They've got this heatwave going on over here now for more days in a row than I would like to count, and it is taking its toll.
It is not just a tad of discomfort here and there, sweating some and feeling humid, it is much more. Water is running out, fires are burning all over the place, energy is becoming scarce, swimming is prohibited because of moss and blue algae, code yellow then code red, national crisis. Old people are dying all over the place, and in the large European cities like Paris, Milan, Lisbon, sometimes up to 50-100 poor souls have left this fine world already. Boy, I would sure hate to die that way.
When I was a kid, growing up in the sweltering heat of the San Joaquin Valley in good old arid California (those were the days), we always had this standard boring question we would occasionally ask each other, just for fun. It went something like this. "If you had a choice to die either by slowly freezing to death or slowly burning to death, which would you do?" Long philosophical discussions would inevitably ensue, and though we were a mere ten years old, we developed quite sophisticated arguments to support our views. I always went for the burning option, figuring that I would gradually adapt to the increasing temperature. I had been born and raised in the California sunshine along with the heat, and I felt confident that the heat death was the better way to go.
I think I was wrong, wouldn't mind slowly freezing to death right now.
This is getting kind of weirdly surreal, and it reminds me of an old SF film from my youth where the earth starts burning up because the sun is slowly getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, in twenty-four hours it will engulf our poor planet, growing and growing until...
Scientists around the world unite and save this poor planet! Before it melts away into non-existence. Please, help!
Just "thinking" about what I want to add to this blog entry makes me sweat profusely, and it is only a little past nine in the morning. All these intense and creative thoughts are causing big bad drops of sweat to come together on my forehead and coalesce, the added weight causing big fat droplets to fall and splatter on my keyboard. If you were to time the frequency of the drops hitting the black surface, you could in theory measure the intensity of my thoughts. I pause to relax.
You see, the normal Dutch abode does not include the luxuries of air-conditioning. Why include the additional expenses of some contraption that you might only use a couple days in a decade?
I do happen to have this ventilator type apparatus which stands vertically on the floor behind me. Not too close now, about three meters behind me. It is not a fan in the old-fashioned sense of a round twirling propeller like thing. Rather, it is an elongated vertical contraption which blows air while oscillating back and forth. There's even a timer on it so the thing turns off after say thirty minutes. Not as nice as air-conditioning, but it does offer some limited solace.
Jeez, this is getting pretty darn unbearable. Help.
At first everyone was so happy and gleeful that the sun was finally shining in an otherwise moist and overcast climate of this northern country below the sea. Everyone ran outside in bathing attire to lie in the sun and get a nice tan. That was more than ten days ago. They say that by the day after tomorrow things should be cooling down some.
I certainly hope so, but we will have to see.
