Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Give me the cold...

I got home from work, checked my visitor numbers and wondered what the hell happened. Apparently Nancy happpened. Thank you for the kind words and, well, all the traffic. As far as I know, I'm an only child, but I can check with my parents to see if any baskets were left at the orphanage on the way home from the Grace.

Also enjoying comments left by Jason and Colette. Colette gloating about going to the Middle East (I miss the bitch session as well) and Jason talking about adapting to the heat of the region. Just to add to things, Cathy's brother is working in Ghana right now where it is 40 degrees every day. For Christmas, he is apparently heading to Sierra Leone, where it is even warmer (in more than one way). For many reasons, we're questioning his sanity.

You know what, I'll take where I am right now, thank you very much.

I know some people are confused by this; "Why would you take -50 over +50?" And it's not because Africa tends to be a pretty messed up place and it's not because the Middle East is unstable and things have a tendency to blow up.

I just don't like the heat that much. Seriously. My brain shuts down at temperatures of more than 35 degrees. I've now been out in -45 and it's working just fine.

I can physically adapt to cold temperatures. There are any number of defences available to me. I can turn up the heat. I can not go out in the cold. If I do go out, I can wear layers (MEC should just open a store here and get it over with). I can wear the BFWC. Soon I will break out the wind pants and maybe even the CFWBs (Clunky Fucking Winter Boots). It will be cold, but there are any number of ways I can adapt to the cold to keep warm.

As best I can figure, the only way to stay cool in the Middle East and Africa is air conditioning. And you often don't see a lot of that in Africa. Light clothing only helps so much when it's 50 degrees. At that point, you just have to bear it, sweat, be uncomfortable and try to keep yourself hydrated.

Let's put it simply. If you put me outside at -50 in Iqaluit I will be more confortable than Jason will be in Qatar at +50. Because I can dress for it. Jason can just hold out until he can get back to the air conditioning.

I'm sure a blast of warm sun and a beach will be nice at some point next year. But only for a week or so. Give me 52 weeks of it and I'll need ear plugs to keep my brain in my head.

Last 5 on iPod
1. Blow at high dough - Tragically Hip (Live Between Us)
2. Crocodile rock - Elton John (Greatest Hits)
3. Her disappearing theme - Broken Social Scene (To Be You and Me)
4. The lowlands of Holland - Anita Best and Pamela Morgan (The Colour of Amber)
5. I wish I had an evil twin - Magnetic Fields (I)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Funny thing is for the past two days its been foggy, thick pea soup, "I can only see 10 feet in front of me"fog that finally disappears at 12:00 in the day.

I have to agree with Craig, heat is harder to adapt to, my villia has 7 air condition units in them, and I love to have all of them on. As for the cold, a dry cold is lot easier to get use to. If Craig returns to St. John's anytime soon he will find that feels colder.

As for the location choices, Qatar Nunavut, I could live in either for a while. Africa, disease would frighten me as I have a small child and my wife tells me when she had malaria it wasn't fun. What a long post, hope this makes up for the lack of one yesterday.

Anonymous said...

Funny thing Craig, is you know I have no heat tolerance either. But I can tolerate it better than cold--even dry cold. What does send me into a pretty miserable, irritable, bitchy funk is humidity plus heat which the UAE gets (like Qatar!)in spades, although not so much at this time of the year. There's a reason I wouldn't be going over in August.

I heard the Booth thing and thought of you immediately. That was one of your funniest rants in the Express. And the students which got you in the scavenger hunt were clever, devious juvenile delinquents in the making, no doubt honing their skills for a brilliant career in provincial politics.