peaches are stone fruits after all

As someone from a hot country that's regularly on fire, here's some tips:

WATER IS YOUR FRIEND! WATER! IS! YOUR! FRIEND! You can transfer SO much heat into this bad boy! You cannot cool down without water!

Wrists under the cold tap. Splash your face and the back of your neck. Fan yourself.

In some countries you can buy a little handeld fan with a water sprayer.

Damp tea towel around the neck. Stick an ice pack in there on hotter days.

Half fill a water bottle with water, stick in freezer. If you use a bottle with a straw, make sure it's lying on its side with the straw side up and out of the water. When frozen top up the rest of the way with tap water and off you go.

Desperate to cool off? Wet T-shirt. Sit in front of a fan. This will nuke it, just don't get hypothermia and don't fall asleep like this.

Cold showers are also your friend in summer. Some people get psyched up by these. Personally, I sleep like a baby, so I'm good to have them before bed. Just keep in mind that it takes a bit of time for the cool to circulate, so your body will tell you that you're colder than you actually are. I find that when I have cold showers I need to step out of the spray when I think I'm cold... I'll just wait, and thirty seconds later the temperature has evened out and I actually need to step under again. Rinse and repeat until you maintain coolness even after stepping out for a bit.

If you can't do cold showers, turn the cold shower on anyway and just stick your arms under. When they're cold, lift your arms up above your head. The sensation of cool blood draining into your body is fucking weird and kinda unpleasant but less unpleasant than being hot.

Feet in a tub of water with ice. Blood naturally flows to your extremities when hot, so take advantage of this. If you don't have a tub of ice water, sticking a wet rag on your feet in front of the fan works too, it's the less powerful version of the wet T-shirt.

Drinks lots of water but make sure that water has electrolytes as well. Stay in the shade.

Keep air circulating. Fans don't actually cool rooms down, they just help transfer heat from your body to the moisture on your skin or the air via evaporative cooling.

Block north facing windows early in the morning so the sun doesn't get in. If you're in the northern hemisphere, this is opposite for you. Keep in mind that if your home is brick, the bricks will still heat up and slowly release heat into your home even after the sun goes down so this will only do so much.

If it's hotter inside than outside, close all your windows but two, making sure they're on opposite sides of the house/unit you're in. Point a fan out of one window, making sure that the doors between the rooms with the open windows are all open. This will help create a mini pressure system in your home, pulling cooler air in and pushing the hotter air out via the fan. Bonus points if you can get that fan high up where the hot air rises; even within a single room the top is much hotter than the air by the floor. Adjust the amount of open windows based on how many fans you have, but generally you want more windows with fans open than windows without fans to keep the pressure correct.

Obviously, use your common sense for these. Not everything WILL work for you, just use the stuff that does and adjust what needs to be adjusted. Some of these will be impossible to use in the workplace but others you can still use. Others are best used at home. If humidity impacts your ability to use any of these, get a dehumidifier if that's an option, or use more ice instead of evaporation.

Use cool wet rags at pressure points - wrists, ankles, feet, etc

If you don't have AC, buy some refreezable bags like the type for sprains and rotate them- they are an absolute lifesaver

Watch your pets:

Your cat/dog is stupid. Don't fully trust them to be smart and go to a cooler area in the house when they're overheated. When we had the heat dome here, my cat desperately wanted to lie on the 40 Celsius tile indoors and give herself heatstroke. I would not let her but a lot of people.lost their pets here. They may not obviously exhibit signs until they are dangerously sick so just intervene if you think they're being dumb

I had repeatedly drag my cat into the one semi airconditioned room in the house cause she hated the sound of the AC unit.

Give them plenty of water to drink too.

-If you are fortunate to have a portable AC unit, give your unit a brief break every few hours. You do NOT want it to fail.

Air circulation from fans drying off sweat stops working after 35 Celsius and lower than that if you live in a humid area. It it's past that, just shut it off until it gets cooler outside than inside later in the day. Your local power grid is probably under a lot of pressure rn.

-If you don't have AC at home, libraries and malls are your friend and so are movie theatres. Even a brief break from the high heat can make you feel worlds better

-Close the door between each of your rooms in the morning and keep them closed- this helps trap hotter and cooler temperatures in different rooms

-Cover your windows- I taped tin foil to my windows before covering it with blinds. This was to trap hot air between the blinds and foil and also between the foil and window. I kept my top floor apartment 7 Celsius cooler than the outdide with this prep (with the exception of the one room that was air conditioned)

- Additionally, if you do decide to get a portable AC after all of this is over, get one rated for a much higher square footage than the room you intend to cool- my bedroom was 120 sq ft, the portable AC was rated for about 400 sqft. And it only brought the temp down to abaout 25C during the daytime due to the extreme temps it was dealing with