4am

The full travel experience, and beyond.
You've never really been somewhere until you've had surgery there.
Perhaps that sounds flippant, but there is a kernel of truth behind it.
As a solo traveller, however unconsciously, you have to put asside practical fears and concerns about health, wealfare, safety. It is simply impossible to live day to day, let alone have any kind of usefull experience, without doing this. As i've written before, fear and anxieties do strike nonetheless, but this is momentary and mostly not the kind of fear or anxiety connected to anything tangible or practical.
So, to have an experience that leaves you in fearfull, lonely agony, is quite an eye-opener.
There is something quite singular about being doubled over in the middle of the night, alone in a city with no idea what is happening, where to go or who to call. Those moments of fear do tend to focus the attention on just how vulnerable you are, and how responsible for your own existance... perhaps in a way that is impossible when surrounded by a familiar place, people and other notions of security.
As I lay naked on the operating table, with an anaesthetic-addled brain, trying to understand what the Doctors were saying (in french), I did have a moment amidst the fear and anxiety, to think... well, fuck at least I know that after this I can pretty much do anything here.
Ive already experienced the worst.
...
So, I dont have anything much particularly new to add, considering that my time is now being spent swollen and punctured on my bed watching the olympics.
Although, for the television critics out there... I can say that all Olympic coverage is as one-eyed and pointless as it is in Australia. Every country shows only their own citizens, and wastes endless time with profile and puff instead of showing you perfectly valid and interesting competition involving the rest of the world. America may have invented the idea, Australia adopted it... but not its universal, Britain and France are no different.
...
Yes I am writing at 4am, because after 2 days in bed, I can now not sleep at all... and I have run out of episodes of Scrubs to watch on youtube.