Extraordinary

Did you know there’s a guy in Thailand whose hands can resist boiling hot oil? And another man, also in Thailand, who can endure extreme cold without a single shiver?

I was just watching a show called ‘Extraordinary Humans’ on Insight TV, a channel I didn’t know we had until we started zapping, after my girlfriend and I watched a B-action movie.

The show is exactly what the title suggests: it features people around the world with extraordinary abilities, seemingly superhuman even.

We see a man who can squirt water (and milk, and coffee, and other liquids) from his eye and a Shaolin monk whose throat can’t get pierced by a metal spear.

But I’m mostly fascinated by the men who can endure extreme heat and extreme cold.

My hands are pretty heat resistant — they can withstand a hot cup of tea — and I take a cold shower everyday, but my body is nothing compared to these guys.

One man sells fried chicken on the streets of Chiang Mai, and can put his hand into the 300 degree oil to take out the chicken, without feeling any pain or getting burned. The other can sit in an ice bath of just a few degrees above zero for over a full hour as if it’s nothing.

It turns out these men’s bodies are literally different from mine. The chicken fryer has a very high tolerance of extreme temperatures. And where normal people get hypothermia, the ice man’s blood just keeps pumping through his body.

Watching them made me feel so ordinary.

Until I went to the loo and smelled the asparagus we ate for dinner tonight. I know my girlfriend can’t smell it, but I can. My nose has that unique ability.

I guess we are all extraordinary humans in our own way.