« January 2006 | Main | April 2006 »
February 26, 2006
Malaria Malaise
The Doc told me this morning that I have malaria.
This is a real pain. Not least because I'd taken Lariam (aka Mefloquine - 'the best' so I'd been told before the trip) religiously every week throughout the seven month journey through East Timor and Indonesia. Lourdes was taking a natural prophylactic called 'Neem Leaf Extract' (that I secretly thought was a load of nonsense - look who's laughing now!). And Chris stopped taking Doxycycline a third of way through the trip (he complained it was making him feel dull-witted - no comment!) and for a couple of months wasn't protected at all. Everyone else on the trip, including April, Kenny and Phil all got bitten far worse than me. So what rhyme or reason is there to all this malaria prevention business?
I'd been feeling pretty rubbish since arriving in Singapore over three months ago. But I figured it was just my body getting rid of the Lariam, which can take a while, sometimes even months. Then three weeks ago I started to experience episodes of fever and headaches. Two days I was delirious with a temperature of 109F and it occured to me there must be something more at play.
The treatment is a concrentrated dose of Malarone, taken over three days. I haven't had a chance to discuss it properly with the Doc yet so I still don't know what species it is (ideally not the cerebral one that's the killer) or whether the disease resides in one's body forever or gets knocked out first time around by the massive dosage of Malarone. But the idea of course is to get well enough to get out on this next leg. At least I know what the problem is now and can look forward to hopefully getting my health and energy back as soon as possible.
jason
Posted at 12:37 AM | Comments (1)
February 11, 2006
Discovery Education Commissions Series
Expedition 360 Productions, LLC has recently been commissioned by Discovery Education to produce 3 x 24 minute programs on the geography of Australia.
Entitled 'X-ploring Austalia', the 3-part series will focus on the Australian leg of Expedition 360, during which key aspects of the country's physical and human geography were filmed for the classroom by the expedition media production crew.
Delivery platforms will be VHS and digital video on demand bundled with a teachers curriculum guide. Target age range is 6-8th grade for both the North American market and the rest of the world (aside from the UK for which a custom series aligned to the ENC will be produced). Classrooms can also download 3-4 minute digital 'chapters' via United Steaming (a digital video-on-demand service of Discovery Education).
Each clip includes a small lead-in story on the X360 team's progress through the outback, followed by educational content that adheres to the 18 US National Standards for geography.
It is hoped the series will form a successful model for future programs covering the geographical regions the expedition will be passing through en route to completion: SE Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
>>>> Discovery Education, the newly created division of Discovery Communications, Inc., is the leader in digital video and multimedia-based learning. It incorporates the existing Discovery School product line of over 750 DVDs, videos, CD-ROMs, and print resources, the recently acquired United Learning line of health-education and prevention-curriculum programs, the cutting-edge teacher and student resources of DiscoverySchool.com, and the unitedstreaming digital video-on-demand application—a collection of over 2,300 core-curriculum, standards-based videos—that has been scientifically proven to increase student achievement in two independent evaluations. Discovery Education products reach over 90,000 schools across the United States, serving 1.5 million teachers and their 35 million students each year. For more information, visit www.discoveryed.com.
Posted at 12:09 AM