The simple hack to sleeping with aircon WITHOUT getting a sore throat
As an foreigner living in a new country, there are certain things that you have to adjust in your lifestyle to make your living as comfortable as possible. These adjustments change all sorts of different things about me. For instance, when I spell my name, Singaporeans get confused when I say 'E' with an Australian accent. I pronounce it like the 'ea' in sea, kind of long and drawn out. For some reason, it gets heard as an A, or they just get confused completely. Hence, now I say my 'E' as in the 'ee' in 'bees' - it's shorter and sharper. For some reason, it just makes more sense to them.
Other things get are expected to change. For instance, your clothing adapts to a new climate too. That's a pretty normal expectation. However, something that I did not ever think I would change because of moving to a new country would be the way I sleep.
You see, coming from Perth, I am used having my best sleeps in a relatively cool room. And that's normal, because during summer, the evening breeze cleans out the hot air, and in winter my bed has so many different rugs and covers over the sheets that it's the equivalent of sleeping under a good serving of lasagne - layered and hot.
Being in Singapore, the air is humid. It's muggy, and at night, this is no exception. Hence, I sleep with the air conditioner on. That's pretty normal. But what I also learned was normal was to wake up with a dry throat. I talked to some people about it, and they all complained, so I realised that it was probably something that couldn't be avoided.
It took me five months do try to do something different, as having a dry throat did not make me happy. So one day, I did something that I thought was so ridiculously simple that I was already convinced that it would not work. And I was 100% wrong.
I slept with my mouth closed.
I woke up the next day with my mouth closed. But my throat was fine. Granted, I had to train myself over the next few days to keep my mouth shut when sleeping, but now sleeping with my mouth open feels very awkward.
I was convinced that maybe this wasn't as obvious as I thought it should be when my boss in July complained about dry throats too. I told him about my sleeping hack, and he laughed. But then he said he hadn't thought of that and would give it a go. And it works.
So there - we change all sorts of things to adapt to lifestyles. And sometimes the simplest changes can be the most effective. I presume when I am living in China, there will be many changes to aspects of my life. And the best part is, I'm so excited to make those discoveries that I can't wait.
