8/31/10 Beating the heat…a hasty retreat

It wasn’t so much the heat as it was the unbearable humidity.  Hot I can handle, but sticky?  There’s a time and place for sticky, and this wasn’t it.

I hate to do this again; you know, write about my most hated topic: the weather.  I fully admit that it’s the lowest common conversational denominator, but it’s just having such an effect on me here.

Do you know who David Philips is?  He’s the senior climatologist for Environment Canada; a self proclaimed weather junkie.  Well, I’ve often dreamed of kicking him in the face and telling him to go fuck himself.  He’s always in the media playing Chicken Little and doomsday soothsayer talking about storms and snow and making a big deal out of it.  Because of the media attention people begin to think his message is important; weather ends up becoming a default topic of conversation, and we’re all dumber for it.

However, I ask for a kind exemption from my own rule of not talking about the weather since it’s been such a dramatic change from what I’m used to.

I couldn’t take it anymore so I went to a tea house to take advantage of the A/C and catch up on my journal.  I don’t know exactly how long I wrote for, but my hand eventually became sore and the words ceased to flow.  It was time to hit the streets.  The humidity hit me in the face like a charging Rhino.  Within minutes I was glistening with sweat.  Not having anyone to impress, I continued my walk.  I walked for hours in the heat and even as the sun set and night was upon me, relief remained absent.  Dinner in the market put me over the edge.  I secured the only remaining table and it soon became clear why nobody else was sitting there.  It was too close to the cooking flames, almost too much to bear.  Good thing I had packed an extra shirt.