I’ve spent years living in Canada and have just returned to Australia, which is the country I call home. I first visited Canada when I studied abroad there for a semester, and I absolutely fell in love with the country and the people. When I had to return home to finish off the rest of my university degree, I felt like a piece of me was missing and knew that I would have to go back there in the future. I ended up applying for every possible Canadian job and internship position in the hope that I would get lucky and be successful, and sure enough, I was. One month ago I returned to Sydney after spending the past five years away.
After all that preamble, I can now get to my point, which is that Australians are so susceptible to the cold! It’ll be like ten degrees outside and they’ve got the heater blaring as if it’s negative thirty. My housemates have used the heater so much this winter that they need regular heating system repairs. Sydney isn’t even that cold; they all just need to relax.
I’ll never forget how cold it was when I was in Vancouver in the middle of winter and my friends and I had just spent a week skiing on the slopes. My body truly felt like it had given up on me, and I felt like I was in the cusp of hypothermia. I think if my body had continued shaking for any longer than an hour I would’ve taken myself to hospital. Until my housemates get to that point, I think it’s ridiculous that they spent all their spare cash last year on ducted gas heating installation. Sydney, where I grew up, always seemed pretty cold to me, but in reality it’s climate is so mild that it’s practically warm 24/7.
I’ll keep reminding my housemates how much colder it could get, and hopefully we can turn off the heater a little more every once in a while.