The little guy was sick for about 3 weeks, but is now up and running full speed.  I, on the other hand, have had a really hard time getting over being sick.  I have had a cold for a few weeks now, and this is the mother of all colds.  It makes any other colds I have had before it look like training colds.

I think I am at the end of it, because I can now breathe through my nose, but I have one problem.  I cannot smell.  At all.  And that means I cannot taste either, and have not been able to for 5 days now.  Imagine the crime against humanity that I committed yesterday by going to Din Tai Fung with our visitors, while being unable to taste the wonderful food!

When you eat and cannot taste the food, you find other ways to “taste.”  You look more at the presentation, and you pay attention more to textures of the food in your mouth.  When you can taste it, maybe you skip all of that and just taste it when it’s in your mouth, but then I think you might miss these other elements that help you enjoy food.

There are benefits to not being able to smell.  For example when walking around Hong Kong with our visitors, there are a lot of places selling dried seafood (scallops, muscles, etc.).  It normally is not my favorite smell, but no big deal to me this week.  Also yesterday I was waiting on the street next to a stinky tofu vendor, and didn’t even notice.  Let’s hope that the sense of smell clears up in time for our next trip back to Sweden, where I long to smell the clean and crisp fall air.