I’m sitting here in a cantankerous mood because it’s past midnight and it’s still so hot.

Those who know me well know that I don’t function well when it’s too hot. I’m like a computer CPU chip - when it’s overheated, things don’t function properly, and the computer might even hang.

So here I am, sitting in the 30 degC heat.

I can’t help but think about an office I used to work in.

It was cool. Literally.

The office was a small room with just me and my colleague.

After he assured me that he liked that cold, I decided to tweak the central aircon vent, so that more cool air could come into the office. The temperature fell from around 23 degC to 18 to 19 degC.

On some evenings, it dropped to around 15 or 16 degC.

I know because I had a thermometer stuck on my computer monitor.

Once in a while, colleagues would pop by the office. Common comments included

“So cold in here!”

“It’s like a fridge in here!”

“How do you all stand it in here?”

Anyway, during those days, our boss was this very chatty and sociable person. He enjoyed popping by our office, partly because both of us had pretty wide knowledge so there were many areas we could talk about that was unrelated to work, and partly because we were the only ones who didn’t ignore him.

The problem was, he could spend a couple of hours chatting with us, so that it actually interfered with our work.

So when he started complaining about the cold, it was good news. It meant that he wouldn’t stay very long in our office.

Or so we thought.

I still remember him sitting there on the chair, with his arms crossed and hugging himself while bouncing his legs to warm himself, while excitedly chatting with us. It was a strange sight.

But his conversations still lasted as long.

Ah well. I miss the aircon.