I've got myself a new air conditioning unit over the weekend.
It was a long overdue purchase, one that had been in the works for years. The old one I had was a hand-me-down - it was a unit my parents didn't use much, and why waste it if it's still working perfectly? But then, that one is really old, and therefore not as power-efficient as the units currently on sale. (Like, a whole new technology more efficient.) And also, it's perhaps a matter of time before it dies.
A couple of weeks back my mother raised that idea again. "Buy a new aircon," she said, upon learning that I didn't have anything specific I wanted to buy with my possible yearend bonuses.
As if on cue, a few days later, it would stop working.
Well, it still did, but it refused to cool. Eternal fan mode. Should be fine. I still have an electric fan in my bedroom. I just need to turn up the fan when I'm going to sleep and I should be fine, right?
I woke up on Monday morning feeling very exhausted, and worse, on the verge of a sore throat and an asthma attack, somehow both at the same time.
I could only get a new aircon on Saturday. I needed my parents over to help me install; I could get folks to help me out, but between the cat being nosy and the paperwork being messy, we all decided we should just do it ourselves. That meant five days of having to sleep in hotter than expected conditions, something that I could fix by sleeping in the living room instead.
Imagine that. I have my own one-bedroom flat, and I am sleeping in the living room. Well, it isn't that bad, since I still don't have a proper bed, but just a mattress. I'm just a little more prone to waking up to whatever Bonkey gets to doing in the middle of the night. Imagine how confused he must be upon learning that I am not sleeping where I should be. Now, am I sleeping better? Slightly. It's cooler, but I still wake up in the middle of the night. I never quite get better. My sore throat lingers, but doesn't progress fully.
Just a little longer, I tell myself.
It's been a weekend and I've been amazed at how well the aircon is cooling, and more importantly, how... well, how I am spending slightly less in electricity. One thing I learned over a week without air conditioning is that the rest of my daily power usage amounts to just PHP 60 a day if I'm cooking. It's doubled with the aircon but in the old days it would add a full hundred bucks on average. I guess that helps when all prices are rising and the world is falling apart, right?
Speaking of the world falling apart, yes, I am well aware of the "super" El Niño happening, more so now that I'm 37 and not seven when the last "super" one came around. I remember a study estimating an additional 450,000 deaths around the world in the next few months due to this massive heating. I thought, was I on the verge of it? And the irony of contributing further with a new air conditioning unit.
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