1/ I know people have said to live in a hot country is worse,
because you can't really do anything about it, whereas when it gets cold you
wear warm clothes, but the fact is, the cold is worse than heat, because, a,
sunlight is good for our bones, b, in heat we perspire, c, cold weather makes
one always sleepy, tired and languid, makes one lose energy and not wish to do
anything, d, hot weather can be annoying, sometimes causes faint or headache,
but the cold is always, always painful, e, the cold doesn't only affect our
habits (for example, people here stay home whenever possible) but also has some
impacts on mood and personality (depressed, melancholy, cold, unenthusiastic,
lazy, distant, etc).
"There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad
clothing" (Norwegian or Swedish saying) is a stupid
self-consolation. I don't need to go through winter in order to feel like summer is paradise. At all costs, I still prefer Saigon's climate to
Kristiansand's or Oslo's, because I grew up in heat and during my 15 years in
Saigon I was hardly sick, but here, with my body not built for the cold weather,
I'm sick all the time. Sick like a dog.
2/ Wearing some clothes and a jacket isn't enough. One must always
wear gloves- our hands get numb and it will be very painful when it's cold,
I've experienced feeling nothing between my fingers, at times as though my
hands are no longer a part of me, and one must always have a hat, because a
head exposed to cold weather, especially to the wind, is very likely to suffer
a headache.
3/ Never, ever, make a wrong decision when it involves the traffic
route. There are several different ways to travel from the National theatre to
my apartment, for instance, and today I made a wrong decision. In fact, in good
mood, I didn't carefully consider my options. And paid a high price, a very
high price: waiting for the bus for 20 minutes in 1 C degree. I wouldn't have
waited so long if I had taken the metro, or, if I had come back to Oslo S and
missed the train and still not wanted to take the metro, I would have had to
spend half an hour waiting for the next one, but at least I could have waited
indoors.
Now I'm alive, but whether I can actually survive this winter
is...
