Shortly after being moved into Lab 318, I was taken to a prototyping company for a meeting and to check up on some work they were doing for us. After seeing some of their model making spaces, we went into their meeting room and sat down. As is customary in China, they brought tea out to us in disposable clear plastic cups. At the time, I was looking at the furniture and thinking how it was so uniquely Chinese and I was trying to work out some characteristics that could be represented generically.
One of the secretaries (or something like that) came out with the first two cups of tea and placed them on the table. The cup that she put in front of me was a little crushed but I did not react to that. I then considered sliding it over to one of the people sitting further from the door but I did not, I just listened to the Chinese as they talked about they work going on between Lab 318 and this company. I could not understand much as my Chinese was still quite poor at that time so I was listening carefully for any word that I could pick out.
Suddenly there was a sound as the cup of tea in front of me keeled over and spilt its contents on the glass table. The water spilled off the table and down to my left foot which was on the ground directly under the table’s edge. At first I moved quickly to avoid being in the way of the water but my sock was already soaked. I was asked if my foot was okay and I responded that it was not too bad. I calmed myself and decided that the pain was not significant. I have done this in Kung Fu quite a lot so it was not completely new. As I sat I decided that it did not hurt enough to be serious and decided that I could ignore it. I think they offered to let me wash my foot or at least take my shoe off but I did not want to disrupt the meeting and I did not think it was very serious so I just told them it would not be necessary and went back to trying to listen for Chinese words I knew and trying to extract the meaning of their conversation.
As we left I noticed that I was a little more shaky than usual and on the drive home I decided that I should have a proper look at my wound when we got back to the lab. In the car I sent a text message to a friend back at the international dorm saying “tea no foot, pain!” I meant to write “tea on foot…” but the predictive spelling on my phone is not always accurate. After that, we discussed finding apartments in Hangzhou because at the time I was thinking of moving out of the dorms to cheaper accommodation.
When we arrived at the lab I walked in and sat down as quickly as possible. I then removed my shoe and on of the guys from the lab who spoke better than average English came over. He was outraged when he found out that I had been so burnt and not done anything. As I removed my sock I managed to also remove most of the affected skin. The lab members then decided I should go to the school hospital so I gathered my things. They found keys to Ying Fantian’s car and Blake, the boy with good English, drove me there.
The hospital smelt strange and a few people let me go before them in line as they thought my burn looked serious. The doctor agreed that it was not a good idea to have avoided washing it. I then went to a nurse who dressed my wound and told me to return the next day for redressing. My colleagues then drove me home. They had to go back to the lab so they left me at that point.
After settling in to the new pain, the dressing had reminded me of what I was feeling, so I called the friend that I sent the text message to and explained the situation. She went and bought me a few things and then came to my room. One of the things she tried to get me were some flip-flops. However, when she went to a nearby supermarket and asked for the appropriate size, she was laughed at and told that no-one needed shoes that large. She then explained that I was tall and western and then they understood how such a large foot could exist but the still could not help the fact that their shoes were all much smaller. As a band-aid solution, she bought me a pair that were a few sizes too small but still the biggest that were made. We thought I could get some larger ones latter on and the ones she bought were quite cheap. I am actually yet to replace them but that is another matter.
The day went on and we went to a restaurant for dinner, but the food was not that good. At that point I could still walk, just not very fast.
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