pretty much everyone in our group is mad about something right now. whether it's getting beaten and robbed (j.klopperfield), atomic diarrhea (sandy), having a senile, steven-segal-loving, batty seventy-five year old for a mother (poopentstocks), or having financial troubles in the poolside castle (princess Z), late may, nearly the halfway point, has seemingly become a good time to air grievances.
somehow, i've yet to acquire any inherent resentment towards chile - some things suck, but just as many things are thebeesknees.org, but i'm not one to buck trends so here's a word about our calefón and the bueaty of warm showers as a means of suffering hellacious cold:
i remember when i was about 14 i was watching an episode of survivor, the second run i think, and this rugged cowboy type had won the chance to have a warm shower. seemed like pretty standard fare until they did the "post-warm shower wrap-up interview" and he revealed that he was actually "the cold shower type." as a adolescent in canada with ancestry in the tropics, it struck me as strange that anyone in their right mind would ever long for a cold shower, but i decided to give it a shot. for a time, i'd have a typical, scalding hot shower and then near the termination of said shower, would kill the hot water and bask in the horror that was cold water as a way of preparing myself for the iciness that was the canadian winter awaiting me in the land beyond shower curtain.
once we moved to california, i was even more so able to identify with why cletus/jeb/austin/jib/rugged cowboy from season 2 of survivor was able to take cold showers... in some parts of the world, it just wasn't that wintery. in california, i would actually take cold showers, as a means of waking myself up, refreshing myself after some form of anything but vigorous exercise, or cleaning myself.
in case you were unawares, it's turning into winter in chile. i'd call it autumn, which is supposedly what it is, but i can see my breath in my bedroom at night. autumn has become the greatest misnomer known to man. at times like these, a warm shower isn't only a surefire way to get squeaky clean, but it's also a therapeutic experience - a vital way to maintain sanity; however, attaining that hot shower isn't quite as simple as it is north of the mexico. though in certain cases chile has achieved parity with what would be labeled "the developed world," they kinda missed the whenyouwantit hot water system that we gots going on in n.a.. for that, every house in the country is armed with a calefón.
a regular calefón has a gas valve (yellow guy under the big white guy) that is turned on, and then a knob that let's you adjust the amount of hot you're looking for. a regular calefón functions quite simply, and is a logical method of accessing hot water when you need it.
our calefón is different. our calefón is temperamental. it needs love, reaffirmation, needs to be told that it's doing a great job. it needs to be cleaned, though after it's recent cleaning, it decided to decrease its level of functionality. arguably, it's just old, but i think the problem runs deeper than that. i think the calefón knows. it knows there's a gringo up in the house that has lived on the other side. somebody that knows the pleasure of just getting in there and turning it on, basking in the readiness. it knows.
our calefón requires time and patience. two things i've been rapidly developing and fine tuning since i came to chile. you need to flip the yellow valve like in any other household, but after that, you have to ignite the pilot flame and push down on the level control for about two minutes, hopefully after which the pilot has decided to stay on. sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, it keeps life interesting. i've seen days where angelica or erwin (mom and dad) have only needed a half minute, i'm yet to familiarize myself with such serendipity. sometimes when i'm a little upset with the calefón, i laugh at it. it's easy, after all, it was made by junkers.
during my usual 120 seconds until go time, when im not counting to 120 at varied paces (depending on the day), i like to think of the better things i could be doing with my 120 seconds - sleeping, staying dirty, inventing a time machine and going back to 83 and asking pinochet why he isn't prioritizing readily accessible warm water, and so forth. i won't lie, other times i stare down our calefón and think very, very bad words. but i don't dare say them out loud. i think junkers is bilingual. i'm jealous.
sometimes, after junkers is lit, the water's still cold. i won't dwell on that unfortunate state of affairs anymore than i already have in my head.
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