So on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week I was very ill with food poisoning. It was terrible and resulted in an embarrassing/humorous situation on Tuesday.

Turn back the clock to last Friday, I went out with two co-workers and three Chinese members of Mitsubishi to an Izakaya-type restaurant. Now even though Chinese people eat the strangest food on the planet on average, for some reason they don’t like to eat raw foods. Fine, cool with me. So one of my co-workers orders a plate of raw meats. Ok. I trust the quality and preparation methods in Japan so I will indulge. I ate my share of raw beef, raw horse, and most importantly raw chicken. The chicken was a first. It wasn’t remarkable and otherwise forgettable.

Fast forward to Monday morning.

There was a holiday so I didn’t have work, but early in the morning I started to feel sick to my stomach. Was it that milk I drank last night? No idea. Interestingly the previous night one of my co-workers complained of feeling ill as well. Things were starting to click in my head as the day progressed and I felt worse and worse. I went to bed early and woke up at the normal time for work. I was still feeling ill, but I felt well enough to come in.

I ride to work and I am sweating a lot even though it was a cool morning. Not a good sign. I change and go to my desk. I am feeling ill and tired, but I think I will be able to make it until midday at least. My boss comes over and tells me that I am going to meet with one of the HR people that did my initial interview at USC. Kay, no worries, now I have an extra incentive to be here. About 40 min later one of the office ladies goes with me to the elevator. While waiting for the elevator to come up to our floor I am really feeling tired, I didn’t get much sleep and had the weirdest dreams ever. The elevator arrives and I go in and lean on the back wall. I can tell something is wrong and plan to hit a bathroom once we get to the first floor. The elevator stops on the the floor below ours on the way down. Damn why do people keep getting on. A man gets on. Next thing I know I am on the floor of the elevator and the door is open to the ground floor. I fainted in the elevator. WTF. Now I am much more coherent while security guard upon security guard comes rushing up to me. Fantastic. A lady doctor, very hot, arrives in a long white coat and I get ferried to the medical building in a security cart. My boss, foreign co-workers, and the HR woman all come in an see me and I end up going home after resting a few hours. I take Wednesday off since I do not want to take the chance of a repeat performance.

So what did I learn from this?

Raw chicken does this.

And that food poisoning sucks. It was the sickest I have ever been and I do not want to experience it again.

I will not eat raw chicken, beef, horse, or anything else that does not live in the ocean.

Madagascar closed their ports 5 min after I fainted.