We Got A/C!

Very exciting, indeed.

I have been to India many times (before residing here), and though hot, I have never needed A/C. So when Josh said he wanted to get A/C when we moved to the house, I was skeptical. I thought it wasn’t necessary. I kept thinking “we’ll see.” Very ironic, because I complain about heat a lot during the summer. My body’s cooling system is broken, so once it gets hot, it takes many hours to cool down, causing me  what I call, “heat headaches”. I don’t know. And India’s weather was one of the things that worried me before making the move.

Anyway, we moved into our house and the temperature wasn’t that bad at all. The ceiling fans did the trick. That is, until monsoon season was completely over and it started to get hot. Really hot. Many times, especially after sunset, the inside of our house was hotter than outside and didn’t cool down through the night. This house has concrete walls, so insolation happens, even with our cracked and old windows (which we plan to fix soon.)

We started to get very irritated by this. It did not help that Josh is a computer programmer who spends a lot of time in front of the computer, and I am a blogger/tumblrer/emailer/googler/huluer/photoeditor who spends a lot of time in front of the computer. I have a 5 year old Apple laptop that gets stupid hot. I don’t know if the newer Macs do the same. So, the heat would concentrate where we spend most of the time, in our office/living room/dining room.

Above is Josh wearing a wet t-shirt wrapped around his head to cool off.

So, with his latest “paycheck” (not literally a check), we ordered A/C. The next day it arrived around 1 o’ clock. Both Josh and I were happy to see it was Panasonic, instead of an Indian brand (sorry India.) After loud drilling and a mess, the A/C was installed, but we could not use it yet. We had to wait for the electrician to come later that evening to create a line to connect the A/C.

India is such a tease.

Around 6pm the electrician arrived, and it took him longer to do his work than the guy who installed the A/C. After more loud drilling, by 8pm we had working A/C! The house felt better even after a few minutes.

I had to cleanup after the electrician though; construction and service men in India ALWAYS leave a mess behind. Including packaging:

I guess you have to have a balance and experience bad when you experience good. E.g. Good: A/C, Bad: loud drilling, a mess, and hours of waiting. Ying Yang kind of thing.

A/C is a luxury in India. Nobody has A/C around here, and I do wonder what our maid and cook think. Josh put it into perspective when he told me: “the A/C is worth two months of Shekhar’s brother’s salary and about two years of our cook’s salary” The latter only comes work 1-2 hours, 6 times a week, but still. You can’t help feel a little bad, but we chose A/C over furniture (we still sleep on a mattress on the floor), over a western toilet (which I can’t wait to get.), and over new windows (most of the windows in our house are very old and don’t close completely.) And honestly, Indian people are used to their weather. They grew up in it and it is in their genetic history. That is my excuse to not feel bad.

Last night was our first night with A/C, and today our first full day with A/C. We are SO happy. It makes a really big difference.

The hanging portrait came with the house. It has a quote in Spanish at the bottom that says: “Dios es amor… y el amor tiene que amar.” – Meher Baba. Which translates to: “God is love… and love must love.” Given that I am Mexican, it was a nice touch to find a God quote in Spanish in the house that God chose for us to live here in India. What are the odds?