I do believe that, on average, I have spent more hours per day trying to stay warm since arriving in Perth than ever before in my life. Having lived in the interior of Alaska for seven years now, that’s saying a lot. It’s really not that it’s so splendidly cold here, especially during the day - although the average Aussie would have you thinking it’s about to snow any minute even when a good 24 °C (75 °F), it’s just that I feel as though I’ve been winter camping for the past two weeks. Now don’t get me wrong, I quite like camping, but I tend to dress for it, I never try to work on my lap top whilst freezing my arse off in a tent, and I’m typically quite ready to go home after two weeks - sadly, this is home.
No one here can fathom quite how the ‘Alaskan’ could possibly feel cold. First off, even the shoddiest cabin in Fairbanks tends to be equipped with at least a quality wood stove (if not a monitor heater) and a scant amount of insulation. This is in marked contrast to the two houses I have thus far experienced in Perth. Today I determined, without question, that our house is actually designed to cool itself to approximately absolute zero (the point at which all atomic motion stops - for you few non-nerds who’ve deigned to read this far) at all times. I’m not making this up.
While it was a beautifully fine day outside (the weather in Perth, I have learned, is always ‘fine’, regardless of the temperature/cloud cover/precipitation/ etc.), Megan and I could honestly see our frosty clouds of breath whilst standing around making breakfast this morning. In a nearly successful attempt to ward off hypothermia, I washed dishes in scalding water and Megan went outside to tame the jungle that ate our garden. I should have volunteered for lawn mowing duty, as Megan came in sweating in her tank top to find me blue lipped and shivering over our wimpy electric heater with a cup of tea in hand.
Resolute that I would make progress on my experimental paper this weekend come hell freezing over in our living room or high water, I packed up my lap top and headed out to find a coffee shop where I could work away without risking frost bite. My brilliant plan was derailed by a half discharged lap top battery, giving me approximately 37 minutes to work by the time I found a place to settle in with a cappuccino. So, after a bit of frantically working as the battery life quickly ebbed from my ancient little computer, I packed up to look for a new spot that might have the added bonus of an outlet. Another hour or so of wandering up and down the strip put me no closer to finishing my paper, but I did discover a handful of fabulous restaurants I intend to sample just as soon as I get paid…
I finally returned home, optimistically having convinced myself that the house had to be a few degrees warmer from sitting in the mid-day sun. Ha! Donning two sweaters and my alpaca wool hat, I settled down next to the heater with my lap top and multiple cups of tea, which cooled from boiling to tepid in approximately four nanoseconds, to bang out a few more pages of my paper. Over the course of the afternoon, I made multiple forays outside to defrost in the sun and convince myself that, yes, indeed it was about 100 degrees warmer outside than in the living room, despite having all windows and doors wide open. This was when I decided to further inspect this all-laws-of-physics thwarting house I occupy - it is incredibly well designed to avoid the sun’s rays from all angles throughout all hours of the day and does, honestly, seem to be equipped with multiple features actually designed to shed heat - a brilliant plan for the other 9 months of the year I won’t be living here, I’m sure.
