Eeewww...

Monsoon season is here.

Before coming here, I was somewhat nervous about what the summer in South Korea would be like. I had heard that summers in Korea were very hot and very humid. Summer is my favorite season. I love the hot weather, the beach, sunglasses, flip flops, the beach, iced coffee, barbecues, and I even kind of like the beach. But I CAN"T STAND humidity. Actually, it's okay if it's at the beach. Because, well, it's the beach.. With all of that water, humidity is inevitable, but the breeze totally makes it okay. And anyway, it's the beach... so.. yeah. Did I mention that I like the beach?

It actually hasn't been as hot here as I thought it would be. But humidity? GROSS. It tends to hover around 90-100%. And as much as I love the rain (shhh.. don't tell), I do NOT like the rain when it is 85 degrees out. Today I was walking around in shorts, a tank top, and flip flops... in the rain... carrying an umbrella. So of course, my feet are getting wet, I am in immediate danger of eating pavement (flip flops are not built for traction - at least not the $4 (actually ￦4,000) flip flops that you buy at - you guessed it - the beach), and my arms are getting wet because the rain can't follow the rules and keeps sneaking under the umbrella. So I have that nice, cozy, cold, wet, sticky, hot feeling. It's great. I'm a really big fan. Not.

But I can deal with all of this. My A/C works well and I'm quite comfy in my little home. I ought to be - my utilities cost me $100 bucks more last month than they did the month before - I can only attribute this to the A/C.

So what's my real issue? Clearly I'm not a fan of humidity. Or monsoon season. But I've just stated that I can deal, so what's the point?

Cockroaches. I CAN'T DEAL WITH COCKROACHES. Seriously. I can deal with a lot of things, but I am TERRIFIED of cockroaches. I'm not kidding. I realize that the extent of my fear may be a bit irrational. Although cockroaches are gross, they probably won't kill me.* Also, I am much bigger than them and if I could overcome my fear, I would have a fighting chance of killing one. But my attempts at being logical are not helping. I live in constant fear that I will discover one in my apartment. Just writing this is giving me the heebie jeebies and I want to climb up on something where I know I'm safe. I don't like spiders, bees, or most other bugs and creepy crawly things but I can deal with them. If there's nobody else around to do it for me, I'll kill the nasty little things. But I'm afraid if I ever find a cockroach in my apartment, I'll be more inclined to just move out. I don't know how much longer I can talk about this, or I won't be able to sleep tonight. I'm totally serious here, guys. You know me, I've held snakes before, caught lizards, pet a tarantula once (this wasn't a pet tarantula, it was one a friend found in Mexico - admittedly, petting it was ill-advised), killed many spiders and bees, but I don't do cockroaches.

I'm scared because I feel like there isn't much I can do to protect myself. I know there are precautions I can take that will help, but I can't really prevent cockroaches from getting in my place. It's like when everyone around you gets sick, you think it might be a good idea to take vitamins, and get plenty of rest, and eat healthfully. And it is a good idea. And maybe it will keep you from getting sick, but there's no guarantee. THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO GUARANTEE THAT YOU WON'T GET SICK.

Part of what has me so paranoid is that last week, there were a few cockroach sightings at work. One of them was at my desk. Fortunately, I wasn't sitting at my desk at the time. But my friend Emma (who sits next to me) said that a cockroach was running around on my desk and hers. Then they discovered that it had LAID EGGS UNDER MY KEYBOARD. Yeah. Really. Suffice it to say that I cleaned my entire desk area (fortunately, someone else cleaned up the eggs and cockroach remains first) and for the rest of the day, whenever I was at my desk, I was sitting with my legs crossed in my chair and my iPod turned up to drown out the fear.

Writing this at night was not a good idea. Now I need to go to sleep but I'm too creeped out. Maybe if I clean my living room (which is also my summer bedroom - the A/C is in the living room) while watching some TV, I'll be able to sleep in an hour. If I have roach dreams tonight, I'm going to be VERY unhappy.

* According to this website, "Cockroaches can carry pathogens that cause asthma, allergies, abscesses, boils, bubonic plague, diarrhea, dysentery, gastroenteritis, intestinal infections, leprosy, lesions, typhoid fever, urinary tract infections and more."

It's barely May!

I'm going to melt.

Two or three months from now, I won't show up to work. My boss will call me to find out why. I won't answer. My coworkers will become concerned, because that just isn't like me. So someone will come to my place to check on me. When no one answers the door, they will break in. They will call my name and look for me, but all they will see is a puddle. I will have gone the way of Frosty the Snowman. The sun was hot that day.

We're only three days into May, and it was 82 degrees today. With about 75% humidity. Well, during the middle of the day, anyway. It's 100% humidity right now, but fortunately, it's cooled off to about 60 degrees. My apartment is equipped with air conditioning - such as it is. I try not to use the A/C more than necessary, and it's amazing to me how hot it gets in my apartment if I don't. I haven't turned on the heat since I got here at the beginning of March. It was cold then. But I'm on the 5th floor of an 8 floor building and I guess my apartment absorbs enough heat from the surrounding apartments that I don't actually have to turn the heat on. Back then, the temperature gauge in my living room typically read 22-23ºC (72-74ºF) - a little warm, but I would have felt foolish using the air conditioning when it was so cold outside. So I opened my windows. But then I discovered that if I left my windows open at night, my living room floor would be covered with tiny little bugs the next day. Ewww. So now I only open it in the mornings.

Average no-A/C temperature in my apartment has risen over the last few weeks - as you might imagine. It's been hovering around 26ºC (about 79ºF) for the last couple of weeks, but as of today, it's hovering around 27ºC (about 81ºF). So that's fun. I generally just turn the A/C on when I'm really hot and shut it off when I'm comfortable. It's amazing how fast the temperature rises again, though. Especially when it's already warmer inside than it is outside. I usually turn the A/C off at around 25ºC (about 77ºF), but even at night, it doesn't take long for the temperature to shoot back up.

I'm also mildly concerned about the functionality of my A/C. My system is one of those little one-room jobbies that is mounted on my wall. My concern is that although the display may tell me that we're shooting for a temperature of 18ºC, the air coming out of the machine is only slightly colder than room temperature. So I'm wondering - if it gets up to 90ºF in my apartment, and I turn on the AC - will I have 88ºF air "cooling" the room? Hmm.. maybe I should make some inquiries.

P.S. I realize that the listing of temperatures and going back and forth between different units of measurement may seem a bit excessive and ridiculous. But everything is listed in Celsius here and I (as well as most of you) need to convert the temperatures to Fahrenheit in order to have a better grasp on their significance. So why didn't I just simplify things and omit the Celsius temperatures? For the sake of accuracy - I'm a little OCD. In order to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit, you must multiply by 9/5 and add 32. So 26ºC (which I translated to "about 79ºF" above), is actually 78.8ºF. So if I round the temperature in Fahrenheit and don't give you the Celsius temperature with it, it seems inaccurate to me. Yes, I do know how ridiculous this sounds. But I admitted that I'm OCD, so back off.