Right now, I find that tiny chunks of certain foods (i.e. dried figs, almonds or beef jerky) easily get stuck in my throat. Online research reveals that this is a case of “benign esophageal stricture.” In addition to drinking carbonated water, other solutions suggested include eating no meat, chewing for longer, and eating smaller chunks at a time.
Thankfully my case of esophageal stricture isn’t severe enough that it affects my breathing. Besides chewing for longer and harder, all I’m going to do is drink a cup of soda whenever I feel something lurking in my throat.
Finding carbonated water won’t be as hard as you might imagine, even when I’m out and about. Diet sodas are available at pretty much every restaurant and vending machine in the South Bay. Not to mention, my family has several unopened bottles of Pellegrino (aka Italian soda water from Costco) sitting in the garage. Worst comes to worst, I’ll fill a water bottle with Pellegrino water and carry it around in my satchel bag.
In other news, I finished the Duolingo Chinese course on Thursday, July the 15th. That happened to be my 143rd continuous day in a row of doing Mandarin Chinese exercises on Duolingo. Honestly, I can’t say that my Mandarin skills have improved that much. However, I did learn some new vocabulary due to my choice of Simplified instead of Traditional (i.e. 经理 vs 老闆 for “manager” and 橙子 vs 橘子 for “orange”).
