How cold it is out here

I'm sure I've written in the past about how hot it gets here during the summers. Apparently winter weather took offense and decided to show me who the dominant season is. It's terrible. I had a chance to get some perspective when I visited Hyderabad and the lowest temperature there was the highest temperature in C'garh. My parents kept talking each day about how it was "getting colder" and I kept saying, "If you say so," while sitting around in shorts. Here, when I come home from work, I quickly change into my nightwear and sit on the bed, covered with a thick blanket.

As I've told many people before, it's so cold INSIDE my room that my breath fogs up. One night I went to bed wearing a regular woolen cap on top of a "monkey cap", two pairs of socks on my feet, two layers of clothing and two blankets on top of each other. In the mornings, I have to heat my water for about 45 mins before I can shower with it. Normally I overheat the water so I can bring the temperature down to the exact temperature I want with a few mugs of colder tap water. Now the tap water is so cold that even boiling water cools down fast with just a couple of mugs. I have to be check the temperature of the water between half-mugs to make sure it doesn't get too cold. After showering I have to dry up myself really fast and rush into my clothes because otherwise any moisture on my skin starts evaporating in the dry air and that completely negates all the effects of the hot shower. On the days that I have to wash my hair it's worse because I have to then worry about drying my hair thoroughly or risk my head freezing up. Normally I shave after my bath. But now I can't stand there wet while shaving or I'll just freeze standing there. So shaving is a special occasion that I need to plan for in advance - TWO buckets of heated water so that I can shower, shave and then shower a little more to counter the freezing I had to endure while shaving.

This is mostly due to the poor insulation here. The walls do a very poor job of blocking the cold or keeping in the heat. I finally got my hands on a room heater with an inbuilt blower. The guy who gave it to me told me that running this thing for an hour is enough to heat up the room. Yeah right! I ran it all night long and I still had to bundle up under the blankets. But atleast it was comfortable this time. The last two nights I kept waking up every two hours from the cold. Luckily this week the work load is non-existent so it hasn't hurt me too bad. And who knows, next week by this time the warming might have already started.