you can be too hot but not in london

london 8.29am 14C cloudy monday 2020

it was very cool last night with a breeze. i only noticed it because i saw from a live website that i follow about a family in rome having to  sleep in their living room because the heat upstairs in their bedroom makes it too hot there. even in the supposedly cooler living room, they were suffering from the heat and unable to sleep.

it made me look up the temperature in rome, and i saw they are hitting highs of 31C,32C and even at 10pm when i looked at them it was 28C.

rome, and florence also , (and i looked at madrid too), they all are hitting very high temperatures now. highs are in the early 30s… i did not know that rome can get such high temperatures. and none of them seem to have electric fans . i remember when i was growing up in malaysia, we get such high temperatures too, but at least we have ceiling fans that we kept on all night so that it is at least bearable. this family did not even have a fan. they have a heat stove in the corner of the room, which suggests that it must be cold in winter. seems to me that they are getting the worst of both worlds, very cold in winter and very hot in summer. 

i remember looking out of my window then and noticing it is raining as well outside, and was very glad i live here in london. there was even a breeze , and it was coming into the flat. lovely.

but it make me think that perhaps my view of this is all different from most people who likes the heat, who either get brainwashed or are just ignorant, that unlike that saying, you can never be too rich or too thin, you can never be too hot does not hold true. 

found on another blog that these are bear’s breeches (acanthus)

its hot outside

london 1.27pm 30C sunny wednesday 2020

oh my, it is hot out there. i have just been back from a trip to the tesco in vauxhall. and cooking on the stove now is a curry chicken, a willow farm chicken from tesco, £2.43, flat rate price for any weight between 1kg and 1.5kg. so naturally i chose the heaviest one i could find which was 1.43kg. so effectively it was £1.67/kg instead of their labeled price of £1.87/kg.  it is a curious quirk of tesco, to sell their chicken like this instead of pricing each chicken individually by its weight.

i guess it saves a lot of trouble weighing each one and printing each label specially for each chicken. but for each customer, the difference can be either a saving or loss of up to 44p depanding on whether u chose a 1kg chicken, or the maximum 1.5kg. i suppose most people wont bother which chicken they pick up, as the savings is quite small. though it seems to me a 1kg chicken is really too small , not much meat there in proportion of flesh to  the bones. and after cooking, the chicken always shrink, so that u get even less meat . i must say i was craving curry chicken today so this chicken is very welcomed. i think 1.5kg is the best weight to buy.

i also got a shoulder pork,£5.52 for 1.84kg, (it has been reduced from £3.85/kg to £3/kg even though its expiry date is 1july), and i cut it up into 5 portions, put them inside  margarine tubs, and freeze them all. that should be like 10-15meals there. usually i would cook them in a stirfry with vegetables.  other times i would make soya sauce pork out of each tub portion. there are many ways of cooking it, either on its own, or in combination with other ingredients.

 

cinema and supermarkets will be cool at least

london 11.26pm 26.6C dry (highest today36.9C 3.54pm) thursday 2018

we shall see if this is the official highest temperature of the day.

i was in my flat so escaped the worst of it. with the curtains drawn, it can be quite cool in the flat. perhaps if i had been outside i would have felt it was like an oven. i went out at about 7.30pm when it had cooled down a bit. went to the tesco and found a yogurt selling for £1 for 1kg. it is a brand i have not heard of , henna, and it is a set yogurt. it is quite nice, and a nice change from the sloshy yogurts. nice to know there is a £1 1kg yogurt to buy when i feel like having a probiotic topup. the previous promotion, of that brand lancashire farm that i had been buying is now over and have reverted to the usual price of £1.40. 

i have been seeing this mission impossible film that is being shown on tv now… the 5th in the series. yesterday they showed the 4th. it does seem quite repetitive actually, car chases seem to take up quite a lot of these films to fill up the 3hrs which they run … i think it too long really.

all these mission impossible films we are being shown  now on tv are an advert for the latest film, that is released on 25july. they are supposed to whet your appetite for more of these, but i think it made me feel overfull, and satiated with the formula.

perhaps the heat outside will encourage more people to go to the cinema, for the cold air if nothing else. we might see a spike in cinema attendance. though it does encourage me to go into the supermarkets whenever i see one near me, just to cool off. 

added 27.7.18 friday 11.21am 29.7C sunny. looks like the official highest temperature yesterday was 35.1C. 

thunderstorms are so cooling

london 6.48pm 24.8C sunny public holiday monday 2018

its a holiday today, but the shops are all open, esp the supermarkets. nowadays they dont shut shop just because it is a bank holiday. very convenient for us, the public, but the staff will have to work so cannot have a lazy day like most office workers. in fact, bus drivers and tube staff have to work today too. i would have stayed in all day if not for this 10x nectar points offer by sainsburys which make me go out and buy things there today, as it is the last dayof the offer.

i spent £15 today at the sainsburys, just because it is 10x the nectar points . it is the highest i spent in one shop for groceries. i have spent this much or more when buying bags of rice, though not in sainsburys because they dont have reduced price of rice for some reason. asda and tescos will reduce their rice price but not sainsburys.

i bought frozen uncooked jumbo prawns, at £3.75 for a pack of 225mg, i bought 2packs. prawns are my only luxury , i am willing to splash out on them.

the weather is nice and hot today, so i suppose plenty of people will be buying food to cook for a garden barbeque party. it may be the only chance of one this year seeing we cannot guarantee a hot summer. in the past i used to have friends who would throw a garden barbeque party. but that is all in the past now. 

i did not go anywhere else today, apart from going to the sainsburys near me. in the past i would go to the museums or art galleries. it is the kind of day to spend looking at art or artefacts. and getting indoors would make me avoid the pollen outside. but i think i prefer to stay at home really. i can certainly avoid all pollen contact if i stay indoors at home.

interesting, i had a look at the weather now for london, and it seems there are thunderstorms. not in my area though. but it says thunderstorms ending at 9pm. actually, i looked outside and see dark storm clouds gathering so it does look like it will rain soon in my area. and it is 7.19pm. but in the weather charts it is only two blobs of stormy weather hovering above the map for london. the rest of the country is cloud free. i for one will welcome some rain, to take the heat off. oh good, the rain is pelting down now so that is lovely. its quite heavy too. and there is some hail too. a few pinging sounds as they hit my window. so nice to feel the cool air . its so heavy the gutters are overflowing with water. it did not last long though, it is 7.34pm and allready abating and blue sky coming out.

seems it will be the hottest day today

london 21.9C sunny 7.59am tuesday 2016

today is supposed to be the hottest day of the year. it certainly looks lovely out there now, blue cloudless sky bright in the east above the rooftops of the block opposite me. and on the opposite side, the rising sun brightening up the penthouses of the luxury flats and glinting off the windows and casting the glare right into my flat.

 yesterday i went out at 6pm, lots of trees round me, so walking under them i thought it is not hot at all…because i was under the trees and their shade, which reminds me of my childhood days walking under the rain trees that line the roads in malaysia, even in the middle of kuala lumpur, and being reminded that trees are perfect for being under when u have such strong sun as now.

 and it carried on being pleasant right over the bridge across the thames, until i hit vauxhall, and then the heat came. all that concrete absorbing the heat and reflecting it back.

 saw an article in this blog answering the question by a gay man in a relationship whether he should have an open relationship.

 the writer has come into contact with  a lot of gay couples to take their picture and have asked them about their relationship and got a good idea of how gay couples handle their long term relationships.

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too much sun now

london 12.07pm monday 2016 25.3C sunny

so sunny , sun streaming in through the windows making a glare that makes it difficult to see the tv screen images. so i had to draw the curtains on one of the windows. i know, it is awful that i had to do that. now we got sun i end up shutting it out. is that not perverse of us human beings or not! actually it makes the flat cooler too, without all that hot sun coming in to warm up the air inside. 

if i were god i would be grumbling at these ungrateful human beings and why i bother to create them in the first place… a waste of time… they call to me wanting something, and when i give it to them they spurn it and grumble away. its the same when i give them rain, they complain there is a drought and call for it, and when i give it to them in buckets, they complain too much and grumble away …

(i am a human being and i will ask of god  why god dont do moderation, haha. its like he is a petulant old git who says u want water, you can have it in buckets …. and flood us out of house and home. why cant he give us just the right amount… though come to think of it, the uk weather  comes close to perfection … a little bit of everything and never too much of anything. granted these few days we are going to have it hot, but hey, it is only for 3days and we get back to the normal 25C )

if i were god i will have to question my blueprint on human beings… unless of course i create them like this just to make life interesting. haha. i am sure god must be bored with just being by himself all perfect and wonderful.humans with all their perverse contradictions must be a huge relieve from the tedium of his existence.

ah well, it is nice to get this hot weather especially since i know it wont last. so enjoy it while i can. makes me glad i dont have to go to the mediterranean  for this weather, i cannot stand the plane travelling, the congestion at the airports, and the long tedious flights, and then to arrive to all that confusion of a foreign language i cannot understand so that simply buying something is a fraught and complicated affair.

 added. 12.40pm i was at the library earlier this morning and read it in the papers that there is huge disruption at heathrow because of delays with their new computer system… (it is a recurrant problem it seems when they put in a new system or upgrade the old one…it was installed earlier this year and this is the 4th time it failed) but i did not really realise what it can be like until i read this article about schofield, a tv presenter raving away on twitter when he missed his flight to the sun because of the delay in checking in. well, haha. haha. that is what happens when u follow the herd and travel around now, school holidays and summer crowds makes travelling at this time, even without the computer hitch a murder to do. with all his money why phillip schofield wants to join the herd, i wonder?. isn’t the whole thing about being rich is that u can travel outside the crowded herd periods? the wildebeest that is the school holiday crowd have to travel at this time. with all your money why join them in that mad rush to the sun now. unless of course phillip is just another person tied to his job and dictated to by his job requirements so not as free as he would like.

makes u think really. we might be more free than he is, for all his money. 

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5.27pm 30.2C that is what the london weather website says now. is it really? cant say i notice it because i am inside my flat with the curtain drawn and it is cool in here. i just woke up from a nap. though i can see bright lights coming in through the other window which has the curtains open. that window faces east actually but it is bright from the reflected sunlight coming from the brick facade of the block of flats opposite the courtyard. the other side of the flat, where the windows faces west are not very bright. this is because the sun is blocked by the flats opposite . come sunset the sun will be shining straight into the flat.

i shall most probably venture out at about 6pm, to the tesco where i want to buy some frozen chicken pieces. it is double tesco points today, an offer that is on over the weekend and that expires today. not that i take much heed of it, but i do have a craving for roast chicken of all things. funny that because roasting chicken in the oven will make more heat in the flat seeing that tomorrow they forecast it will be even hotter. … can we see high of 32C tomorrow!! that would be quite unheard of so i think a thunderstorm might happen tomorrow to dampen it all down. hoho. and it might be today is the highest temperature we shall get.

i know i should be out there soaking in the sun. if i have a weaker mind, i would have succumbed to that uneasy feeling that i am letting the chance get away , maybe the only chance in the year to get this sun on me with this high temperature; but i could not be bovvered. haha. 

think again if u want to be an expat; uk is still better than any other country. (just my opinion)

london 9.46pm friday 2015.

people here dont know they have it real cushy. they want to go off elsewhere to live, thinking it is a better life elsewhere and all they can see is to live in a place where the sun is out all year round in their new country, and think that is all they want. 

i got an email from john, who lives in poole, in reply to my query about a mutual friend who had moved to torrevieja to live. john tells me he has major surgery and need more to come, and also that he could not sell his house there, when he wanted to live in a condominium, having discovered it costs a lot to maintain a private swimming pool. that was 5yrs ago. i thought he had sold that house when he moved into a flat in a urbanisation… but it seems he could not and rent it instead and now the tenant for the house has left.

it reminded me that health is the biggest unknown factor to anyone thinking of being an expat. it is inevitable that health problems will surface as you go older. say what u like about the nhs, but at least u can get medical care if u live here.

he lives in spain, and we hear so much of how much better their health service is than the nhs. but if u cannot speak the lingo, much good it will do you. and if the uk votes to leave the EU? what then? i doubt u will get to use their health service free. not being able to speak the lingo is the biggest disadvantage to living abroad. even if u can get by it will still be a lack, as very few expats ever get to be  fluent in it. i think if u are fluent in it, i doubt we can call you an expat anymore. i would venture to say that fluency in the language, or lack of it, will be what defines you as an expat. 

added 10.14am, i got an email from john saying that house of keith’s is another house he got, not the one with the swimming pool, which he did sell. and john says there is no problem with language with the doctors, and it seems keith is getting very good medical care. those major operations he got may not be available if he had been in the nhs here … so maybe i am wrong, it is good to be there…so maybe it is good to be an expat there and leave the uk.  in the end, it really is up to the individual. u can only give your opinion which will be biased to yourself and not to the other person. it might turn out to be a good move, to live in spain, or it might turn out to be a disaster… i guess each person will have to find out for themselves.

i have changed my mind about advising people not to be an expat. all i mean is that i dont like to be an expat outside the uk. haha. in a way, i am an expat from malaysia, so who am i to say no to others who want to be expats elsewhere. 

did u got woken up by the electricial storm last night?

london

That was what simon asked me just now. he said he got up at about 5am to go to work, and suddenly there was sudden huge pouring of rain and bright lights and thunder that shook the windows of the flat and flooded the flat with light. and it was over in 2 or 3mins.

I slept through it all. If he had not told me that he saw it, i could scarcely believe it.

when i read of it here, showing photos of the lightning flashes over london, i thought it cannot be happening in my area and must be localised elsewhere in london.

Not the first time i thought that what they said happened did not happen where i live. But after hearing what simon said, i guess i shall have to change my views about these things and just accept that i tend to sleep through the most momentous happenings. 

there is a video that they were showing in that article of the path of the lightning storm, and from it i can see why it lasted only a few minutes as it was a fast moving broad front heading across  england from south to north with the front bringing in torrential rain and lightning and thunder and passing over very quickly.

But i slept through it all. Next morning i did see the road was wet, and i thought a gentle rain had fallen last night. haha.

today is hot, 31.8C at 2.43pm according to this chart i follow. But it was very pleasant in my flat as my flat seem to be cooler. I was indoors.

I can take these temperatures without going mad and rushing out and sitting in the sun just because it is hot. most people are starved for days like these and cannot get enough of it, but i know better. haha. being from a hot country i dont worship the sun so much and want to avoid it.

in winter I will join everyone and walk in the sun and avoid the shady parts, every chance i get. because then, the sun is warming and welcomed.

but not in temperatures like today. thank goodness it is forecast that it will come down as soon as tomorrow.

the nice thing is that i dont have hay fever. i guess the pollen from that particular plant that i suffer from has gone. i think it is from grass, and most of the grass is turning to hay now. good. 

I saw a tv program about our discarded clothes that we give to charity, thinking that they are all sold in charity shops here, but it seems 80% are packed and sent to ghana, and places like that in africa. where the locals fight each other to get it to sell on. and it seems it has destroyed the local traditional clothes industry of the region. now they all wear western style clothes rather than their traditonal clothes.

it seems the people in africa like british second hand clothes, because the size suits them, unlike american sizes which are too large . and i read here that americans put their old clothes into landfill. and recycle the clothes by breaking them down. 

it is something i have noticed happening all over the world, traditional clothes giving way to western style clothes; in malaysia we dont see anyone wearing the traditional clothes for day to day wear, they are worn only on special occasions like weddings, or funerals, or birthdays or new year days. 

a hot day in london

London
Its nice and warm now in London. There were a few blue bottle flies in the flat a few days ago. Now there are none to be seen. That is the good thing about London. We don’t get a lot of creepy crawlies. Now and then we get flies, but no ants, or cockroaches, or mosquitos… the latter is something I really am grateful for.

In Malaysia, we get mosquitos and it is really awful to get bitten by them, or to hear their whine near your ear in the dark when u are about to sleep and expecting to get bitten.

Those rackets that are electrified by batteries are something that I thought was a brilliant invention. U just wave them about your head and if there is a mosquito it will set it off crackling and zapping telling u that you got one of them. No need to catch them sitting on the walls and hitting them with a newspaper, or trying to clap them between your hands when they are flying about.

But I am glad I don’t need them , or mosquito coils or sprays here in London.

I was at the Trafalgar square yesterday, Sunday. It was a really hot day and first time I was able to walk around in sandals and shorts; and was surprised at the long lines of Italian students snaking their way all over the place and in Leicester square. One of them told me he was from naples.

Do Europeans organise school trips to bring students to London? The exchange rate must be very favourable for these students to do it for their parents to still be able to afford it.

added.20.7.13 read in a blog why there are so many of these italian students around. They come here for their summer camp staying with local families. 

I read in the papers that the top deck of the new buses with the open platform at the back which are used for the route 24 from Pimlico to hampstead heath are having very hot interiors in the upper deck, but I was on one yesterday, and it was fine. Quite cool, the temperature on the upper deck considering the back platform was open to the outside and allowing all the cold air to get out.

Added. 9.7.13 i saw a advert for bus assistants, who will be acting as conductors in these buses. maybe for now they are using drivers to alternate the roles, until they can fill it with these bus assistants. it is a cushy job, most probably the salary wont be as much. the best job in the buses is to be a driver, but it would suit people who are calm and collected under pressure as driving in london is a real hassle if u are impatient.

added.15.7.13 read today in this article about the advert for a passenger assistant. i dont recall the advert i read using the words customer-facing experience.  Maybe it did, and i am so used to this kind of double speak, that it is beginning to make a kind of sense and in fact may express what it want to say in a very effective way. it just goes to show george orwell has got it right that we can get used to double speak and prefer it to ordinary words.

I went into the waitrose recently opened on 2nd july beneath city hall in victoria st, hoping to get a free coffee. I saw they have reduced the prices for the sandwiches, 19p for a ham and cheese sandwich and even though I was not hungry I took one pack intending to buy it and eat with my coffee. When I went to get the coffee, the security guard told me it was not working, and then I saw a big sign over it saying it was out of order, being cleaned. Its rather soon to be cleaning it, but then maybe people were complaining of the coffee. When I drank it last time it was ok, but then I am no judge of good coffee.

Well if there was coffee, I would have bought the sandwich.As it is, I did not buy it.

Interesting that they would reduce the price of the sandwich to 19p. That is a low price.There were lots of people there buying things to eat. Do u think everyone knows that waitrose reduce its prices for these things at about 2pm on Sunday? It is news to me. I had the impression waitrose is an upmarket supermarket and those dont reduce their prices do they?

I think I may have confused them with marks and spencer because I read somewhere that M&S don’t do that, reduce their prices I mean.

But sandwiches are not really that healthy for you. Cheeses are not really that healthy for anyone. Really. Though of course, once in a while it is fine. Just as eating burgers are fine once in a while. But I was wondering with these prices it is no wonder people buy them, rather than vegetables.

Added.14.7.13 i re-read that last bit and realise i am being pedantic , saying this food or that food is not good for you. of course all foods are good for us, as it provides nutrition for our bodies. whether they are bad for you  depands on the amount you eat. any foods eaten in huge amounts at the exclusion of others (in other words, a balanced diet is what u need) will be bad for you. 

Murray finally won his first Wimbledon title. About time too, the poor chap had been thwarted in previous years by federer, but luckily for him, both nadel and federer got knocked out on the early stages by relative unknowns who were themselves gone so left the field clear for murray with only the previous holder to beat. I did not follow the matches. Just listened to the results as that was all I was interested in.
I suppose he will be in the queens birthday list next year for a knighthood. Haha.

i rediscovered the wheel.

London

I was watching a tv program last night, death in paradise, about murders in a Caribbean island. I watch it for the sunshine and coconut trees and tropical vegetation, it feels nice to see a place full of sun .

The plot is a old one, two men meeting as strangers and plotting to kill each other’s wives. There is a film of it, called strangers on a train.

But what I remember is one of the characters, a woman who said she went to a spa, supposedly it was a treat. And later they discovered she did not go there.

When asked why, she said it occurred to her how silly for her to go to a sauna in a hot climate. So instead she went to a bar to try to pick up men.
Of course a spa is not only a sauna, there are massages and aroma therapy and god knows what else. But I think most of us would equate a spa with a sauna, steam room, Jacuzzi, all having one thing in common. They are hot.

Later, it did occur to me that what she said is true. Why do tropical countries have saunas, and why do people go there, when just by going outside they will have a full fledge hot sauna, sweat and all for free.

Yet, every hot country I have been have saunas as businesses. They would have cold airconditioned rooms , so that u have the anomaly of frigidly cold rooms and hot saunas. Whilst the outside is hot and humid naturally.

I get the feeling there is something I don’t know, the knowing of which will explain why sauna businesses exist in such hot countries.

I can understand why there are gay saunas, because they are perfect places for gay guys to cruise and have sex.

But u cannot tell me that all those sauna businesses are covers for gay activities.

Oh hang on, straight saunas are covers for prostitution. Female prostitutes use them. Now I get it.

I guess all reading this will be shaking their heads in disbelief. What is with this guy, are there such innocents around still? He is giving adults a bad name. haha. Everyone knows saunas are euphemisms for sex parlours.

Like I said, I am the guy who discovers the wheel and runs around telling everyone of it!! To find that everyone knows it already.