Will you be my swine flu friend?

Classrooms are deathtraps. Seriously. I noticed this during my first lecture of today, where there was quite an increase in the number of attendants. The lecture was History of the Ancient Mediterranean, and so the students not only included those from the Classics department, but also those from History. We all squeezed into the tiny classroom, the lecturer shut all the windows, and the symphony of sniffles then commenced. Coughs came from one direction and sneezes from another, making it quite impossible to listen to the lecture properly. Even worse, the likelihood of my getting sick is now a guarantee. In fact, I'm sure I've already got a bit of a tickle in my throat!

Quite a few Cambridge students have already caught Swine Flu, and its treatment is very different from what Brown has outlined. Back in the states, whenever my friends and I heard someone had been quarantined for Swine Flu, we laughed, as horrible as that sounds. More often than not, the victim himself/herself laughed along with us and ignored the quarantine. Here, the infected are not allowed out of their rooms, and the bathrooms they use becomes off-limits as well. These infected are identifiable from the signs on their doors, which most noticeably, and rather unfortunately, feature an unhappy face. It's almost like how FEMA marked the doors of houses during Katrina to count the dead. How sad is that?

Anyways, I have been required, as all Pembroke students have, to list down two "Swine Flu Friends" who can look after me (or rather yell through the barricaded door of my room from time to time) in the event that I become infected as well. So a common soundbyte of Cambridge students' conversations on the streets, in the libraries, dorms, etc, is, "Will you be my swine flu friend?" It does sound quite ridiculous, but is apparently quite necessary as Pembroke constantly reminds me that I probably, no definitely will get Swine Flu. Of course, I'm still new to the area, and am not quite sure whom I can trust with such a demanding task. So here's me asking: will you be my swine flu friend?