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I am pretty over the food situation at the moment. It’s just such a pain in the ass to get food. I am over having to explain my food allergies, over trying to gauge if they understand, over having to start the whole process again when I have to walk away from someone who doesn’t understand, over getting food that isn’t ok for me to eat & over often getting food that tastes truly awful when it is ok for me to eat.

We rarely eat out at home because it’s just too hard to organise it, and I can converse in a language I am comfortable with there. To be eating out everyday for many months, several times a day is getting a little wearisome, yeah there are no dishes & stuff, but it’s so not worth it, at least not for me. It’s causing me quite a lot of stress & to be honest I am forever feeling hungry.

I have had countless close calls, and some pretty crappy food. I might have had lots of veggies in Mongolia, but no spice & I did have an anaphylactic reaction, which I should have gone to hospital for & didn’t - I can self medicate. China no-one spoke English & to be fair, I did have some good food there, but they use a lot of extra sauces and stuff, all the soy sauce contained wheat, so I had to steer clear of anything with flavour other than chili (or so it seemed at the time). Laos wasn’t too bad, but when I had my allergies translated by some of the locals (had it done 3 times) I was suddenly allergic to all field vegetables, rice & beans - that took a lot of explaining. Cambodia wasn’t too bad, except people thought that I was allergic to bay leaves, rice and coconut.

A lot of the translation mistakes are to be expected when you have people who know a little English translate your allergies & I don’t know that it would necessarily be any better if I had a professional translator write out my allergies, at least the locals use words that are familiar in their area. A piece of paper can only convey so much & when you write down all my food allergies (Milk (all dairy), Wheat, Rye, Oats, Barley, Eggs & Peanuts) on paper, it takes up a lot of room, (although Rye gets bumped off the list a bit, they don’t know what is in Asia). You can’t have anything written down that is so long that people lose interest before they even start to read it. Of course when you do that, you miss things too & then there is usually some clarification needed & without knowing the language well enough it makes it hard.

Food is important in life, you need to it survive, and as much as that is true for me, it is also my enemy. I can live or die by eating it & most people have trouble grasping the idea that if I eat or even touch some things that I am allergic to, it can kill me. The chocolate cake incident of 2002, when I only touched the cake still gets wide eyed expressions of awe, as does the pina colada incident last year, when some idiot thought that adding dairy cream to my drink would be ok - 2 epi-pens were used & I stopped breathing & went blue. You can’t convey all that on a little piece of paper.

I would love to have my own kitchen, none of the hostels or hotels have any sort of cooking facilities in them, which is a pain in the arse. In the past when we have been traveling, we have managed to cook most of the way, but this time, not so much. The closest that we have come to cooking anything, is when we have gotten some hot water & made up potato soup (we got some flaked potato, which you make into a soup with hot water) or vermicelli soup (vermicelli with hot water & some veggies) - funnily enough, I only ate that in China.

Finding places to actually get food to cook realistically isn’t an easy feat either, especially if you move around a lot, you usually get it all sorted (know where to go for what) & then you move onto the next place. It seems to take at least a couple of days to get it sorted, but you can do it.

If we did this again, I would get an electric hot plate, (all the places we have stayed have had at least one powerpoint & most have fridges too) & cook myself. At least then I know exactly what is in my food. I am sure that I could ditch some of the stuff that I am carrying, like my mattress (which I haven’t used at all) & bring a smaller sleeping bag to allow for more space to carry food supplies.

After having a rather long day out & about & with my knee acting up, we decided to stop & get some food for dinner. WOW, what an experience that turned out to be - one that we won’t be forgetting any time soon.

As most people know, I have several life threatening food allergies (Milk - all dairy, Wheat, Rye, Oats, Barley, Eggs & Peanuts). It really does make finding food a rather tiring and wearing exercise, I never really start to relax until dinner is over & am on my way, without needing to use any epi-pens or having to call an ambulance. I love to eat, so whilst I am somewhat used to the whole exercise, it does shit me.

I have a couple of translations of my allergies in Chinese (Mandarin) which I have been using. Yesterday it took them about 30 minutes to work out what I could eat, but thank goodness they had a menu with pictures, so I was able to gauge if they understood my allergies. It is always nice when you see something like Pork Buns or Won-Tons & they say NO (meaning you can’t have this) on the menu, it gives you some confidence that they at least seem to somewhat grasp what you are allergic to. I probably give people a little bit of time to work it out too, as it is a bit of a list to get through. Too often I have seen something on a menu that I am so obviously allergic to & been told, “Yes, you can have this” - Crap, get me outta here quick!

Anyhow, we were welcomed into a rather happening looking restaurant & ushered to a table near the door. They gave us menu’s, which were written in Chinese script only (no pictures), so we knew straight away that this was probably going to be interesting. I showed them my piece of paper with my allergies written on it, which was passed around to pretty much most of the staff, a few people laughed (fair enough, not often that you might see someone with that many allergies) and once that was over with we set about working out what to eat, with the aid of a phrasebook (good for some sentences - but normally pretty shit for trying to convey anything to do with food) + a English/ Mandarin - Mandarin/ English Dictionary we also used some pointing (at food) & making animal noises, much to the amusement of people there.

We started out pointing to things in the dictionary (Mandarin/ English) the head waiter actually looked after us the whole night, although it felt like he was more there to make sure that we didn’t embarrass him bu eating in a culturally inappropriate way (which I think that we still managed to do). He asked if I could eat Rice, Mutton, Beef, Wings (I clucked like a chicken) & he managed a smile & nodded, so we figured he meant Chicken wings, Cabbage, Potato ….., it went on for a while, there were a few characters that he pointed to in the dictionary, which were parts of other words, which I didn’t understand, so I just said no to them. Geoff noticed some people having Hot Pot behind us, so we thought that we might just order that, with meat, which we did.

We ordered drinks, Geoff got a beer (which so far have been HUGE through the parts of Asia we have seen - Seoul, Mongolia & China & very cheap) & I ordered a juice, which came in a bottle about 1/6th of the size of Geoff’s beer (I was feeling a little ripped there). They brought out the big Hot Pot (which was a big dish of boiling water (with a burner) with chilli, ginger, garlic etc in the water to flavour + the sesame based sauce that you dribble over all the meats that you cook.

The sesame sauce was a bit of a heart stopper, as we first thought that it was peanut based, a really nice sauce though, which you mixed chilli, & other spices into yourself - YUM!

There were several different meats, some sort of octopus, beef, pork & lamb (lots of meat), which was all cut quite finely so that it cooked quickly in the broth (hot pot). Then we started to get other dishes, like chicken wings on a stick, rice, & several cabbage dishes. The table was filling up, we were happy to eat at a leisurely pace, but then the head waiter decided to help us out & started to cook the meat for the hot pot, at first we thought that perhaps it was due to us not cooking it the right way, but as soon as he had cleared a few of the plates that had contained bits for the hot pot they were replaced with more plates of food - Holy Shit!!

We finally worked out that he had not been collating a list of food that I could eat at the start to workout what we could eat on the menu, we had in fact ordered at least one or more dishes with those ingredients in them (cabbage, chicken wings etc) - in total there were 13 different dishes of food. Not only did we have a full table of food, but we also had a trolley next to the table with more food on it (the greens for the hot pot). We had to tell them no more, we were full (they still had more dishes coming apparently - holy crap!!!). The leftover food didn’t all go to waste though, we took a lot of it back with us to eat over the next couple of days.

That has to be one of the funniest experiences that we have ever had, it was nice to have so much Chinese food, I actually feel like I got to sample a decent amount of Chinese food (it seemed like the whole menu), which is nice, as I love Chinese, but my allergies can be somewhat restricting. Good to end up with that much food over here too, it ended up costing us $30, it would have easily been about $200 - $300 in OZ.

My working week was going to finish as of this afternoon, but I received a job on Friday (which is great, coz I/ we need the money), so now I have tomorrow off, work Friday, then have Saturday & Sunday off (kinda). Saturday & Sunday will be spent selling more stuff off. We have listings on ebay that finish on Friday, so people will be picking up stuff on Saturday. Then we might be going to a car boot sale early Sunday morning, selling a few more things - then up to Brisbane to go a friends party & also do a little bit of work.

We have been fairly busy, the Easter long weekend, which we originally planned to go camping with Geoff’s dad for, was spent packing, sorting & listing things on ebay instead (& there is still a bit more to do). We are both fairly over it - been getting rid of a lot of things that we shouldn’t have as well, but such is life eh?

Tonight I have to do a bit more packing, cook some dinner & pick up Geoff from Touch Football, so much for me not having any late nights over the holidays. I have a regular job late Wednesday nights, so I was looking forward to a couple of weeks without having to do that, but it seems to be back-firing on me, which is a bit of a bummer.

Brea (the dog that our friends have at the place we are house-sitting) has me wrapped around her finger. She knows that I can’t stand her whining & will feed her. She must have been hungry, because she devoured the bones I gave her immediately, instead of burying them as she normally does. She then managed to convince me to feed her, her dinner (the one meal she gets a day) a couple of hours later. She makes this horrible noise like she is being hurt & seeing as the neighbours are so close I just had to feed her. She loves to have a pat & a play, but I can’t touch her, so feeding her is a challenge, but I get there. Brea is an outside dog, she is a big German Shepherd & has a lovely personality, so happy that she is an outside dog though. When we first started staying here I was taking antihistamine at least twice a day, but now I can sometimes get away with one or none - pretty awesome. I still can’t really be too close to her or play with her, but at least she can be around, not sure that I would want to be taking antihistamine everyday or nearly everyday like I have been for an extended period of time. I certainly don’t feel 100%, but I can cope.

What an eventful evening. It’s been quite an eventful week actually, boat crash on Wednesday night, then tonight I was nearly run over by a taxi (didn’t get his licence plate, which I should have) & when I ordered a drink to unwind at last (after being unable to drink for the rest of the week with everyone else), they put cream in it & I had an anaphylactic reaction & ended up in hospital - FUCKER!

Man, I am SOOOOO over my allergies - FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!!! I am over the allergies and over people’s stupidity, including my own in actually trusting people. I have had a week of having to explain my allergies over and over and over again - at least 3-6 times each day of the congress & Friday night I had, had enough. Bernie told me that I needed a drink to unwind, they didn’t have any breezers, so I thought, why not order a piña colada (it’s one of my favourite drinks) - I checked that it only had Rum, Coconut Cream & Pineapple & paid the $14 (friggin steep) & against my better judgemen I went back to the table- I was told that she would bring it out to me, instead of staying there to watch (as I normally would), but like I said earlier - I am just over the whole thing. It would be nice, NOT to have to worry about what I am eating when I go out, not to just have that experience at home (even then I have to be careful - just incase I accidentally touch something that Geoff had bought to eat in the fridge.

Anyhow, so I ordered the piña colada & it finally arrived at the table. I had eaten some of the sushi that I went out to get, as I was pretty certain that I couldn’t eat the food at CBD & to be honest I didn’t really want to have to go through all that, explaining & then finding out that I can’t eat anything, nope, not for me. I took a sip & thought, wow, that tastes a little weird, very creamy (quite tasty in some ways) & decided to ask what was in it, before I couldn’t. I asked again what it had in it & the girl said Coconut, Malibu,Baccardi & Pineapple. To which I asked, there isn’t any milk & she said no, I said absolutely nothing, nope I said I have anaphylactic allergies to milk & she said, I added a little cream, is that bad?

FUCK!!!!!

It was good to know what I was having an allergic reaction to, as my throat started to close at least, as some people won’t admit it for fear of retribution (ie a suing). I headed back to the table & announced that I needed to go to a hospital now, someone needed to call an ambulance & that I needed to use my epi-pens. Bernie tried to help me & nearly managed to get the needle from the epi-pen into her thumb. After I had one epi-pen Bernie & I think it was Mike Levett tried to get me on the floor, which I didn’t really want, I actually wanted to sit in a chair, instead it kinda became this big scene in the restaurant - probably serves them right, but I don’t really like to make a scene at the best of times - I was getting a little annoyed with all the prying eyes from people that were not a part of our group.

I actually didn’t like not being in control & when I lost all control it actually stressed me out a bit, which isn’t the best thing when your body is already under a lot of stress. I know that everyone meant their best, but it just felt a little weird to not have any control. The first epi-pen didn’t seem to be working, as I was having a great deal of trouble breathing & started to go blue. When I couldn’t talk I signed I was later told, which was quite cool, good to have a 2nd language that doesn’t rely on being able to talk verbally. I actually asked for my puffer when I was having trouble breathing, but instead another epi-pen was grabbed by someone who professed to be a nurse, not a part of our group & injected it, but pulled it out just as fast & didn’t hold it long enough (it needs to be held for 10 seconds), so Llew decided to inject me again with it - which was a HUGE no, no - & stressed me out even more.

Apparently 3 ambulances came, which was good to see - we heard about 4 or 5 all together, must have been a busy night & some of the friends that I was with ran outside to flag down a couple of them.

When the ambo’s arrived apparently it was a scene to behold, I was signing, due to having some issues still with talking, then started to talk, Llew was signing & Mike was interpreting for him & Bernie was trying to explain what was happening. Apparently they at first thought that I was Deaf too & were trying to workout what to do. Then there was confusion as to why Llew was flapping his arms about & some other guy (mike) was talking at the same time. Apparently this was their first encounter like this & were quite amused by it all.

By the time the ambo’s arrived & hooked me up to one of the monitors, apparently my heart beat was at 189 a min, pretty high & my body was pulsating with adrenaline,  so I was shaking all over the place. Mike made a few funny comments like, where are all the old fingerspellers & how that I could interpret for 4 or 5 people at the same time, with all the adrenaline - lol. Poor Mike, I had been holding his hand & Bernie’s & apparently I griped his hand so hard, that he lost a little bit of circulation - whoops, sorry about that.

Anyhow, the ambo’s took me to the Mater Hospital (Private), which was pretty close & I thought was one of the best options, as I have private health insurance (isn’t that what you have it for?). They pretty much just observed me for a couple of hours and pumped me full of more drugs (hydrocortisone & phenergan). Bernie called Geoff & I spoke to him a little bit & he decided to come up to Brisbane to see me. Bernie needed to get home & with the worst over with I relaxed for a little while, before I was told that I was able to leave. Geoff still hadn’t arrived on the train, but after speaking with Kim-Ann she came to pick me up, so that I could relax at their place, as I was staying there during the conference and was supposed to stay the night at theirs. Geoff finally arrived & we were both pretty happy to see each other after the nights events (& coming so close to dying).

I swear that is what some chefs think when I mention my allergies & give them a card. This last week at the 4th World Congress of Mental Health & Deafness at the Brisbane Convention Centre certainly seemed to cement that idea. Obviously those involved in the preparation don’t get allergies - or the chef is so devoid of passion for his work (which was probably true to some extent) that he couldn’t be assed constructing any sort of a meal for those with allergies that had any flavour. Or as Geoff put it, they are so scared of legal action that they won’t show any sense of adventure.

They lumped everyone together who had allergies, even if they were only allergic to one thing - they all ended up with the same bland food. There was a poor woman, Angela, who was only allergic to vinegar & ended up with the same bland food I had - the chef refused to take her through the buffet to tell her what she could & couldn’t have. Lunch consisted of - boiled chicken, old cut up cucumber, a couple of cherry tomatoes and some lettuce as stock standard with another little bit of something added, one day we  got a bit of avocado (then they discovered that someone was allergic to that, so we all couldn’t have that any more), another day I had some weird carrot salad. Dessert & morning & afternoon tea was FRUIT.

After the 2nd day of boiled chicken & fruit for every meal, I had, had enough. I had heard such great things about the convention centre & how fantastic they were with catering to people with allergies - but the food was devoid of flavour or any passion at all. There were some that just seemed to accept what they got - not really sure why ~ the food really wasn’t very good & there certainly wasn’t enough of it. Everyone else had a buffet menu to select from that changed every day, but not so for those of us with allergies - a pitiful amount of food (coz apparently you don’t need to eat much) & no creativity at all. The chef came out a couple of times & he was just plain grumpy - there were about 150 of 450 delegates that had food restrictions, from - I don’t like & won’t eat or I have an intolerance/ allergy to people like me with anaphylaxis.

It helps to know who to talk to, when you don’t like the food - I spoke to Simon from Deaf Services & I also managed to speak to the guy who was managing the conference from the Brisbane Convention Centre side of things & after the night before on the boat cruise - & 2 days of the same food - I didn’t hold much back.

The Gala dinner Thursday night didn’t get off to a good start. My entrée was literally 1/2 an avocado with a few tiny pieces of tomato, cucumber & snow pea sprouts to garnish(I should have taken a photo, but I was in denial - I really didn’t think that was it) - I have never been given 1/2 an avocado to eat - it didn’t compare with the entrée that everyone else had. I asked for some dressing & was given olive oil & vinegar (I think the olive oil was off) - it was quite yucky, but not knowing what my main would be & after paying $110 for the Gala dinner, I tried to suck it up. I couldn’t drink any wine again & they weren’t going to get any that I could drink, so yet again I left the car behind for no reason - DOH!

Despite expressing my need to have anything else but chicken, you guessed it, my main was ….. CHICKEN (again) although this time it was roasted, so had some flavour and it was in a tomato sauce with a potato cake underneath, which wasn’t too bad - at least it appeared that they tried, but I was still hungry (probably because my entrée wasn’t very filling, like everyone else’s. Dessert was by far the best though - a coconut gelatine thing (like a coconut jelly), some minced strawberry with mint & raspberry sorbet - they even brought out extra sorbet for me - YUM!

The food for the last day of the conference improved a little. However, I had been asked specifically what food I wanted to have & I said cake & they didn’t come through with the goods on that one - that is one thing that shits me, don’t ask what I want & assure me that it will happen & then not do it - don’t make promises that you obviously are not going to keep. I had some of the coconut jelly for morning tea with strawberries & mint again + some veggie skewers. Lunch was smoked salmon with salad & a platter of FRUIT & afternoon tea was apricots in a sugar sauce (VERY SWEET).

I am just over having to fight to get food that I can eat & even more over fighting to get decent food & then being disappointed. Everyone looks at my list & freaks out “What can you eat?” - lots actually, just think about it. I hate having to explain everything all the time. It’s nice to eat out & not have to bring food for myself all the time, but come on - make some decent food please, why is it that everyone with allergies gets the shittiest food? I think that if more chef’s actually made meals that that would actually like to eat, then they might serve food that tasted good - something with flavour - COME ON - I like to eat food that isn’t devoid of any flavour, just like anyone else.