It is May, and the temperatures are climbing. These days the heat hovers around the 38 to 42 degree range, and going outside is like voluntarily sticking your head in a pizza oven....and holding it there. However, it is surprisingly bearable - and I tell myself that if I can cope with minus 40 degrees in the deep freeze of a Canadian winter, then the same should be true for +40 don't you think?
Of course, it goes without saying that I am exposed for a very limited time - usually in the late afternoons when I walk to the grocery store to buy the necessities for our evening meal. Some sensible ladies are using umbrellas or hats to ward off the sun, others like me - do the hundred metre dash from one airconditioned space to the next, darting from one shady object to another. I have promised myself an umbrella - I just have to find a lively, interesting specimen, as I don't want to go with boring black.
On the other hand, I have to report my absolute amazement at observing other people who appear to be impervious to the heat. It is currently 12 noon and as I look outside from my eighth floor window to the pool below me, I see at least four people slow roasting in the midday sun. There they are, basking in tiny bikinis and speedos, totally oblivious to the heat shimmer radiating about their feet, and seemingly indifferent to the prospect of keratosis, melanomas and the like. Just gobsmacked I am...
Perhaps it takes successive increments of exposure. Perhaps the sunworshippers are longtime residents. Perhaps...but I think I will continue to be wary of the heat, and I don't think it hurts to complain about it. After all, it becomes a topic of conversation, just as it does in Canada. Plus ca change plus c'est le meme chose.... 
Of course, it goes without saying that I am exposed for a very limited time - usually in the late afternoons when I walk to the grocery store to buy the necessities for our evening meal. Some sensible ladies are using umbrellas or hats to ward off the sun, others like me - do the hundred metre dash from one airconditioned space to the next, darting from one shady object to another. I have promised myself an umbrella - I just have to find a lively, interesting specimen, as I don't want to go with boring black.
On the other hand, I have to report my absolute amazement at observing other people who appear to be impervious to the heat. It is currently 12 noon and as I look outside from my eighth floor window to the pool below me, I see at least four people slow roasting in the midday sun. There they are, basking in tiny bikinis and speedos, totally oblivious to the heat shimmer radiating about their feet, and seemingly indifferent to the prospect of keratosis, melanomas and the like. Just gobsmacked I am...
Perhaps it takes successive increments of exposure. Perhaps the sunworshippers are longtime residents. Perhaps...but I think I will continue to be wary of the heat, and I don't think it hurts to complain about it. After all, it becomes a topic of conversation, just as it does in Canada. Plus ca change plus c'est le meme chose.... 
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