Antibiotic Story (cont.) & When Elephants Make Love

My condition was greatly improved, but only for less than a day. Sunday night, my body temperature began climbing up again. Though I was sure that I had been given the same two kinds of antibiotic (Mideca and Beatacycline) by Doctor Goh at least once before, I was also certain there has been yet another type prescribed for my badly infected throat. On Monday, my body was feeling heat and chill. I tried to find the name of the drug in my diary. The only thing I managed to find was the name of the one given by an expensive specialist doctor a few years before for a similar condition (Zinnat). In the meantime by early evening, fever went up to as high as 39.4 degrees. As the doctor had instructed me to come again if the condition had not improved by Monday, without hesitating I went see him. I honestly told him about the other kind and he was aware that he had prescribed me different antibiotic types before. The other was, well, Zinnat. With Zinnat, the fever started coming down yesterday afternoon and is staying down now. I will visit the clinic again on Saturday for a prognosis check. It should conclude this infectious episode.

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There are only 10 pages left to reach the end of Dr. Kissinger’s 3-volume memoirs. Reading the heavy volumes, I’ve often heard Kissinger’s accented bass. In page 1057 of Years of Renewal, there is this passage: “The fate of the vast majority of the people of Lebanon who were not participants in the battles and meneuvers of the various militias and outside forces [of 1976] called to mind a story told me by Julius Nyerere, the President of Tanzania. At one Nonaligned meeting or another, Nyerere had justified his mistrust of the great powers to pro-Western Lee Kuan Yew, the Prime Minister of Singapore, by saying: ‘When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.’ Lee had replied: ‘When elephants make love, the grass gets trampled too.’

Throughout the volumes, one thing that strongly impressed me is a visible lack of presence shown by Japanese players. Two major issues between Japan and the US, negotiations over Okinawa and textile, were described in the first half of the first volume, The White House Years. Thereafter, there was not an in-depth analysis of any Japanese politicians, though Prime Minister Miki seemed quite deep in his sleep in the 1975 Rambouillet summit. Dr. Kissinger has very high regard for profound insights and statesmanship exhibited by allies and adversaries alike. Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Leonid Brezhnev, Anwar Sadat, Hafez Assad, Golda Meir, Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda are examples.

And this is not my first time I felt this way. Reading books by US major political players (and Che Guevara), it seems that there has not been even one post-war Japanese statesman. One accolade is from Bill Clinton to Tsutomu Hata, Prime Minister for 64 days. “I like Hata. Speaks more English than he lets on; caught himself answering my questions before they were translated. But he’s a good politician.” (p.275, All Too Human, George Stephanopoulos) Just maybe, Hata’s listening power in English is better than his Japanese speaking capability. I remember his days as Prime Minister for his struggle to find the right Japanese words at press conference. Failing to do so, he would a pronoun for the substitute though nobody knew for what noun the pronoun was substituting.