Baby, It's Cold Inside

While it is not quite the arctic mess that Oklahoma has become of late, winter has finally found its way to Shanghai. It is cold. And miserable. I'm from Oklahoma and I lived in Indiana and France so it isn't that I'm not adjusted to cold weather. I'm just used to it being outside.

Earlier I showed pictures of our air conditioning units (sorry I'd link to them, but it is too problematic with the firewall and all.) We have three wall units (one in the living room, and one in each of the two bedrooms.) They work pretty much like window AC units, and they also work as heaters.

Our apartment is pretty big, but it is also drafty. The units work ok, but they don't put out enough to heat the whole place. I typically run the one in the living room, and keep all the other doors shut. This works pretty good except when the unit decides to blow cold air instead of hot.

Honestly I only have a slight idea how to work out heater. All the buttons are in Chinese. We have a mini english guide, but it doesn't say much. And it is only for the one in the living room, for the one in the bedroom we have no guide at all. Mainly I hit buttons and wait for warm air. And it does shoot warm air most of the time, except when it pushes cold air.

The only thing I can think of is that I have it set on some automatic setting. When the temperature is below a certain degree it heats, but when the temperature is above that level (and I'm pretty such it is only above that level 2 centimeters away from the unit) we get cold air.

Which means the room suddenly turns really cold very randomly. Of course all the other rooms are freezing cold. The kitchen with no unit at all, and an outside door that barely shuts, is always cold. The bathroom remains an ice burg. And a wet ice burg at that. There is moisture always in that room and it keeps my towels in a perpetual moist state.

I'm currently in my flannel pajamas, my fluffy slippers and a knit hat. A tobaggon if you will. Because I'm cold.

Speaking of clothes, I told you that I bought a washing machine the other week. I love it and am happy with it. We don't have a dryer though. This wasn't a problem when the sun shined and I could dry my clothes outside. But now that it is cold and damp things aren't so good. Clothes take two or three days to dry. And as we only have one drying contraption, the dirties are piling up.

We did buy one of those portable space heaters. I figured with the perpetual cold it might keep me warm in the non heated rooms. It does work, but it only actually heats the area about 18 inches in front of the heating coils. Everywhere else is cold. On the plus side it does work as a nice clothes dyer. I now stay cold, but I can rotate the wet clothes in front of the heater and they get dry in about 15 minutes.