Saturday, September 3, 2016
The Influence of Global Warming hr576
I live in an apartment that is enclosed by the mountains and a
five-minute walk to the ski slopes. It was built about 30 years ago,
when this area was cool enough to be lived without an air conditioner in
high summer. As an air conditioner was assumed unnecessary, my
apartment has the structure that an air conditioner can’t be set up. But
in recent years, the temperature here reaches above 91 degrees in the
summer time. While I’m not sure global warming plays a part in this, my
apartment is now evidently too hot to live a normal life without an air
conditioner in the summer. Every day I fill up a plastic bottle with
water, freeze it and use it as a portable cooler inside my apartment.
It’s possible to set up an electrical cooler on the window, but it would
cool only one room while it would occupy a large part of the widow
blocking the view and making my apartment dark. Besides, since my
apartment was designed without a possible use of an air conditioner, the
allocation of the maximum electricity for each apartment is low and I
would worry about a circuit breaker all the time not to have a blackout.
Even so, when an unbearably hot summer ended last year, I decided to
place a cooler on the window for the next summer. And as the way of the
world, I forgot the heat I had suffered when autumn came. By spring, I
couldn’t remember why I needed a cooler altogether. Then, summer arrived
again with stronger heat. There is a communal spa in the building for
the residents of this apartment complex and a cold bath is operated
there every day in the high season. I used it a lot this summer. The
small tub is filled with extremely cold water because the tap water is
from the mountains. The water cools off my body instantly and I’m hooked
with its sensation. Being submerged up to my neck in it, with my heart
pumping and my teeth chattering in ten seconds, I can no longer tell
whether I’m fierily hot or freezing cold. I get a scare every time that
my heart might stop in this cold water. Especially in the hot summer
like this year though, it was so easy for me to push away my fear of a
heart attack and I plunged in it three times one evening, making it my
new record. Next day, I had a sore throat and began to cough. Then I was
running a fever and had stayed in bed for a week. I caught a cold by
three plunges into a cold bath. I hated my poor immune system and felt
wretched about myself. After I got rid of a fever and got out of bed,
persistent coughing has continued to make me miserable over ten days.
While I was scuffling with my cold, summer is coming to an end. I didn’t
get a cooler this summer either again…
Labels:
air conditioner,
apartment,
autumn,
cold,
cold bath,
cooler,
cough,
fever,
global warming,
heart,
heart attack,
heat,
immune system,
mountain,
ski slope,
sore throat,
spa,
summer,
water