The Heat Is On

The thermostat in Korean heaven is set at the same temperature as in my personal hell, a fact that has uncomfortably come to light over the past two weeks as fall begins to lose its grip to winter.  I have copious amounts of evidence to prove my incompatibility with Korea's love for all spaces warm.  But before I get to my hard evidence let's first taxonomize the levels of inferno, kind of like a scale of wing sauce temperatures.

No Warm
This level is called No Warm because it's not cool, and it's also not warm:  it's nothing.  This temperature does not really exist because it usually fails to be noticed at all.  On a degree scale, it's probably close to 70 degrees, or whatever 'room temperature' implies.  You can leave cheese and butter out in No Warm without fear.  You can really do anything you want in no warm, and you can wear your most comfortable clothes in this temperature.  It is No Warm.

Warm
When you put a palm on someone's forehead checking for a fever, you're really checking for Warm.  You can't really say a forehead is ever hot, not in the sense that it would burn the person touching it.  A warm forehead probably isn't a good sign, but in most other cases Warm is a nice descriptor.  A warm personality.  A warm smile.  A warm relationship.  Aside from global warming and foreheads, warm almost always has a positive connotation. 

When I lived in Nepal I often waited till mid-afternoon to take a shower, once the water in the rooftop tank had a bit of time to warm.  A 7am shower was too cold, and sometimes ended with my hair freezing into mini icicles. 

Goldilocks liked her porridge warm for a reason.  Because warm doesn't burn your mouth or give you brain freeze.

Grandpa Warm

There is warm, then there is Grandpa Warm, which is the temperature that my Grandpa Guilfoyle liked to keep his room over at the assisted-living facility where he lived. The only way to describe Grandpa Warm is to ask you to imagine being wrapped in an electric sleeping blanket, but this sleeping blanket is no ordinary blanket; it's made of air.  So it's all around you, and it has no zipper.  Grandpa Warm is great if you, for example, had been out walking on a cold day, in Russia, or you had just gone skiing, and the chairlift had suspended you in midair for an entire sunless morning.  Grandpa Warm can resuscitate any limbs in danger of frostbite.  In summary, though Grandpa Warm greets you with a hug you might get from a longtime friend, it doesn't stop hugging you and only reluctantly lets you go.

Korean Warm 
Korean Warm can only be understood through an anecdote. Outside it's an overcast day and the temperature is in the mid-fifties, right on the border between Cool and No Warm. I could sleep outdoors in this weather. I could play or watch almost any sport at this temperature; it's dry and comfortable.  Nara and I are boarding a bus bound for the east coast of Korea.  We've walked up a few flights of stairs from the subway platform, and we're carrying a few bags, not heavy ones but sizable enough that you wouldn't want to lug them around a city as big as Seoul.   I'm wearing jeans and a fleece jacket with a t-shirt underneath, but once I'm on the bus I know I've stepped into Grandpa Warm.  The fleece is too much, and it has to come off.  At first I think this to be the result of carrying bags around and walking up a few flights of stairs, but even after jettisoning the fleece the warmth persists, pushing the outer reaches of Grandpa Warm. 

In the five minutes we sit and wait for the bus to depart, passengers fill up the empty seats.  Each new passenger brings another degree of human warmth onto the bus; the windows begin to steam.  Even when the full lengths of the windows are saturated with steam, no one takes their jacket off, and I notice a few women who are still wearing scarves or winter hats.  Meanwhile, the anaconda of Grandpa Warm is tightening its grip around me.  The bus roars into motion, and we're off.

Thirty minutes into the ride and I have already complained to Nara seven times about the heat.  She sympathized with the first few complaints but now she's getting annoyed.  "You should understand Koreans," she says, "They like warm places."  I threaten to take my shirt off if the bus driver doesn't turn down the heat.  I press against the window, looking for a latch, some portal to the cool world beyond the window. We are riding in a sauna on wheels, and someone just keeps pouring water onto the hot rocks in the bus's engine.

But this is not yet Korean Warm.

Engulfed in hot human steam, I make an unexpected discovery.  Just as I'm about to register my eighth heat-related complaint with the only person who will listen to me, I reach my hand up to the vents and realize that there is, in fact, no air coming out; the heat was not even on.  Minutes later, the vents rattle to life.  A strong blast of furnace-grade air washes over me, over all, and I can see the Koreans bathing in it as I burn.  This must be it, I think, this must be what they call Korean Warm:  I have cast layers aside, absorbed the oppression of Grandpa Warm, and pressed my face up against a fogged window.  There is no means of escape.  But when the bus reaches our destination and we make our into the Sol Beach resort -- yes, quite fittingly our hotel was named Sol as in Sun, as in Hotter Than The Sun Hotel -- I realize that while on the bus we were only being driven to the gas chamber.  We had yet to experience Korean Warm.

But when we enter room 412 at Sol Beach Resort, only then do I know what Korean Warm is.  It is quite simply this:  walking up to a thermostat in a hotel room and seeing that it has been set to 30 degrees celsius.  This is, and I had to look it up, 86 degrees fahrenheit.  This is the temperature that they want you to feel when you first walk into the room, the temperature that is supposed to make you go 'ahhh.'  And I have no doubt that for 95% of the clientele, 86 degrees is heavenly.  But for me, 86 degrees should be reserved for the beach in July, or the ballpark in August, not for constant room temperature when it's 60 degrees outside. 

The definition of Korean Warm also comes with a qualifier; it only qualifies as Korean Warm if there is no way to change the temperature; in other words you must be trapped.  The thermostat at the Hot Flames Hotel, of course, could not be altered, no matter how many times I pushed the down button. And I pushed it many, many times.  My only option, then, was to open the sliding door to the balcony to let gale force winds into the room; these winds, also appalled by the temperature in the room, tried to escape via the crack in the front door, creating a high-pitched whistling noise that I think must have been the sounds of tiny molecules of cool air dissipating in our room's inferno.

None of this should have been a big surprise to me.  I should've remember my Korean friend Jay, who once tried to bake me alive at a Days Inn near Niagara Falls, and who later had a Thermostat Battle Royale with Navin, our Nepali guest whose preferred temperature is somewhere between Cave and I-Can-See-My-Breath-Inside.  I should've known from living in Korea for more than two years.  So what was it?  Maybe in my four months back in the U.S. I had acclimitized too well; maybe I'd gotten used to spending time in rooms in which you're not worried about singeing your arm hairs just by leaning up against a wall.

Whatever the case, it's sad to know that even if I get into heaven I won't be able to see my Korean friends there; no, they'll be a few floors below me, kicking their feet up on a steamy bus or reclining atop a scalding floor of hot coals, all while wearing their snuggest wool jackets.