn’t hurt... VNS