keep your cool

Over a 100 deaths in cal due to the heat wave this year, another hundred or so across the east coast.
a small no considering the numbers in developing countries and in lands of extreme weathers.
nevertheless,there are interruptions which open up alternatives to conserving energy.

Here are a few random rumbling on keeping cool

- Turn on the fans and keep large bowl filled with cold water all over the home; the evaporation form the bowl will cool the place. Even if there are no fans, the effect is still good.

- Put water in spay cans (make sure the holes are tiny), and spray fine water in the air all over your place - restaurants do it too It gives a great cooling effect.

- Think iced tea and Jumba juice.

- Freeze bed -spreads! Weird as it may sound - this is from a friend who actually does it. She puts clean bedspreads in plastic bags and keeps them in the freezer for 20 mins or so, and then viola, it’s an invitingly cool bed.

- Eat water melon, English cucumbers, lettuce salads, and fish.

- Lick popsicles, sherbets and ice-creams.

- Go jump in a pool or a lake.

Summers used to be so intense in my childhood home in Jamshedpur that we used to pour buckets of water in our bedrooms in the evening. The old English bungalow that my family lived in had bedrooms that were slightly lower than the rest of the rooms, specially the storage-room. So, we poured water, and allowed the ceiling fans as well as the air-coolers to help evaporate and turn the rooms cool.