Bad joke

A man with a duck on his head walks into a doctor's office and the duck says... ok, maybe today's duck theme is a bit far fetched. But I did - you might have guessed it - pay a visit to a doctor's office. Did I mention how terribly efficient the Chinese are? Have you ever tried to go and see a doctor without an appointment (at 2:30 in the afternoon) in, say, Germany, the US or Canada? Well, once I had my temperature taken by a nurse at the entrance (swine flue prevention, I assume), purchased a patient booklet and wrote my (Chinese) name on a registration card, there was no wait whatsoever to see *one of* the doctors (actually, she was reading a newspaper and had absolutely nothing better to do than wait for a patient). Needless to say that without LingFei I would not have been able to describe the doctor the circumstances of the light fever I've been having since Monday. Oh, right, and I have a little cough, which won me another ticket for a chest x-ray. At this rate I'll have lung cancer by the time I come back. I tried to argue that I just had a chest x-ray taken less than a week ago and she said "well, you weren't sick then, were you?" (free translation). But first I had to go back downstairs to the cashier and pay for the x-ray and blood test (apparently a sterile needle costs 0.3yuan=5cents; this puts my mind at ease about the woman I saw squatting on the lab floor scrubbing test tubes with a brush in soapy water), then take my receipt to the appropriate room (again, no wait worth mentioning and I got the results within two minutes), take this back upstairs to the doctor, tell her what antibiotic I'm allergic to (she had never heard of it) and get a prescription for a new antibiotic (which is in the same class as the one I am allergic to - oops) as well as some "Chinese medicine." You can tell the Chinese medicine from western medicine by the packaging - Chinese medicine is in green and gold, looking very natural, herbal, zen and whatnot, western medicine comes in a sterile white package :) And the Chinese medicine reliefs weird symptoms, you never knew you could have (LingFei was a bit hesitant with the translation, something about liver fat and a bloody tongue? He said "well, it's Chinese medicine" as in "you're not supposed to understand that"). All in all I paid 60yuan(=$10) for the doctor and the medication and was done in 90minutes. I'll get reimbursed for most of that once I'm properly registered with the university payroll. Now, this was the university health center, so I guess you'd expect them to be efficient. No idea what a regular doctor's office is like, and I certainly don't want to find out what a hospital is like. This clinic already reminded me of traumatic childhood experiences (ok, fine, one) in a GDR hospital. Don't expect to be pampered into forgetting you're sick. No, it has to smell like disinfectant and be really gloomy. People are efficient, not friendly. And the smell of the bathrooms... holy shit! Er... no pun intended.