I'm just gonna do this once- it's cold.

The BBQ Pit
21

This time of year, when I come back from a weekend of camping I’ll open the door to a blast of warm air and think I left the heater on again. Then I’ll look at the thermostat and realize no, it’s really 46 F in here, it just feels cooking hot compared to where I’ve been.

But that’s only for a fun weekend with a relatively huge bonfire. We got trees. On longer trips where I end up taking a sponge bath in the snow, that’s when it goes clear to the bone. And when it goes on day after day, that just wears you down.

Off subject, I really noticed an improvement in mood and fewer sniffles when I started taking 2000 IU / day of vitamin D in the winter. If you can find some (and can be sure there’s no melamine involved) I highly recommend it.

The guy across the street, of course.

22

I almost didn’t wear flip flops today.

23

The car was making an odd noise. I popped the hood and checked a few things, the leak in the power steering system is back. Not a huge problem, I can get that looked at on the weekend if I can’t fix it myself, and in the meantime I’ll just refill the system with the bottle of power steering fluid I have in the trunk.

Or I would, if it hadn’t turned into a power steering fluid Slurpee.

That’s at -31C. I remember a day a few years back that was -53. All of the paint fell off my apartment building. Some days I want to just drive south and talk to local meteorologists as I go, and not stop until I get to one who has to try and remember what a wind chill factor is.

Ah well, at least in the summers it… gets hot enough that the tar on the repaired cracks in the roads melts and sticks to your shoes.

24

Couldn’t agree with you more!

I grew up in Michigan and know what cold is. Especially that point where you feel your snot freeze as you inhale—that sensation pretty much cleanly demarcates 0 F.

But…

Every two years my family spends a few weeks in Rio de Janeiro, where my wife’s family is from. We go during our summer, which means we arrive there in the middle of winter. Now, in many trips there I had never felt anything less than 65F, and it often hits 90F on a warm winter day (think “Florida”).

Last year we were there during a sudden cold snap, when the temperature must have dipped to somewhere around fifty. Big deal.
But no one has heaters. The houses are made with brick, and nothing else. No one has fireplaces. There aren’t any electric blankets anywhere. There aren’t warm baths (few Brazilians have a bathtub; they are more into showers… electric showers). We wrapped ourselves in her aunt’s blankets and grumbled about the cold for a couple of days until things warmed up. We never imagined that 50F would be uncomfortable, much less have us chattering our teeth and wrapping up and not moving for three days.

It really was nothing like the misery of living through a true winter in such conditions, like you described and the OP describes, but it sure gave me respect for how easy it is to live in unpleasant climates until someone takes away all that we take for granted.

ETA: Boy this sounds ridiculous next to folks talking about -53C. Oh well. The point still stands: we take our heated homes for granted.

25

I was a student in Southern Spain. Everybody thinks Spain is mild and sunny, like California. Um, no. Temperatures hit the 30’s in the winter, and with windchill, it was way colder. Traditional buildings are made of stone and marble, so it was like being in a refrigerator. All winter long, the only thing anybody does is sit around the table heater with the tablecloth/blanket pulled over their legs and watch TV, because it’s too cold to move away.

And on a slight winter-related tangent, what the hell is up with Spain and the complete lack of clothes dryers?! They have washing machines, for god’s sake, why no dryers? In the winter when it’s freezing or raining, you have to string up clothes lines inside to dry your clothes. And even inside, they don’t dry because of the high humidity.

26

We who live in the land of -53C tend to take our heated homes for granted too.

27

There’s probably about 400,000 people in New England and thereabouts that are getting ready to get their electric online and tell you how cold REAL cold is.

28

That we do. See also block heaters, serious boots, good parkas, snow plows, and almost everyone eventually remembering how to drive in winter conditions. I don’t mean to take away from what the OP faces. I’d rather deal with the “you will die in a very short time if you are exposed to these conditions unprotected” stuff with all of the equipment we’ve developed over the years than the chronic and insoluble cold described above.

I also like to remind myself that -53C is rare and probably seems quite balmy compared to the -89C recorded at the Vostok station in Antarctica. -40C is seriously cold. Adding another -40 onto that, and then some… there’d be gentlemen in Winnipeg still abed who’d hold their manhoods cheap, and think themselves accursed they were not there.

29

The food- where to begin.

If I eat out at a normal restaurant, I’m fond of egg-and-tomato soup, sweet and sour eggplant, fried string beans with garlic, sweet cabbage, this meat that tastes like bacon, corn with garlic, tomatoes with sugar, cucumbers and vinegar, stuffed green peppers and various meat and chicken dishes. Even in cheap restaurants, the food is consistantly fresh and good. Surprisingly some dishes are pretty much the same- kung pao chicken and mapo tofu are genuine Sichuan dishes and not too far off the real thing.

Hot pot is a once a week thing. We usually go to a chicken hot pot restaurant that serves chicken with bamboo shoots and large white beans in a spicy red broth. You pick what you want from the boiling pot in the center of the table and then dip it in your own bowl heaped with garlic, cilantro, green onions and hot peppers. After a while you start adding vegetables- tender potatoes, crunchy lotus root, mushrooms, whatever. And there are lots of side dishes. We are fans of spicy peanuts and these sweet deep fried pumkin donut things.

Snack food is a big deal. We have Chinese burritos- a big round flat bread folded around a fried egg, some crunchy stuff, sweet sauce and pickled garlic. Fried rice, noodles and dumplings are always there for a cheap lunch. BBQ’d meat and veggies are common. Immediately after a formal dinner it’s quite normal to go right out for BBQ or hot pot. If you want sweets, we can get sweet pancakes with jam and lard right next to our school. Then there are steamed buns…the list goes on and on. Every night the entire city turns into one giant street food market. I havn’t even tried half of it.

Finally are banquets. These happen at least a couple times a month. A banquet can easily have 30 or 40 dishes- from delicate jellyfish salad to ham sandwiches. Just piles and piles of food. the plates get stacked up on each other several layers deep. This is usually where you get the plates of rabbit heads and live eels and stuff. But it’s easy enough to eat around the stuff that is too weird, and really you develop a “protein is protein” attitude towards stuff anyway. Banquets last for hours. The delivery of food is just endless, as is the alcohol. After a good banquet you are sweating and crying from the hot peppers, numb and drooling from the Sichuan numbing pepper and drunk from the hard liquor. It’s a whole body experience.

Yum! Only a few more hours till dinner time…

30

can you scrounge up some extra blankets? you could line the walls/floor/ceiling and get some insulation in at least one room.

heat up some water and pour it in the biggest plastic water bottle (hell any plastic bottle with a tight lid) and put that under your covers.

heat up bricks or rocks for the same. you can also carry smaller bottles heated in your pockets and believe me this works really well. if you have access to a microwave at work you can even zap them every hour or 2 and keep warmer that way.

I worked at a place that was pretty much a giant refrigerator, and put all of the above (well no rocks or bricks) to use there. they had this little space for a computer and workstation with a space heater that did nothing but make your shins hot until I suggested they actually make some walls and a door. we used moving blankets for a ceiling and walls and just had 2 overlapping for a door and it was a massive improvement, I even recall the space heater started turning off once in awhile.

31

i feel for you. shanghai isn’t that much better. however, we remodeled our flat thiis summer and put in radient floor heating. bambinas run around barefoot and LOVE to lie buck nekkid on the kitchen tile.

xishuangbana is of course tropical all year round. kunming and dali are usually temperate (freak snow every decade). don’t g north to shangrila unless you fancy permafrost.

ps, my first trip to china was thru the tibetan areas of Sichuan (kangding, ganzi, litang, xiangcheng to northern yunnan). i had never been sold cold riding shitty mountain buses on dirt roads over 15,000 foot passes with frozen waterfalls, rivers and ground with no way to get warm. only the tibetan homes were warm with steaming hot yak butter tea. you know it is butt cold when yak butter team is a delightful drink!

32

My vacation plans are Yunnan this winter, Beijing, the major tourist areas and hopefully Tibet this summer when my mom comes to visit (I’ll have almost a whole month to travel!), Xinjiang next October and then maybe off to the Philippines with friends next winter. My tentative plan for when I finish is to take the trans-Siberian railroad back. And by back, I mean to Paris. Where I plan to whoop it up at the Ivoirian discotheques. No matter how lame things can get, I’ve got tons to look forward to.

33

It’s so when we get back, we have some stories that can make the Africa RPCVs shudder! It’s a motivating factor.

Honestly, I spent the whole time reminding myself that I was lucky because at least I got to leave eventually, unlike the Bulgarians, who have to deal with it every single year.

34

I am quite good at dealing with cold just by bundling up. I think mental attitude is a great part of it. If you think it will suck then it will suck. Iguess living on a boat and other camping and hiking experiences will do that to you. I have never let the cold get in the way of my enjoying whatever I was doing.

One thing to know is that it does not matter if the room is freezing if the bed is warm. Electric blankets are a great invention and will keep the bed warm and dry even in the coldest room. There is nothing better than getting into a really hot bed. Even some bottles filled with really hot water will help. To heat the bed you only need a fraction of the energy you would need to heat the room.

Regarding personal hygiene I have learnt to do do, what do you call them? cat-baths? where you just wash down a few parts whith a flannel. You really do not need much more. It is the clothes that need washing but that should not be a problem.

When I travel in China and it gets too cold I have bought an electric cooking burner. What do you call them? the old fashioned type with a clay base and a spiral wire that glows red and you can heat a pot on it. You can buy one for under a dollar and it will heat your feet. Just be careful.

Ans I love the Chinese custom of having all windows open even in the freezing cold. I much prefer fresh cold air than stuffy warm air. I hate going into a room, office or public space where it is stuffy.

even sven, whereabouts are you in China? Far north or far inland?

It is actually Korean but a favorite movie of mine about the experience of a young teacher in a backwards village is The Harmonium in my Memory.

35

So, it’s the place for my own pitting.
A gas leak was detected on a pipe in my building. More specifically, the pipe leading to my apartment. As a result, gas was cut, quite logically.

No, this pipe needs repairs, and I won’t have gas until it’s done. I won’t explain in detail, both because it’s complicated and because I don’t know the proper English terminology but my landowner (as opposed to me or the co-owners association) is responsible for the repairs. So, of course, I called her. Asking her if I could have the repairs done (by the company that usually make repairs of all kind in the building) and then send her the bill, so that it could be done quickly.

Her answer : no way. No, it’s not just because she wants to take care of it herself, choose the company what will do the repairs or anything like that. That’s because she won’t do anything until the company that manages the building on behalf of the co-owner association will tell her to do so. Only problem is that this company, or the co-owner association for that matter, has nothing to do with the issue and absolutely no reason to be involved.

I tried to tell her so. Answer “That’s none of your business” :rolleyes:. Sure, I’ve no gas, hence no heat and no hot water and “it’s none of my business”. Then, I tried to explain to her that even if she thinks (and she would be wrong, but whatever) that the co-owner association, or the Holy Ghost for that matter, should pay for the repair, THAT is none of my business. She is renting the apartment to me. She has to make sure that I’ve gas. If she wants to go after someone to pay for it (and go nowhere) latter, that’s her privilege. Meanwhile, she has to make sure the repairs are done. It fell on deaf hears.
But she thought it was the perfect moment to tell me that my rent was quite low, and that she’s going to raise it. :rolleyes::mad::rolleyes:
So, it went nowhere. I sent her a certified letter. She didn’t accept it (completely pointless, but again, whatever). I sought legal advice. I called her again. I told her again that she was completely in the wrong. She told me I didn’t know what I was talking about. I mentioned that I double-checked everything with a lawyer. Now, it was time for her to be upset : “HOW DID I DARE call a lawyer!!!”. That’s obviously completely unreasonable. Reasonable people don’t call a lawyer. They settle their minor problems themselves (yeah, indeed. They do. Unreasonable people, on the other hand, don’t do anything to meet their obligations until a court force them to do so.). Anyway, she isn’t officially informed of the problem (I assume she’s waiting for the French president to call her personally so she will be “officially” informed).

At this point, she plays another card : she’s fed up with renting this apartment, she’s barely making any money with it. She intends to sell it. Implied threat : I won’t have a roof if I keep on pestering her (Go ahead, I don’t care. I can find another place to rent. Plus, it’s not exactly the best time to sell real estate, but as usual, whatever).

Though actually, she’s right. I indeed can’t find another place to rent. That would be because she won’t send me any rent receipt. So, when a potential landowner will request some evidence that I’m safe tenant, I’ll be unable to give any proofs of it.

At this point, I’ve three options : The first one is to have the repairs done myself and pay for them. Note that it wouldn’t be very costly. It’s something like € 150 (yes, she won’t pay € 150). But, besides the fact that I’m unwilling to pay, I’ve no right to have repairs done outside my apartment, so I’m certainly not going to do so, especially on gas pipes. The two others are the completely unreasonable ones :

  1. Drag her ass to court myself. Only problem : it will in all likelihood take months before the case is heard. Especially since the local small claims court is currently working with a reduced staff.

  2. Hire a lawyer to drag her ass to court. That would allow me to use a summary procedure, and have the case settled probably within some weeks. Only problem, it will cost me around ten times the cost of the repairs (note that my landowner probably will have to reimburse me, but I can’t be 100% sure).

Meanwhile, I had to buy an electric radiator, and even with that, it’s 13°C when I wake up, 19°C when the radiator has been on all day long. And “taking a shower” requires a hotplate, a washing-up plastic bowl and a saucepan.

Giving the long post, I’ll spare you the problems involved in getting documentation from the gas company, due to the fact that it has recently been partially privatized and cut into several pieces that now ignore the existence of each other. Still, I can tell you that the choice “press 1 if you had a gas leak resulting in the service being interrupted, but are still sent bills for the gas you don’t get and furthermore need documentation about the situation in order to sue your landowner” doesn’t exist.

36

See, the great thing about San Francisco is that while the weather skews a bit cool, it almost never skews very much either way. We can generally go outside with a light sweater and be fine for 93% of the year.

But that last 7%. Older buildings (such as mine, from 1905) don’t have heat or AC or much in the way of insulation or proper wiring, and no one bothers to upgrade since they’re needed so seldomly. So when it’s genuinely cold, we can’t simply close the window, or turn the heat on, nor can many of us use a space heater because the fuse’ll blow.

Luckily, our wiring has only cost us the price of some three- to two-prong adapters and two microwaves, but we can pull the curtains and close interior doors and stay pretty toasty in the living room (Og help you if you leave the door open any longer than it takes to walk through it). But last night I slept under three comforters + sweatpants. I’ve even considered buying a scarf (I hate extra layers).

37

Okay, but you’re not actually telling me what the weather in San Francisco is like, are you?

38

You’re tellin’ me! 77F out today. I had to turn the a/c on in my car!

39

You guys are really making me appreciate western Canada. Yeah, it gets freakin’ cold here, but we are so very well equipped to deal with it. I’ve got my nice, toasty insulated house with a powerful furnace, a block heater in my car and a timer on my electrical cord for the morning, warm clothes and parkas and boots, water and gas pipes installed so the frost in the ground doesn’t affect them - it’s all been taken care of. “Kill you in half an hour” cold is just an inconvenience to us here.

40

I often think about how people lived in Montreal before modern heating. I can’t imagine it - I can barely stand to live here with it.

You have my utmost sympathy. I couldn’t do it.