#82. Basal Pneumonia, Literary Agents, and Linsanity (Friday, February 17, 2012)
What was your best day…of finally being recovered from an illness?
If there’s one thing I’ve been particularly lucky with throughout my life, it’s my health. During my college years, in particular, despite doing very little to take proper care of myself, I only set foot in the University Health Services once—and it was in my last semester there.
That time it was actually kind of serious. I had what seemed like a cold for a week, which started to get better—until it didn’t, and I began coughing up blood. So I feared I had tuberculosis, and quickly made an appointment. Long story short: I did a bunch of X-rays, turned out I had basal pneumonia (caught from suitemate’s father via healthy suitemate), and I was prescribed antibiotics.
I started feeling better just in time for midterm week, which ended up being the hardest week I ever studied outside of that year’s finals (#99).
And right after the last midterm on Friday, I spontaneously went for drinks with my classmate Aaron (the first time I ever spontaneously went for drinks with someone), who taught me how to pour a pitcher of beer without leaving any head. A skill that turned out to be much more useful than anything from that financial risk management test.
I didn’t drink too much, because right after I had my final checkup with the doctor. And despite having three pints in me, I was cleared of everything.
With those hellish past three weeks now officially done and Reading Week coming up, it felt like a perfect convergence of relief.
And when I walked into our suite, Kurt Huang (#115) and my other suitemates were all pretty relieved as well. Apparently, my coming home long past midnight from the library every night had led them to believe I’d died from my illness.
“So Kurt, anything new going on around here?”
“Well, besides you completely disappearing for the last five days, nothing.”
Adding to their curiosity were four letters from New York that I had somehow missed on the kitchen table every night. They were responses from literary agents to queries I had started sending out for my novel (#124), and a rather promising one requested my full manuscript to be mailed to her.
Since I was going back to Ottawa the next day, I wanted to resolve it that night. So I spent the next four hours in my room preparing the materials, then left to go to the FedEx copy shop while Kurt and a few other buddies were watching the Knicks-Hornets basketball game. Keep in mind, this was at the height of Linsanity, especially in Toronto where Lin had hit a last-second three to beat the Raptors a few days before1.
Side Note: Long story short, Jeremy Lin was this unheralded third-string basketball player (from Harvard) who in the span of the past two weeks, had fallen into a starting spot with the New York Knicks and had since them led them to a seven-game winning streak where he was averaging 20-plus points a night. Made even more insane by the fact that he was the first ever Asian-American player to make any kind of mark in the NBA.
After taking care of my business (the literary agent response doesn’t ultimately materialize into anything), I returned home just in time to see the dying seconds of the basketball game. The Knicks lost for the first time since Jeremy Lin became a starter, and everyone was disappointed. But Kurt was especially livid, demanding to know “who was responsible for this”.2
I was just happy to be schoolwork- and pneumonia-free going into a nine-day break.
- Hearing the loudness of the cheers from that shot, at the Raptors home arena, was probably my most embarrassing moment ever as a Raptors fan.
- That, and our wasting our St. Patrick’s Day (#115), were the only two times I ever saw him angry.