I’ve never really appreciated how medicated Americans are until I came here. And watched TV.

Since we came (14/12), we’ve been seeing little more than pharmaceutical ads on the box. Painkillers, fatkillers, cholesterol killers. Sleep disorder and, of course, your ED treatments. All day long, you’re solicited by one chemical alternative or another to treat a slew of health predicaments, real or imagined.

I wonder if anyone here realises that this is just so…worrisome. I mean, back home, if you can’t sleep, you go to a mamak. And ironically, drink coffee or teh tarik or eat some nasi lemak or roti, and you go home and sleep like a baby. Nobody I know takes other stuff than Panadol or Paracetamol when they have an ache anywhere. And if we DO have a sex problem, we just stop having sex altogether. Or these days, buy Coke with tongkat ali or kacip Fatimah (for women on the go, it’s ok!).

Or do what I do. Read a book.

For the insomnia, not the erectile dysfunction.

Wait ’til I tell you about the nocturnal party-line ads.