I‘ve 
been fairly busy recently and at the height of the H1N1 drama in Canada (‘H1N1 overplayed in Canada’), I ended up catching a cold too. A normal cold, that is, of the house and garden variety kind (@rebelalfons): It started with a strep-throat, I ended up with a medium to high fever which was gone within 6 hours. I felt excellent the day after the fever. Tired, but excellent. If I had contracted H1N1, I’d be probably the most sought-after person in the world. That is a funny thought.
Talking about H1N1: I’m not certain how it has been played out in the European media. Over here it felt la sort of like a panic. I agree that risk groups should take the necessary precautions, particularly pregnant women: Before the media paid attention to this, I remember reading a US article about serious infection cases that seemed to affect pregnancy and I think that at that point serious advisories were sent out to medical institutions and practitioners.
In a couple of days, it’s
the 47th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, which if you click today’s link at Google news, details all the self-celebratory self-pats on the backs of the glamorous and the entertainerous (that’s not a word, I know). Including U2. There’s a lot of confusion how, or rather, why the Wall fell: from my memories of the days around that event, I recall that the main engine behind the sudden rise of rallies in East Germany was Mikhail Gorbachev. Kohl, Reagon and Bush? Not so much.
Anyway: no matter how you turn it, the Fall of the Berlin Wall was an astounding event, but as far as i remember, didn’t affect the life of yours truly: the days after, I was probably back in school writing up exams or something.