Every few weeks my brother and I try to get in touch with each other over Facebook Messenger.
We make a phone call over the internet and chat for a few hours to keep up with each other’s lives.
It’s difficult, because we have a significant time change to deal with. You see, my brother has been living in Ukraine for the past two years now. He really enjoys it there because he is a little American casanova to all these beautiful Ukrainian girls. We were talking about the current global environment and our respective outdoor climates. It turns out, he has pretty similar air temperatures to the region where I live right now. As much as I’m enjoying the warm in the springtime air, he said that he’s dreading it. He actually wished it was winter again and didn’t want to think about the coming summer season. At first, I didn’t understand how he could feel that way, living in Ukraine and all. But he was happy to explain. Apparently, Ukrainians feel differently about air conditioning than we do. It is extremely uncommon for them to have air conditioning in their homes or in their public buildings. The air quality control technology simply isn’t very affordable or necessary there. This means, my brother sits in his hot apartment all summer while the sun streams in from the south and creates a sauna. In the winter, however, Ukrainians absolutely love their heating systems. My brother’s landlord takes very good care of the old boiler system in the basement, and he has endless heat in his apartment. When it comes to my brother’s air temperature preferences, it turns out that they’re largely based on the comfort for entertaining beautiful guests at his apartment.
