Burning in KL

One thing that I hate about KL is its weather. To my recollection, I have never felt so hot and sweaty when I lived my first 10 years in Jakarta, 8 years in Bogor and 5 years in Bandung. During my 10 months stay in KL, it's been very hot and humid almost every single day. When I walk in the busy streets of KL, it's not only hot and sweaty, but also the sunshine is extremely bright which makes me can't open my eyes fully. Gosh, it's like there were 9 suns shining this city everyday. When I'm at home, turning on the the ceiling fan in the living room, or the desk fan in my room, is a compulsory to keep 'survive'. And I think almost every house in KL is equipped with at least one ceiling fan in the living room, which is not a common practice in Bandung's houses. When you go to LRT station, you also can easily see at least one big stand fan directly blowing at the ticketperson. He/she probably hates it everytime having rotational task as a ticketperson, knowing that his/her colleagues comfortably sit inside the air-conditioned ticket counter. In open public places like city parks, Sepang Circuit, even in my hospital's frontyard, there are always mistfans placed all over the areas. Mistfan is a fan that sprays the mist, small droplets of water suspended in air. In an extremely hot weather, normally people gather around a mistfan, just to feel the cool sensation of the mist that touches their sweaty faces and bodies.

In my normal days, the places where I can feel comfortable is in the train (crowded but still I can feel the air-con), RapidKL buses, Metrobus (sometimes I happen to get old bus which its air-con does not function well anymore) and inside hospital environment, be it in computer lab, teaching room or oncology unit, the place where I normally carry out my project. Often when I'm the first to come to computer lab, I always turn on both air-con to get maximum coldness. Rooms in which there is a sophisticated medical modality like MRI, CT-Scan, Linear Accelerator, the temperature is always maintained at quite low level, around 16-18 centigrades. I always feel comfortable in such places to compensate the heat exposure that I get outside, whereas my coursemates (especially the skinny ones) always get freezed, no matter how many layer of labcoat covering their bodies. Back to home, again I turn on the deskfan in my room, though it does not affect significantly, due to sweat that keeps flowing out of my pores, until I fall asleep.

I'm wondering what makes KL so damn hot and humid more than Jakarta, I guess. My hypothesis is, KL has relatively low level of pollution (not to mention the yearly haze from my country) compared to Jakarta. You can still see the blue KL sky, while Jakarta is often surrounded by pollution haze from vehicles and factories exhaust. It is the haze that surrounds Jakarta's sky that might block the sunshine to the ground.

Well, it's my weak thought, without any scientific ground. Clearly, I miss Bandung, I miss its early morning cold water that made me lazy to take a bath, I miss the water vapor that comes out from my breath everytime I walked to my morning class. I will definitely go there once I get home!