came home tonight after visiting rie in berkeley. i saw my mom's light was still on, and she was reading the chinese newspaper.

"hey what was the name of that cruise we went on? celebrity?"

"yeah," i said.

"mercury, right? they just had an outbreak of 350 cases of stomach flu."

i looked at the newspaper, and saw the article in a tiny box in the middle of the page, under a domineering photo of the ship. there were a few words in english scattered through the text -- celebrity, mercury, cdc, south carolina.

"yeah, that's the exact ship we were on."

messaged tom. "looks like they got what you got."

found an article about it in english. what the fuck has that poor ship been going through. but sounds like the number of cruise-ship outbreaks has gone down in recent years, from 34 in 2006, 21 in 2007, 15 in 2008, and 13 in 2009. if that's any consolation.