Ramblings About My Life..

The Night Rain...

It's exactly 9pm here in Sheffield. I'm in my room, after having done a bit of background reading for tomorrow's lecture. Having nothing else to do for the night, having boiled my drinking water, finalized my timetables and arranging the stuff on my desk - I'm back to blogging. It's raining here. Not the usual pansy-ass drizzle that isn't heavy enough to warrant taking out one's umbrella but is heavy enough to make your clothes damp and your hair wet - it's actually the kind of rain we'd call 'light' back in Malaysia. I haven't seen it since I've arrived here. Whenever it rains at night, I feel strangely calm and at peace with the world. I've never found out the reason why, though. Everything just seems so...calm. The falling rain lends a feeling of reassurance to me - the whisper of falling droplets that seemingly says everything will be all right after the rain.

The temperature in my room seems to be around 15 degrees Celcius, I suppose. The heater in my room is nominally switched on at this moment. For some reason or the other, the heaters are switched on in the afternoons, and the early night until around 11pm. Then they are switched off until the next morning. I have not an iota of an idea why the heaters aren't switched on at the coldest periods - in the late nights till early morning! Perhaps they think that we close our room windows from 8pm onwards and build up the heat in our rooms by accumulating warmed air and so further heating is unnecessary in the wee hours of the night. It's not that bad, it's not exactly cold but then again, it's not exactly warm and toasty either.

Just discovered a great idea on how to ensure that my bed is all nice and warm when my bedtime comes! It's so uncomfortable crawling onto a cold bed at night - I usually wait until it becomes relatively warm before even trying to get some shuteye. Hence, after mulling over this problem for 15 minutes, I came up with an excellent idea. Since I boil water for drinking every night and transport it back to my room in a "space-cup" (a huge bottle capable of carrying a large amount of water, made of quality plastic that doesn't degrade with heat - similiar to the bottle Chow lugs around everyday whilst we were back in college), I thought, Hey, why waste the heat by letting the water cool? Why not put the bottle beneath my duvet, let the heat escaping from my bottle heat up the bed and I'll have a warm bed when I tuck in? And voila! No more crawling into a cold bed every night! Hahaha!

Before anyone suggests that a hot-water bottle would be more effective, please note that I have just the stuff in my room to work with. I do not have a hot-water bottle, and if you can spare one, please send it to me.

posted by yong chen @ 9:59 PM