Pseudo-Aromatherapy Session

Today is the day we try to figure out and imagine how people in the pre-electricity era took their bath on winters (at least, if they ever had the chance to desparately need to have one).

No. In case you're wondering, this will be a purely decent discussion, and there will be no explicit descriptions of naked women covered in suds.. or for that matter, hairy naked men covered in suds.

Ok... We probably would've guess that they didnt have much baths on winter because of the inconvenience of heating up the water, as well as the fact that people dont sweat much when the temperature is cold. But I'd just like to say I've just had a similar experience today.

No, not with the not taking a bath part, people. About the taking a bath during winters without electricity.

Stop it already. Its a darn decent discussion to put in a blog.

You're testing my patience, aren't you.

Come along now, I'm trying to describe the way I took a bath today.

Winters. We've all hated the fact that ice cold water and freezing weather will concoct images of freezing, shivering experiences in the bathroom. Getting caught wet stationary without hot water on you will be an experience of "hell freezing over". For those located in the tropics, where winter is virutually non-existent, try to imagine taking a shower in an air conditioned room set below 10 degrees. Got that image in your head already? good.

I managed to get into that position today. Fortunately, the heater was still working so I didn't have to boil tons of water to get a decent bath. But there's this problem with the light in my bathroom - It broke down, and since on this particular day it was rather late already, and its already night, and all the bulb shops where closed, in the end, I would end up with a dark bathroom. And the result would be that I wouldn't very well see where the shampoo is as opposed to the conditioner and the liquid soap and the feminine wash. I wasn't about to cover my head with feminine wash, so to speak.

So I did the next best thing. I took out a couple of my tea lights and lit them up one by one enough to light the bathroom.

Reminds me of the times when I was still in the Philippines and there was an extreme power shortage. For almost 6 months (or was that a year?) every household had 4-8 hours of electricty every day. (I can't really remember the exact figures, but it sure felt like electricity didnt exist at that time) And since the government thought that people will eventually sleep at night, they decided that people dont really need electricity when the sun goes down. So everybody stocked up on boxes and boxes of candles. But that's way beside the point, I still had some sort of modern conveniences at this point, and I was only the light in the bathroom that was the problem.

So here I was, in the bathroom, wondering if the strategically placed tea lights would snuff out when I start turning on the hot water and steam starts hissing to cover up the small room.

< splash splash squeak squeak dammit its freezing! splash splash dress myself up ahhh >

There are some things I'd like to take note off at this point:
1. Lots of tea lights DO make up for the ambience.
2. Tea lights DO NOT snuff out even when the room is saturated with steam.
3. With so many tea lights, the heat generated is enough to make the cold weather a bit bearable.
4. Nevermind the ambiance, it will be an extreme hazard to light up more than 10 tea lights in a closed room, unless you want to risk fire throughout the building.
4. Substituting tea lights with normal bulbs WILL NOT help when you are exposed to EXTREME cold weather, unless you plan to conduct suicide by inducing hypothermia.

I am still wondering how people living near the poles take their baths without electricity though.

Just an observation. Maybe I should try lighting up tea lights in my room when its really cold... now if I fall asleep that would be a problem...

In any case. Should take note to try that before head off to my next life. Wouldn't want to miss any nice experiences.