In the Heat of the Night

So about two weeks ago it got hot - or rather it became hot and humid - and it's the humidity that's the real killer. So even though there have been one or two cloudy days you still end up sweating after walking a short distance. Our air conditioner eats electricity and it isn't terribly effective. I've found I can't sleep at night and even our desert hamsters are drinking water in huge quantities and sleeping out in the open. I'm not much different.

Just to exacerbate matters summer seems to have given carte blanche to the local street vendors to start selling their wares from seven thirty in the morning, via loudspeakers, from parked positions next to our apartment building. This does not really fit with my going to bed at two in the morning, but at least when one seller was roaming the streets at one a.m. yelling '찹쌀떡' (rice cakes) at the top of his voice it didn't bother me. I don't know how everyone else takes it though. The heat and the early morning loudspeakers are becoming a real problem, and I'm becoming too exhausted to think clearly.

Rain was forecast for today, and it finally came in the evening, but it didn't get much cooler. A few more weeks of this and then I'm told that the 'real summer' will begin. Great. Plus the monsoon season and typhoon season. Given that we're on a flood plain near the sea this does at least offer the possibility of shutting up those early vendors, although I suspect if the street outside is ever submerged they'll just take to selling from boats. They're resourceful like that.