Somewhere Between Central and Celsius

For the past few days, I’ve been layering liberally. Contrary to what many might mentally merit, Hanoi is often quite the cold place during these winter months. However, until earlier this week, I had to rely on my own internally guided gauge to judge just what type of temperature had engulfed the city. That’s not to say that Hanoi is without attempt in correctly quantifying this atmospheric entity, it’s just that the only results reported are read in seemingly make-believe measurements, always suffixed with Celsius. I suspect this unusual unit might be quite useful in measuring the blood pressure of unicorns or the certainty of a space rabies diagnosis, but beyond that, its validity seems questionable at best.

Thankfully though, a friend, who just returned from the States, brought with her a certifiably scientific thermometer that reacquainted all of us with that familiar friend called Fahrenheit. This moment was sweet, being both a technological breakthrough and a glorious reunification of sorts, all rolled into one. It was like coming to consciousness while suddenly conceptualizing the flux capacitor, after a nasty toilet bowel injury, compounded with a Montel Williams induced reunion with your long lost high school sweet heart, who, over the last decade, has grown much more confident and taken to wearing a classy pair of leopard skin hot pants. That is, without the burning bump on your head, or, sadly, some sound spectral relationship advice from Sylvia Browne. But, then again, you can’t have your KFC Famous Bowl, and eat it too.

However, when met with these recognizable readouts, I was a bit surprised. The mercury had settled somewhere between 50 and 55, but I had expected it to set up camp much earlier in its upward journey. So here I was, shivering like Billy Zane on the Titanic, when all along, it was really just a crisp autumn day aboard Thunder in Paradise, that is, with my first mate Terry Hogan. But there is good reason for this mistaken case of meteorological measuring.

(Side note: Why has there never been an action movie staring Paul and Terry “Hulk” Hogan? Like Hogan’s Heroes, it could take place in a good-humored Nazi prison camp. Paul could wear a POW uniform he fashioned into a sexy leather vest and Terry would always be ripping his off. The wardrobe dynamics alone would be sensational. Plus, if I’ve learned anything from Indiana Jones, Nazis are always scouring the earth for mystical relics. As such, the movie essentially writes itself. The Hogans, with the Third Reich hot on their trail, must escape the camp and find the ancient weight set that St. Paul used to bulk up with in the Philippi prison yard. However, there’s a surprise ending. This low-rep artifact is the very same set used at the Nazi prison camp, which is evident after the removal of a counterfeit Bowflex sticker. Needless to say, it takes both high-flying Hogans to solve this mystery.)

Hanoi is a city designed to engage the environmental elements. Most of the homes, shops, and cafes, comprising the cluttered urban culture, are open to the air, allowing residents, employees and patrons to, for better or worse (depending on the season), nuzzle up to Mother Nature. In the fall, this afforded a most comfortable climate in each nook and cranny the city had to offer. But, in the winter, it pits you against an arguably mild, but constant, cold that you can never seem to escape. I suppose it’s something similar to that loveable Jason that those 36 soul searching Friday the 13th films introduced us to. There he was, always waiting for you at each and every bend in the forest, his hockey mask peering down at your shivering body.

Regardless, on either count, such an atmosphere is quite novel compared to the climate-controlled heat and air I’ve known for so long, all prefixed with that delightful disclaimer called central. In turn, my biologically innate ability of temperature telling has suffered greatly. Add to that some fantastical Lewis-Carroll/Al-Roker hybrid of a quantifying unit, and even I can correctly predict the approaching of the perfect storm.

To pull it all together, and to place such things in the greater context, I must admit that much of this misfortune does seem directly connected to that muddled up metric system, which vainly attempts to map that world around us, but in the end, serves only to rob us of the wonderful enjoyment that only a myriad of conversion rates can supply. As for Celsius, in light of such occurrences, evidence appears to overwhelmingly convict it as an aiding accomplice. If you find such accusations far-fetched, let’s call a character witness to the courtroom.

In a scene from an internationally celebrated and respected Russian novel, a certain Ivan Karamazov discusses a series of philosophical quandaries with an unwelcome guest, who, amidst these intellectual meanderings, brags of Russia’s conversion to this very system. Well, I hope you’re sitting down as you read this, because that guest was none other than a hallucination claiming to be Satan. So with that, I’ll leave you with two important inquiries regarding this new-age alchemy.

Are such apparitions with evil aspirations the kind of figures you want to keep company with?

If Russia is so much better for this change, then why does the movie Miracle exist?

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Okay so, our organization is holding a conference coming up in Chiang Mai, Thailand and our team is going to spend some extra days in Cambodia and Bangkok along the way, so the next post will likely be more delayed than usual.

Also, I must confess that my bedroom does in fact have a heater.