Suitcase and World: Phobias, allergies and food tastes.

Tuesday, November 7, 2006

Phobias, allergies and food tastes.

During our lunch time get together today, Lei asked me if I have any phobias and at first I replied that I didn't have any but actually I do.

I'm a bit claustrophobic - found that out riding a coal shuttle down the mine shaft of the Copper Queen mine in Bisbee, Arizona. During the 100 foot descent down this very narrow and dark mine shaft, my heart was pounding fast and hard. Before we reached bottom, I was starting to hyperventilate, sweat and shake - I felt really sorry for the guy, sitting in the shuttle seat in front of me, because I was holding on to the back of his shirt the whole way down. He was really nice....helped me climb out of the car when we got to the bottom. Anyway....., I don't think we'll be going down any narrow mine shafts in either Egypt or Jordan.....at least I hope not!

Turns out Lei has got a gripping fear of......of all things, worms and caterpillars. She warned me that if she sees either one, her initial reaction is a blood curdling scream. Yikes!! Apparently, slugs also send her into a screaming tizzy. All it takes for her to react is to see a worm, a caterpillar or a slug.....it doesn't have to be physically on her for her to scream and go running into the wild blue yonder! I guess she won't be going fishing with me anytime soon. Fortunately, I don't think there are any worms, caterpillars or slugs in the desert so we should be safe.

Next was allergies. I have none except I have an extremely low tolerance to alcohol. Not sure how much booze is served in both Egypt and Jordan as both are Muslim countries.

Lei is allergic to penicillin. Good to know in case of an emergency.

Then, onto foods we don't eat. We're both Chinese which means you expect us to eat everything. She eats everything. I'm an adventurous eater who will taste everything once but I don't do raisins and any dried, wrinkled black fruit (dates, prunes, figs) unless they're pureed and made into some sort of a filling e.g., whole dried fig bad, Fig Newton good.

Good that we find out these things about each other before we head off on our 17 day trip together. It would have scared the bejeebies out of me had I not known about Lei's screaming reaction to a worm :-)