Keeping cool in the city

It's been raining a lot the past few days and with rain comes a cooling breeze. Temps drop down to the mid twenties and strolling for long distances is pleasant. Usually this time of year is hot. This is "Summer."

My mother and brother were here this time last year and I remember their stages of adjusting to the heat. So just how do we cope with it? Well I think the first thing that's really important is to not over-cool ourselves indoors. It makes going outside a real shock. Humans were built to live in hot climates, Mesopotamia was not cold. Still, it's a big change for northerners and I find it's a process of relaxing. If I'm anxious about being hot, then I'm hot. If I relax then it becomes a warm tropical vacation all over again.

We have one of these air conditioners in every room of our apartment except the bathrooms and kitchen. They have little remotes where we can set them to just fan or to a particular temperature. All the bedroom ones are usually just on fan while the one in the living room is set to about 28-29 degrees during the day. 4-5 degrees cooler than outside and a good comfortable temp to live with. We also leave our windows open a bit so there's a bit of constant air exchange. We've found that acclimatizing to hotter temps indoors has also chased away the sniffles. We had head colds when we first got here and used to use the a/c a lot more. We've had none in the past year since we started turning it off.

Where you are in the city has a huge amount to do with how hot you feel at home too. If you're down in densely populated areas with lots of a/c units constantly exhausting heat you'll feel much warmer than if you're in an area with green space. Little India, The CBD, Chinatown, Clarke Quay and Orchard Road always feel about 5 degrees hotter than where we live. The coastal areas and the Botanic gardens are great places to go sit at night and be cool enough to need a sweater.