digest this!

never understood why it is that when i eat absolute rubbish at the stall at the dusty road by the grubby open drain, my tummy doesn't give two hoots about the filth entering it, but i get the worst cases of stomach upsets and virus attacks from what appear to be benign meals at hotel functions, pizza places or the neighbourhood steakhouse.

possible hypotheses:

(1) guess what? your classy hotel, favourite pizza joint and neighbourhood steakhouse may look clean, but in reality the stall by the drain is far more sanitary than their kitchens!

(2) i eat more than most women or men (friends and family will testify to this) and thus, according to the laws of probability, it is more probable that i will catch any contaminants which may be present in the food being consumed.

(3) i've got what people have started to sympathetically refer to as a "sensitive stomach".

HEY, i used to buy those bright-coloured drinks that ol' Pakcik dispenses from grimy containers amidst clouds of smoke from environmentally-unaware school buses that traverse busy jalan bukit bintang, and i lived to tell the tale.. who ya calling sensitive, huh? then again, if hypothesis (1) above is correct, the likes of Pakcik's stall are in fact the cleanest food joints around..

what EXACTLY is a "sensitive" stomach anyway?

(4) as a friend recently eloquently put it, "aiyaa, your stomach needs the nonsense laa. you cannot eat at classy places laa."

(NB. Hypothesis (1), if correct, would also disprove this.)

(5) what the heck. it's just my luck.