A year ago, I was in Hong Kong. I had arrived in October, and caught the end of the island’s bad weather. (A typhoon alert, the first week. Heat and rain, in general.) But by mid-November, things were fine, and in January I actually recall running a space-heater at night a time or two in the HK Tiny Apartment.

Thing about HK, though, was … that I knew I would be leaving at the end of January. After four months. So I would never have to face the brutal reality of a Hong Kong summer.

Now, I am in Abu Dhabi, on the Gulf, and I anticipate (inshallah) that I will be here for what is an even more brutal summer than Hong Kong can manage.

So, meantime …

I have to appreciate things the way they are now.

Night has just fallen. It is 70 degrees Fahrenheit at the moment, according to weather.com

Can’t beat that. I’ve always thought the optimum temperature for humans is between 65-75, and that’s what it is, day in and day out here in December,  January and Februay. And for stretches in November and March, too.

The 10-day forecast here is for highs ranging from 76 to 80, which is a little warm for me, but not life-changing. Not lethal. Not “hide-from-the-sun” dangerous.

I can exercise outside. I can walk home from the office. I could walk to the office, if I had a change of clothes.

The average lows are in the middle/high 50s. So it isn’t really cold here. Nothing you can’t combat with a sweatshirt or a sweater.

So, yes, basically, it’s almost ideal, right now. Not much chance of rain, generally sunny, almost always in the 70s … and it’s grand. A person can see exactly why Europeans might come here (or more likely to Dubai, up the coast) for a week or two in the depth of the Euro winter.

However, the bad times are coming. And the bad times are half the year.

Check this chart of average highs/lows in Abu Dhabi, broken out by month. It’s the second chart on this link, lower down on the page.

Tell me that stretch from May right through October doesn’t look … oh, scary. Five consecutive months of average highs of 100 and above, a sixth month clocking in at 97 (and a seventh at 91, but we’ll let that slide) … and two months with average highs of 108 degrees.

And this, ladies and gentlemen is most definitely not a “dry heat” of the sort Palm Springs can claim. We are within a mile of various inlets of the Gulf. So it is a wet, sapping, debilitating, potentially killing kind of heat. It drives people inside (aside from the poor guys working on construction projects) and keeps them there for half the year, and they turn into nocturnal creatures, hiding from the pitiless sun.

To stand in it for 10 minutes is to feel punished. To be in the August sun more than that is to risk a health crisis.

It’s when I look at charts like that … that I try to remind myself to notice and appreciate how mild it is right now. In fact,  I think I will take a walk around Khalifa University tonight.

Just because I can. Not long from now, I won’t have that option.