Saturday, April 23, 2016

Formula 1 Team Owner’s Misery hr567

As an avid fan of Formula One racing, I spend every winter longing for a season opener. My long wait was finally coming to an end with ten days to go until the first race. That was when the bad news arrived instead of the race. A Japanese TV network station that had been broadcasting Formula One for decades announced a termination to a free broadcast of the sport. They would no longer broadcast it, starting this season. My dream is to live in Monaco as a team owner of Formula One and I thought I had striven to get closer to the dream little by little. On the contrary, I was left far from it now that even watching Formula One on TV got taken away from me. I scoured on the Internet but didn’t find any website for free streaming of the race. The only way to watch it in Japan was through cable TV that cost about $25 a month. Paying money for a broadcast that I was accustomed to watching free all the time is quite undesirable. But when I looked into the cable station further, I found out that would broadcast live all three free practices, adding to the qualifying and the race. While I had been resigned to watching taped, delayed, edited and cut versions of only the qualifying and the race through free broadcasting for years, the cable station would let me watch all sessions of every venue live. It meant a significant upgrade for my Formula One life, and I decided to subscribe it. Watching live broadcasting for all sessions of all Formula One races around the world would be absolutely fascinating. On TV, I sometimes see VIPs watching the race on a TV screen in an elegant paddock lounge while having champagne and appetizers although they were at the circuit and could get a direct viewing of the real cars. If VIPs at the race venue watch it on a TV screen, it would be similar when I watch it live on my TV screen, except for my small apartment, cheap wine and junk food. It would be gorgeous enough for me to feel like I had become a team owner who attends all the venues. I thought $25 was inexpensive for an imaginary taste of dream-come-true. But once I got down to sign up for a subscription, I encountered an annoying process. Despite this high-tech age, I needed to ask for contract papers, fill them out, send them back, receive a tuner and set it up to my TV set. The season opener that is regarded as a celebration among the people concerned was ten days away and it was impossible to be all set by then. What a misery it is that a fake team owner would miss the festive first race of the season. I learned what $25-a-month could do at best…

Saturday, April 9, 2016

The First Cold in 10 Years hr566

I started coughing the next day when I got back from a four-day trip of my winter getaway. The day after that, I had a high fever. Now it was official that I had a cold. I had been very careful not to catch a cold for years by wiping my hands with wet tissue every time I touch public materials, gurgling right after I come home and drinking vegetable juice every morning. As I had boasted about building up my immune system, I believed I had strong resistance to a cold. That confidence was shattered. My diligent anti-bacteria daily life was to no avail and I caught a cold for the first time in more than ten years. Because my fever was as high as 101 degrees, I suspected it was influenza. I also feared that I might have contracted MARS or something since I was strolling around the airport during the trip. I usually consult the Internet instead of a doctor, and websites said that I should see how my fever would go over a week. If it got higher and lasted more than a week, it would be influenza. If less than that, it would be a simple cold. Until the verdict, I just took cold medicine and stayed in bed. To make things worse, my partner caught a cold at the same time and had the exactly the same symptoms as mine. Two of us under the same roof had a cold simultaneously meant there was no one who took care of us. With nobody to cook or clean, we ate instant foods in our gradually dirtying apartment, which surely didn’t seem to work for recovery. I lost appetite and every simple movement lead to exhaustion easily. Because I hadn’t had a cold for such a long time, I forgot about how painful it could be. I lay in bed all day long coughing and wheezing, with my head dim by a fever and medicine, thinking about how much I wanted to be in good health. I realized that health was the most important thing to have and I could do anything if only I got rid of a cold. Then I began to feel helpless and all sorts of negative thoughts invaded me. I was afraid of being in this excruciating condition over a week. What if I didn’t get better after several weeks? Could it be much more serious disease beyond my deductions? Would I eventually be brought into an emergency room and hospitalized for a long time? When I get very old, would I be feeble like this every day? If so, I strongly defy aging. I slept on and off with those cloudy thoughts. One morning, I woke up after I slept for twelve hours straight probably because of medicine. I found no sign of my partner who sleeps in a different room and usually gets up earlier than I do. There was no sound of him walking down the hallway or fixing breakfast as I hear in my room every morning. I wondered if he had died as his condition got worse during the night. Should I call an ambulance? Can I live all alone from now on? Do I have enough money for his funeral? I felt terrified at the thought of what I should do, and then, I heard him getting out of his room. He was alive, thankfully. After three days in physical and mental agony, my fever began to drop. It returned to normal temperature within a week. It was a cold, not anything serious after all. I got back to work ten days later. To sum up, I wasted two weeks in total on the trip and the cold. Only one good thing was that I lost six pounds in a week although I hadn’t been able to lose an ounce whatever I tried. Now I must keep my weight this way. Otherwise, I suffered for nothing and just threw two weeks down the drain…