I'm sensitive. To the elements. I'm sensitive to the elements and anything that remotely interrupts my homeostasis can ruin my day and then ruin my life forever in that exact order. I have myriad pollen, dust, and potentially grass allergies as well as triggers for skin flare-ups, mostly of the rosacea variety. I throw hands with the elements every day and it beats my ass. I think regular Flonase and antihistamine use sort of saved me from the worst of it though-- granted I no longer wanted to deal with the excessive fatigue and drowsiness that all of that stuff gives you anyway-- but a lot of problems still linger. Problems which work in tandem with possibly the worst most disgusting arrangement ever taking a hot and humid climate into account. I have no AC. None whatsoever. I've got a fancy thermometer which says that it's almost 80 degrees inside the apartment but not a lick of fucking AC. I got heating though! I have also died a thousand times in the past week. A lot of "solutions" and "workarounds" exist for this sort of thing. You can use a humidifer. You can get one of those big box fans and set it to high. Point it towards you and have fun. If it worked exactly like such then i_ai_r could take over the world. i_ai_r could discover planets. i_ai_r could maybe even have sex. Yet i_ai_r is i_ai_r and i_ai_r is concerning themself with shit like linguistics and the C programming language every week. i_ai_r concerns themself with such because i_ai_r has sensitive nasal passages.
Saying that this is the root of my problems is no hyperbole. Having had to deal with dry air for most of my life, I figured out rather quickly that the "congestion" I felt every night back home in spite of my constant vacuuming and laundryをしている* was the result of the desert air in the circulation. One could point out that the (thankfully present) AC would contribute in part to the dryness of the air, but I would respond that they should point out the "eyeness" of the air, as in, i_ai_r, as in, "i_ai_r points out that this was literally in the fucking desert where there's maybe like 15% humidity at best on a normal day, and where precipitation is usally concentrated around 3 weeks in the late summer months". The solution to this was incorporating a humidifier into my room, which actually allowed me to sleep rather well at night, albeit a little cost inefficient with the constant filter replacement required to keep it working as intended. A solution was in place. But it couldn't stay there, as I couldn't stay there.
* I can't think of a good way to write the act of doing laundry in this context so I had to use Japanese, sorry
The new arrangement grants me the burden of choice, that which acts as a compromise of polar opposites. I can run the box fan and have it point directly at me from 20 or so feet away, which allows me to not wake up coated in sweat, but at the same time the air produced is extraordinarily dry and it can be felt on my eyes and in my nostrils. I could turn the fan off and have my humidifier work in tandem with the outside air (provided with a slightly cracked-open window) to ensure that I wake up feeling rather spritzy and hydrated. I could also wake up sleeping on a puddle, which I have done many times prior. These extremities, of course, leads to the complications that which I have been complaining about. Specifically the "congestion", outside of making me feel dry as shit for upwards of an hour after waking up, directly attributes to sleep apnea, which in turn effects a whole bunch of other things concerning your wellbeing. Sleep is extremely important. You can sleep a lot, but if it's not good quality sleep, then you won't feel a lick any more refreshed as you did many hours prior. It also will stick a hand in your metabolism and ability to retain information from the day prior. Point is that you want good sleep. Point is that I can't get good sleep. It's an evil world we live in, and I, predictably, am shouldering all of it.
You can't get what you want all the time, that's for sure. Yet, a part of me thinks that A Mediterranean climate doesn't necessarily mean you have to peg yourselves to the standards of living of the Greeks. One thing could be said though, that being that a lot of the buildings are made of actual material, a foreign concept in modern American construction. The walls are insulated rather well, leading to the excessive trapping of heat which makes me baby rage, but also allowing for things like errant noise and the likes to be effectively erased. It is quite European (Balkan) in that regard, and honestly I kind of hate it in spite of that one big benefit it provides. This applies for a lot of places on my campus as well. No A/C. Kinda busted. You can smell like 20 different people's body odor at once in the hallways. At least everything is either designed in the style of brutalist meccas or brick-layed bomb shelters, though. If it didn't play into my fucked up aesthetic sense while acting as a detriment to my quality of life I would've been pissed. Actually, I still am fucking pissed, but less so had everything been that ugly drywall stucco look that evil looking white people keep slapping together in a months time in this country's most unremarkable deserts. If you manage wealth for investment funds with billions of dollars in real estate holdings I will hip drop tackle you and destroy every tendon in your legs.
back