Why strange European music sounds right on warm days?

It feels like hotter than hell, and the high was only 82 degrees.  Yesterday it was even hotter--89 degrees, and about 20 degrees higher than normal.  Damn this global warming!

Eleven years in the mild conditions of Oregon have spoilt me. Completely.

When the temperature goes more than 72, maybe 75, I feel like I might as well quit doing anything and take a long siesta.  My brain doesn't want to work, and my body feels uncomfortable.  I hate the thought of cooking anything when I consider the additional heat from the flames.

My lunch and dinner were the same yesterday: a tomato/avocado salad. No cooking at all.

I know it sounds hysterically comical given that I was born in the southern part of India, not even ten degrees north of the equator, and spent 23 years of my life there.  I used to play outside, bike all over the town, and climb up mango trees, with no care whatsoever for the blazing sun.  I simply didn't know anything better, I suppose.

A decade of Oregon has made me a wuss.  Not California though.

Bakersfield, where I spent a decade, was muy caliente! It was a place where a string of triple-digit temperature days in the summer was not uncommon.  I hated the heat there, too, but I could somehow tolerate it to some extent.  Maybe because I was younger then.

Once, in the summer, a high school student from Sweden came to spend three weeks with us.  Why in the Bakersfield summer?  Long story there.  Anyway, we picked her up from the airport on a 110 degree afternoon.  Yes, a 110.  We reached home and the inside of the structure seemed as hot as the outside--the air conditioning unit had conked out.  The young Swedish girl quickly gained enough color on her cheeks, but she was a good sport who didn't complain. Unlike me now!

Perhaps conditioned by the number of movies in which the female actors wear summery dresses and with French or Greek music playing in the background, my mind seems to calm down and handle the heat much better when I let a vinyl spin out music in some strange languages.

I reached home and brewed myself coffee.  The formula requires me to have cookies or cake with coffee with the music playing.  While the coffeemaker was making its peculiar noises, I rushed to the front room and    placed a Nana Mouskouri LP on the turntable.  Soon, her voice wafted through the entire home and mixed in with the sweet aroma of coffee.

The coffee was ready. With cookies--lemon filling inside--I sat down with the laptop to blog about all these.  I am now cool, though it is hot outside.

I am alive. I celebrate!