On Sweat

I've never seen sweat like I've seen here.  Walking past the stadium at any time of day is an excuse to shudder and think longingly about a cold shower.  

Order a glass of ice water--a glass of ice with a capped bottle of water--and if for some reason you get distracted and don't pour, the ice will last about 8 minutes before condensing into enough sweat puddle to drown a gecko accompanied by gentle condensation billowing from the glass.  

Order a bottle of cold refreshment and you have about 4 minutes to get it entirely on ice before reaching just-over body temperature with a fleet of slug trails slithering across the table.  

And then there's teaching.  

Rather, on a day when the concrete quad is radiating heat well above 110 degrees, standing in front of a couple hundred eyeballs staring with mild disinterest (at best) while sweltering in a bare concrete room resounding with screams of unfortunately comprehensible disinterest (at best) without aircon or air circulation beyond the occasional stampede in or out of the class.

Within 5 minutes, the waistline of my cotton pants could wring out half a cup.  And I'm as sweaty as I am hairy (i.e., I shaved in February)--my coworker, teaching in similar conditions, looks like the tragic and unwitting business-casual entrant into a wet teeshirt contest.  

What really blows me away is that after accepting that I am the ever-chilled, ever-dry one, whose fingers crack in alpine summer, bleed in any winter, and never get about chilly, who can easily suck up an entire hodad bottle of lotion (and would likely break out in reaction to the perfumes and additives) in one go, and that was BEFORE losing all excess (or measurable) fat and muscle, I'm hot and clammy most of the time.  Hot and clammy enough to coat myself with special, cooling talcum powder before school, at lunch, before leaving school, and again after my cold shower.  

What's funny is that where Americans laugh about bluehairs as an accepted sort of social faux pas, here there are people with smears of powder on their faces and arms.  Covering up is beyond me: I've earned every single one of those suckers, and I'm not about to hide them; a coating of cooling powder is great.

What's bizarre is that most powders and almost all lotions have bleaching/whitening elements, many of which are more or less contrary to good health.  But locals don't buy or wear sunscreen, and the strongest available in hyper-priced farang stores is SPF 20.