Notes on how to survive a dehabilitating bout of flu

Being housebound for three days is no fun. However, if you remember the following six points, you will at least be half-human afterwards (but only half - the other half of you is still a flu virus colony).

1. Make sure you have sufficient toilet paper to last the siege, otherwise you will find yourself having to crawl over to the nearest store in your contagious, dirty, sweaty state just for those lousy three ply rolls. [WORST CASE SCENARIO tip: use the tissue you were using to wipe your nose, to wipe in the loo.]

2. Calculate in advance how much liquid you have at home (excluding alcohol) to ensure that you will not die of thirst, otherwise you will find yourself having to crawl over to the nearest store in your contagious, dirty, sweaty state just to buy 3 litre bottles of water. [WORST CASE SCENARIO tip: boil tap water. This is not just being snobbish, it's about the fluoride in the Hong Kong tap water - the stuff can ruin the taste of everything.]

3. Find all those cheap DVDs you bought but never had the time to watch, then watch them. This is to ensure that your brain does not stop functioning, thus preventing accidental brain death. [WORST CASE SCENARIO tip: read books. Don't watch too much 'Sesame Street'.]

4. Sweat out the extra-strong flu medicine the pharmacist gave you (which is now turning your insides black) instead of carrying on with the self-medication. [This IS the worst case scenario, so no tip.]

5. Remember to eat. [WORST CASE SCENARIO tip: drink hot water and honey if you can't manage solids.]

6. Repent your nights of debauched drinking and dancing on the weekend before. [WORST CASE SCENARIO tip: own up that you are not a charming globe-trotting Korean lawyer who just quit her job in Hong Kong, but are actually a middle-aged Australian professor of semantics whose wife left him because he spends all his time chatting on the computer with what he thinks are young women, but are in fact middle-aged men like himself posing as young women.]