Well let's just say that I am presently karmically (is this a word?) challenged.   Having mouthed off loudly and often about the beat up which is swine flu, Allah (or Confucius perhaps) has got me because here I sit in solitary confinement having been quarantined in Shanghai.

Sunday's flight from Melbourne was a shocker - flight oversold (courtesy cancelled service the day before), so instead of a nice row of seats to myself, feet up, and lap top whirring, I was crammed into 56C (58 rows in all) with not enough room to open a magazine, much less the laptop (which as it happened had decided not to work!).   Food in extremely short supply, and we were very grateful for the good sense of Ian - a fellow traveller sitting in our row, who does this run often and brings supplementary food.  Thankfully he was happy to share.

Soon after take-off the flight attendants came round and took everyone's temperature by way of a "gun to the head" - quite amusing.  Little did we know that somewhere further up the plane, a young (Chinese) man "showed symptoms", and for the remainder of the flight he was "quarantined" behind a curtain in 58K a crew rest seat- just two rows away.

So, on arrival in Shanghai, we were ordered to stay in our seats - not easy after 11 hours of torture (the bathrooms - filthy by the way - were the only place you could find any leg-room!), and on came a platoon of men in white suits.   You know the kind - disposable one-pieces with boots and hoods built in.  Big goggles and rubber gloves.    They made a bee-line for our part of the plane where our man was sitting, and there was much temperature taking, note-taking, and discussion.  Meantime, another platoon made its way around the aircraft taking temperatures of all on board - gun to the head method.  I did manage to take a couple of pictures of it all.

By now at least an hour had gone by and the natives were restless.  You have to love a good Chinese revolt and there was one with much shouting and pointing.  Eventually, they allowed all those seated forward of Row 49 to go, plus (really curiously) two rows @ around 53 and 54.   Was it just a coincidence that this is where the most angry/vocal of the natives were???.

Announcements were made but not all of them were made in English so we never knew what was happening and were relying on the English speaking Chinese around us to translate.

There were about 50 of us left by this stage, and our passports were collected and placed in a large plastic bag and taken away for Immigration processing.  After about another hour (plane getting very hot by now), they came back and we disembarked onto the tarmac.  Many people had international connections, there were some amazingly well behaved children, but "the authorities" could not have cared less.  The Chinese do "not caring" extremely well!

We were told we were going to a "medical facility" for observation, and to wait while "our man" was tested for swine flu, and  that it was a hotel about 90 minutes south of Shanghai.  Eventually we left the airport in a convoy of three buses which amusingly took a wrong turn adding goodness knows how long to the journey.

The hotel turns out to be a massive Motel 168 somewhere out of town  - impossible to know where.

When we arrived a very large number of people descended on our buses - they were all dressed in green scrubs, and the place looked like a giant operating theatre, or the set of M.A.S.H. - at one stage a group of people walked along the roadway near our buses, and when they saw us, and our suited welcome party, they covered their mouths and ran for dear life!   The suited ones took our passports and put a sticker on each - (our room number), and a corresponding sticker onto a room key.  Passports are once again in a giant plastic bag somewhere.   That business was comical to watch because they were all wearing industrial strength rubber gloves and the stickers are about half the size of a postage stamp!  No fun when you were as tired and over it as we all were though.

Our facility is probably 2 star at best - in that special way of local Chinese hotels.  The smell is terrible, the rooms are extremely basic, and the carpets filthy - I know because I walked around in bare feet last night and they were black after only a few minutes!   One room, one person (except for couples) and we are not to leave the rooms.    We have air conditioning of sorts and TV - 65 channels of Chinese!  I am not kidding.   

We are confined to our rooms with a list of instructions which I won't bore you with.    Shortly after our arrival, no less than 4 suited ones appeared at my door to take my temperature.  This is done by handing you a thermometer with a gesture towards the mouth, and off they go.  They return about half an hour later to check the reading.  This happens regularly throughout the day - I have not taken my temperature yet, and still they take a look and shake it and read it when I hand it to them.

Continued Monday evening.

A very long day as we waited for the afflicted one's results to come back from the hospital - we were told last night this would take 5 hours.  If there is one thing we have learned thus far, it is that you always double the times they say things will take, and then add some.  So it was that 13 hours after our arrival we received the bad news today that he tested positive for swine 'flu.  But stay calm they said and be patient because there is a second test, and we will have the results of that tonight at 6pm, and if it's clear you can go, if not you will be here for at least 7 days.

Sad to say it was positive and we are now here "for at least 7 days" as the man from the Government told us.   The fact that the place we are in is dreadful is one issue, ditto the food (inedible) and the fact that English is virtually non existent.  We have however befriended the good and lovely Miss Xu (also from the government) and not only does she speak good English but she has given us her mobile number, and she has personally gone shopping for suitable food items for us.   She will be rewarded in some way when this is all over and done.

Enter the conference organisers and the Ritz Carlton hotel (where we are meant to be staying), and this afternoon the head of the conference company came to the hotel (accompanied by the food inspector from the Ritz Carlton in case anyone challenged the quality of the food they were carrying) and delivered to us 2 large sports and an esky filled with every conceivable item - magazines, chocolate, milk, muesli bars, an enormous fruit basket - 2 bottles of white and 2 of red (on ice), 3 lovely green salads with balsamic dressing, playing cards, a large bag of beautiful toiletries for each of us, a room deodoriser and a large can of air freshener for each of us/tea/coffee/sugar.  Of course they were not allowed into the building however our captors did the right thing and took delivery on our behalf.  We are so blessed to be so well connected and have discreetly dined very nicely this evening.  I am afraid the meals we are offered are the worst of the worst imaginable Chinese local food.   Simply inedible.    The system of delivery and everything else associated could be the subject of an entirely different story.    Appalling is an appropriate word.

We are very concerned about some things;  One is the fact that this afternoon they came around and bolted shut all the fire escapes.  When we protested we were told there is someone sitting on the other side of each one with a key in case of an emergency - yeah right!!!    The other is hygiene.  They won't enter our rooms at all for anything, so there is no cleaning, fresh towels etc.  Considering the rooms were fetid to begin with this is of great concern.  I am happy to clean myself but need the equipment to do so and that will be a matter for tomorrow.  The other is exercise - simply no way to get any - especially if we do as we are told and remain in our rooms.  That hasn't happened by the way.  There is a kind of anarchy happening already with everyone leaving their doors open and hanging about in the corridors, and we three (Trevor, Visnja and I have been visiting each other).  Today they went along the corridors and sprayed top to bottom with enormous industrial sprayers.   The hotel is massive, and entirely taken over by the government for this exercise by the way.

So, there you have it.    It is going to be a very long week, and I don't know if I am up to it, but we shall see.  This morning I was threatening to write a book.  Who knows!!  I do know that this will not be a pleasant place at all by the end of this.  It is bad already.  There are only about 10 Caucasian people among us - some of them are Europeans.  There are many Chinese on Australian passports and several other Chinese nationals - one poor girl was to have flown to Beijing last night and her parents drove 600 kms to collect her without knowing she was not going to be there - no mobiles, no information so they simply drove home again.  There is a family with some tiny children who were supposed to be going to Frankfurt and on it goes.  In that sense we are lucky - (a) to have each other for company, and (b) that Shanghai was our destination.

Stand by for the next exciting instalment - there is bound to be one!  By the way, the internet mysteriously disappeared this afternoon, and returned when I complained to Miss Xu tonight that it was a minimum requirement for the inmates.