A Canadian TikToker has just dragged our entire country in a 30-second rant, but she’s honestly spitting facts. Alexandra (@alxelizabeth) told followers that living in a freezing sharehouse is the “worst part about living in Australia”, because somebody decided it’d be a great idea to skimp on insulation.
And look, she’s from Manitoba, which hit temperatures of -40°C to -55°C with windchill earlier this year. For comparison, the coldest temp Melbourne has ever experienced was -2.8°C, and that was a million years ago in 1869.
“People genuinely say to me, ‘Oh well, you’re Canadian, so you shouldn’t be able to feel the cold’. Well, I can confidently tell you that the coldest that I have ever been is [while] living in a Melbourne share house in the middle of July and lying in my own bed trying to fall asleep,” she said.
“Being able to see my own breath, while only being able to warm myself with a tiny space heater and an electric blanket. I don’t know why everyone in Australia was like, ‘Let’s not insulate our houses, let’s all put on a Kathmandu jacket and call it a day’.”
In the TikTok comments, she compared the difference between Manitoba and Melbourne, saying that Canadian winters are dry and crisp.
“Being cold inside is so depressing… I stand by that the houses in Melbourne were not built to keep out heat or cold. [They] just absorb it like a sponge,” she declared.
“It’s not that it doesn’t get that cold – it’s that the inside is colder than the outside.”
This is basically what it’s like living in a Melbourne share house. (Image: Getty)
Her TikTok has been viewed almost 300,000 times, and people have been commenting some zingers.
“Australia couldn’t decide to build house swarm for winter or cool for summer, so they chose to do neither,” one person wrote.
“Thank you for validating our coldness,” another added.
“The coldest part is the people here IMO. And some people even told me I wasn’t allowed to use a heater,” a third said.
“I can see the grass growing under my house through the gap in my floorboards. Aussie houses are wild,” another commented.
I think we can all agree that there’s something ~unique~ about paying a fuckton of money for the shittiest, mouldiest flat and somehow still being grateful for a roof above your head.
When I was flatting in uni, there was a hole in the window that our landlord kindly repaired for us by taping a plastic bag over the top… in the middle of winter. Somehow, the freeloading mice that infested our walls didn’t help insulate us from the cold.
I’m off to purchase yet another Oodie to somehow power through the chilly season. Good luck to all those in the mouldy trenches alongside me!
