Hydration woes

on the surface level search for a perfectly adequate water bottle

In my life, I (should hope that I) have learned many things. One of those things is that God does not want me to drink cold water.

Do you know what a Hydro Flask is? It is a high quality and in Pakistan, fairly (unnecessarily) pricey vacuum flask. All my friends seemed to have one. I didn’t, and therefore felt on some level like a second class citizen, and it wasn’t even that readily available here until somewhat recently. So I did as most Pakistanis must do - I found alternatives.

I’m also kind of obsessed with water bottles - If I go to any department/grocery store I will inevitably be seen drifting almost involuntarily towards the water bottle section. Today there are a lot more options than there were just a few years ago, which is when I was in a self-inflicted desperate situation and needed a bottle that kept water cold. How much I actually needed this versus how much I thought I needed it is a question I must ask myself about all of the traps I fall into (many). But anyway. I found a bottle online. It wasn’t cheap but it wasn’t exorbitant. It even had a Hydro Flask type handle, and it was the perfect size and colour. I ordered it. It came. I felt cool for about a month, lugging this actually rather heavy bottle around, that didn’t fit in the bottle holder in my car and when it fell it made a very loud jarring sound, but at least it was pretty and looked a little like a Hydro Flask (sigh).

When the month was over, almost as if on warranty cue, the vacuum stopped working. I felt silly and ripped off. But how could I expect anything made in Pakistan that’s trying to be something it’s not to stay functional very long?

But of course I also kept using the bottle because it was pretty. A few months later I took it with me on a trip. Towards the end of that trip it fell off the edge of my bunk bed and the lid broke. That was that. I left it at the hostel.

After that I decided to be sensible and buy a cheaper bottle that also promised to keep water cold and for a while, it did. It also fit in my car’s bottle holder. But then it started to show signs of rust near the mouth, and stopped keeping water cold within the 3-4 month mark.

On my birthday this year, I was given the gift of, yes, you guessed it, an actual Hydro Flask. I was *actually* cool now. Joke’s on me is that it was winter, and I didn’t even need to drink cold water. For the first month, I was using it to drink normal, boring, room temperature water, which naturally felt like a waste, and at which point I wondered if I had indeed fallen into a trap, but at least this was a trap I didn’t pay for. Until the end of the month, when I was carrying too many things at once and I dropped the bottle, and the bottle cap broke. Turns out you can replace Hydro Flask bottle caps, an indication that they tend to (i.e are designed to) break if left in the hands of a clumsy social climber. When I went to replace it, I discovered that the lid cost as much as the knock-off bottle I had bought a year and a half earlier. I justified this to myself with the consolation that at least I didn’t buy the actual flask. I happily carried on with my life with my functioning, perfectly adequate water bottle.

My birthday was in January. It is now July. I go to work one day at 9 am, with cold water in my Hydro Flask, and while there I start to notice early signs of condensation. Generally not supposed to happen with good, functional vacuum flasks. I come home by 2 pm, with some rather room temperature water in my bottle. I think, huh. This is the one bottle in the entire world that is supposed to never stop working, no matter how much you drop it, judging by the dents on my friends’ bottles. I wonder if I kept the lid too loose. I go in the next day, mindful of giving it an extra tight squeeze shut. The condensation continues, the water is very soon no longer cold.

So yes, God does not want me to drink cold water. But they say that room temperature water is better for digestion.