I write a lot about food here, I've realised. Pork, lamb, chocolate covered bacon, takeaways and take out; all these things and more have been covered in this blog. I do this because food is a commonality both Australia and North America can immediately recognise, yet with such a broad scope of differences it's a prime topic for discussion.
However despite the temptation to address it once more (and I do have some new ground to broach with it), this triumphant return to the blogging world instead will address another thing we have in common - the weather.
It's hardly fair of me to deride or mock either North America for the heat wave they're currently going through, nor Victorians for the wet and chilly weather happening there. It's got up to 39 degrees Celcius here in the last day or two - hardly insignificant in the grand scheme of things - and when you add humidity to the mix things are really sticky here. To me this is hot weather, yet when I came from a city that got to 48 degrees in the last summer I was there, it's still not the hottest I've ever been.
Nights are the worst, though. I have always been what my mother called a "Hottentot". I get very hot when I sleep. I sleep next to a bit of a cold fish, whose lower extremities I have long refered to as "Undead Feet". I swear they couldn't get much colder if I actually did stick them in a freezer! Brr! However this is negated by the fact the cats love to swamp me. Cue me waking up at about 5am overheated and grumpy, gasping for air and clawing my way out from under the pile of cat fur.
This is a godsend in winter, though. I can go to bed freezing, and still wake up needing to throw off the blankets and chill for a while. Yes, even in the -28 degree weather I have to do this. And I know the Undead Feet appreciate my inability to regulate my body temperature, at least when the snow is falling.
There's the crux of this matter. I used to gripe a bit about the chill back home, but as we were by the ocean we never got far below zero, and usually then only at night. And there was certainly no snow. Sometimes the grass was whitened by frost, and sometimes there was a bit of rime on the windows, but nothing like I've seen here.
Yet my fellow Australians dress exactly the same for their approximately zero degree weather as the Canadians around me now dress for the depths of these bleak white winters. On the other hand, I have seen the people around me shed their clothes as soon the sun shows itself; the wools and thick, dark fabrics quickly being discarded for the thin cottons and light colours that I equate with only the hottest of days. I feel like a big black bat as I swoop around this town in my black lace, black long skirts and black long sleeved blouses amongst all these pastel and white donned sweaty Canadians.
These things amuse and enthrall me, and it makes me smile to think of how the human creature adapts to its environment. Aussies who are wondering at how Canadians can live here in the "eternal freezing cold" - you'd adapt, and it's not cold all the time despite what you might believe. In fact, it does get quite hot here. And Canucks, it's not sunny and warm all the time in Australia, though for the first winter or so I suspect you'd do as I now do, and chuckle every time they complain about the chill. You'd each get your own back every time the seasons change, trust me.
No comments:
Post a Comment