Pix: ganoderma lucidum (lingzhi mushrooms)I am writing this while furiously scratching my bare head. To the uninitiated, it might look as though my hair is the sanctuary of a thousand lice (Eeeeee!). In reality, My scalp is exploding with little pustules and they itch like hell.
The wooden back scratcher is close at hand. Occasionally I reach out to it to rake my back. I know the pustules are there too. This is because I can feel a slight pain when the scratcher roughes over them.
If anyone takes a peep at me now, alone in my study - scratch scratch scratch, type type type, scratch scratch scratch - they might just assume I am doing a monkey dance. Frankly, with all these scratching, I do feel like a monkey at the moment.
Seriously speaking, this is all Pak Abu's fault. Worse still, the dear man meant well. But before I warm up to the subject of blaming Pak Abu (woo, I like this, it's not often I get to blame him for anything!), in all fairness, let me provide some background details (ehem, I subscribe to balanced reporting).
As much as I dislike health supplements of any kind (I find it tedious gulping a fistful of tablets every day), Pak Abu is a disciple of them all - herbs, roots, ginseng extracts, royal jelly, multivitamins, calcium tablets, ganoderma and all the other watchamacallits.
He takes them for a multitude of reasons, so he says; to boost energy, detoxify his body, increase metabolism, strengthen his bones. I am not surprised, of course. After all, he needs all the 'proppings', as it were, since he is an avid golfer.
He tried to induce me to take them too but I wasn't too keen. But the man was so hard on my case that I finally gave in (now you know who can't be a Jane Bond; I buckle under pressure).
Some time back he got started on this ganoderma lucidum thingy - it's a kind of mushroom, also known as lingzhi. He swore by it. So to please him (and to get him off my back, of course), I started taking two capsules daily. Hardly a week later, all hell broke loose, on my scalp, that is.
Therein lies the irony. I got him off my back, only to have my back plastered with those darn pustules. What a trade-off!
He was elated. "You see, your body is full of toxins! Now they are being expelled through those pustules!" All these are not making sense to me. He is the one puffing two packs a day and I am having the pustules? Where the heck do all his toxins go? Where are HIS pustules?? This is sooo unfair!
2 comments:
aaaarghhh, your Pak Abu sounds very much like my Pak Goneng. I have no idea what he feeds me (literally) complete with Bismillah, to make sure I take my supplements. On my journeys away from home, he carefully wraps these pills in foils - enough to last for a few days. Now in Ramadan, he has made some yoghurty stuff that we have to take at sahur...
But puteri, our Pak Abu/Goneng do take care of us right? So scratch or no scratch, no complaints, ya?
hehehe kak teh, they are caring in their own special way... and that's what endear them to us..:)
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