Food Poisoning

News headlines yesterday and today: 'Woman dead after eating at Geylang Serai food stall' is so scary. I never knew that food poisoning can actually kill.

There was once, I remember, many years ago when CP, R and I had food poisoning after a dinner bought from Geylang East. CP and I had quite a bad bout of diarrhoea and some vomiting within hours of each other; I think CP's was worse than mine. Weirdly, though, R had some stomach cramps only.

We had suspected that the culprit was the Indian rojak from a stall in Geylang East then. So, we reported that stall to NEA (in those days, it was called ENV). The ENV investigation yielded nothing, so there wasn't anything we could do - not that we would have done anything either, if the investigation had thrown up some evidence.

Later on, however, I suddenly remembered that dinner that day, we had also taken some steamed chicken. Given that cooked chicken left in the open is very prone to becoming contaminated, on reflection, I think the real culprit might have been the chicken rather than the Indian rojak. This is consistent with the extent of the diarrhoea we had - CP had taken the most chicken (hence the worst diarrhoea), and R the least (hence no diahhroea,just some cramps); all 3 of us had taken an almost equal amount of Indian rojak.

Anyway, we recovered. And henceforth, I am very wary of eating steamed chicken for dinner. (In a course at NUS during my JC days, a lecturer had taught us that steamed chicken - usually hung up after being cooked - would be a great host to a whole lot of bacteria which starts to build up from the time the chicken is cooked to the time it finally gets into our stomach.) But to think that a person can actually die from food poisoning! I mean, what a 冤枉 way to pass on!

I sympathise with the poor woman who had died and her family. I hope the survivors recover well.