its pleasant here in london. its cool in my flat, so i dont feel this heat that they say we are having. and if i wanted to cool off, i can go to the library which is airconditioned. and of course the supermarkets are airconditioned too.

london 9.06pm 24C highest 28C sunny sunset 9.05pm monday 2019

as usual, they are giving out warnings to the old. i guess they will have to, because there will bound to be some old people who will take this as a good reason to die, and get off this life. i am thinking everyone wants to prolong life , and not want people to die, there is this assumed desire to prolong life ,that is what is drilled into us;  yet i know a long life with a mind that is going gaga is not a good life to live. but i shall not dwell on it for now as it is too depressing. 

so we are having a lovely summer. we should savour it to the full and wallow in it. who knows, this year it might last all summer. haha. but i am going to confess that i dont mind if it does not last. i think i must be the only one who likes a cool summer, even a rainy one… much better than a 37C one, as they threaten us with this coming thursday.

this film, the world’s end, i am watching now is really hilarious. a bunch of old guys coming together to savour old times by going on a pub crawl in their home town. and meeting a bunch of aliens who look like young kids with blue blood. the whole town is taken over by these aliens.

well perhaps that is the human condition, we just dont like to have nothing happening… so even a nice hot summer is not enough. we want more. and more things happening. and you can bet there will be someone who will take it on themselves to make things happen. 

this was what i had yesterday, cooked by simon. food will always be a joy of life.

thank goodness for aldi, the budget supermarket; they have salads and fruits going very cheap, all about 50p. so i was able to stock up to make salads. cabbage , carrots (and i should have bought the onions too, but i did not realise that they would be nice in a coleslaw. it is really easy to make , all you need is mayonnaise.

london 6.31pm 30.2C sunny/cloudy wednesday 2018

and iceburg lettuce , tomatoes, cucumber all go to make veggie salad with dressing. it is very easy to make home made dressing. no need even to slavishly follow the recipes the cookbooks tell you. after all, you can make it with more or less vinegar, all up to your taste. i like it more actually. this warm weather makes it perfect to eat salads, and coleslaw.

in fact you can warm up some parts of the salads, no rule that it must all be cold is there? and no rule that says u cannot have meat in it. and u can have cold meats or warm meats. it all adds to the taste and gives it variety. in fact, i added melons in the salad. it adds a sweet taste to the mixture.

ah this heat is here to stay it seems. 

hollyhocks

london 2.07pm 30C sunny friday 2018

 

 

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does not feel that hot outside. i just came back from the library, and even though it says 30C now, i did not feel it was that hot. some days when it was below 30C you can feel it very badly, very sweaty, and the air has this oppressive feel to it, but today it was not so. perhaps the library was cool, and the bus was cool, and i was under the trees near the tate britain where the hollyhocks are. and traffic around here is very low.

in the past when i see people with curtains drawn, i used to think what pussies they are because it is never so hot that we want to keep out the sun warming the place up. but today i had to draw the curtains in my living room, to prevent the sun heating it up too much. so i have joined the ranks of the pussies who keep their curtains close. also, the bright sun coming in makes it really difficult to see my laptop screen.

i suppose we should all enjoy this heat, but i think too much of a good thing is not good. but whatever… life is what it is, and if it wants to make a heat wave over uk, so be it. 

32.1C sunny 4.58pm.

cannot quite believe my weather website saying it is 32.1C.added 9.16pm, it seems it hit 33C today

i was out just now, went to the asda just as an excuse to go out. it did not feel that hot. though there was a lot of glare from the sun reflecting off the walls of the buildings.

 

i got a pack of strawberries, asda was selling a lot of them,  but they were not very sweet.  those i bought were reduced from 98p to 69p for 300mg. the sales woman was just putting them out on display when i was there. that is why i decided to replace the one i got from the £1.09shelf for it. when i got back and ate them, they were still very good, not bruised or soft… i thought that by now they should have ripened a lot, but they were not sweet. there were lots of packs at unreduced price of £1.09p. they dont look bright red, so maybe not ripened fully yet.  added. 9.18pm. i saw an advert on tv just now saying they were £1.29p. so why the disparity with the actual price in the shop?

 i have thought there will be lots of summer fruits, like cherries, strawberries, raspberries, etc, glutting the market; but it is not so. or rather, only strawberries seem to be abundant. and if what i ate is typical, it is not sweet. i wonder why?

i have heard so much about english strawberries being small but sweet. but not the ones i ate today. perhaps it is not typical of the batch, or it might be too early to be picked. ah well, that is the thing about fruits. if you dont pick them early, they get too ripe when they arrive at the shops and they go all soft and blotchy and look too ugly.

long ago we used to go to the farms to pick strawberries, and i would pick and eat them… i think you are not supposed to do that. you are supposed to pick them and then have them weighed and you then buy them. but that time, i was new to uk, and so i thought that was the whole idea of it, wasn’t it? pay to go into the farm and eat as much as u like…now i realise it was not supposed to be like that, and i was glad i was not caught out and be scolded for it. haha. but perhaps in those days, things were cheaper, and what we paid to go in, paid for whatever we could eat as well. there were maize plants as well, and i remember the fresh corn eaten off the cob was so sweet. before that, i have never eaten fresh corn, having only eaten them when they are cooked. i never knew u can eat them raw.

i have fond memories of the fruit gluts that we can get in malaysia when the time for it comes round. like for eg, the durian glut, oh how we can gorge , an orgy of gorging on the fruit. or when it is rambutan season, or duku, langsat. and in times of old, mangosteens. the latter is no more now, gone are those happy days when mangosteens are plentiful. it is a sad fact, that only when it is over, and you look back on it, do u appreciate how good it was. during the time when it was abundant, i never realise how good it was, nor that it will be gone in future. i wonder what are the things now that we take for granted, which are abundantly available, will become so scarce that we wont be able to enjoy in future. 

and i noticed the £1 offer for the 1kg lancashire farm yogurt is now over, and they are selling for £1.40 now. well, all good things must come to an end i suppose. 

added. 9.36pm. you see what i mean when i say good things come to an end. i just got an email from talk talk, telling me that the free sim for my mobile phone where i got free calls will end 8 sept. if i still want it it will cost me £3 a month. unlike now when it is free to me. but i dont think i want to pay for it. even though they said they will give me 4G. it is 3G now. frankly i have no idea how much better it will be , as i dont know what the 4G means. but i dont make a lot of calls even now even thought it is free. i hardly use up the 200 mins i get free each month.  so no point i think.

i stick with talktalk because of the free broadband included in the package, and it is the cheapest package around at £20 a month. i am happy with that because the broadband allows me to access catch up tv, and hd and the free tv programs in hd. that is good enough for me, not forgetting it allows me to be online all the time on my laptop. its got to the stage now that i cannot do without broadband. it has become essential. i can remember in the past i would be saying broadband is not important and i can live without it. not anymore , i am hooked .

haha. i will miss the free calls on the phone, but they are not essential.

thoughts on a warm day

london 5.36am 18C sunny but clouds, thursday 2018

yesterday i was hoping for rain, because it was forecast, but it never did get any and i was hanging out in chelsea,(for my circuit training) and westminster. it was cooler, and cloudy but no rain. this morning i see an article that says wimbledon tennis was interrupted by rain. it never ceased to amaze me that the rain in london is so selective. i would have welcomed rain yesterday, but then that is life, when u want rain it never comes, and it will fall on areas where it is not welcomed. nevertheless, yesterday was very pleasant because it was cooler.

also, in the same article, they were talking of flying ants. none of that where i live so i am not aware of this invasion.  so it looks like that is selective invasion happening again in london.

i think they are termites, because they go through a life cycle where they fly to mate. in malaysia we get to see it, they pair up and fall to the ground, where they shed their wings and the pair would scuttle off into the undergrowth, or across the living room floor, to wherever they go to enjoy married bliss. haha. and produce lots of babies. during that time, we will get to walk about with flying insects getting into our eyes, and then seeing their wings littering the ground. they dont bite, thank goodness. but it is interesting that a tropical phenomenon like flying ants, should come to london.

and i have heard of people saying they have mosquitos biting them. how odd, dont you think? to see mosquitos in london. i know it happens, because i saw mosquito larvae breeding in stagnant water in a garden in tooting broadway, in the garden of a house where a charity used to cook food for HIV people.  i was one of those who distributes the food to them. that system of bringing food to them in their homes has been replaced by another system, where they have to go to a place to eat communally with others, and so at a stroke they got rid of volunteers like us as we are not needed anymore. it was not efficient, using a lot of cars to drive to everyone’s home to give them one meal each time. so it was not surprising that they changed their method of operation.

i can still remember that time when i saw the mosquito larvae rising up to breathe  and falling back into the depths , and wondering why i did not turn the containers upside down and get rid of the water trapped in them, and their larvae. i never thought of that. at that time, all i could think of was wishing i got oil to spread over the surface, like they do in malaysia , with kerosene.

i wonder if that practise is still used nowadays… you have a man with a kerosene tank on his back and he would operate a pump to spray it on vegetation and any place where stagnant water can collect. most especially on the bananas trees.  these men were quite a common sight when i was growing up.

pavement resurface

london 20.1C sunny friday 2016

23.8C sunny. 3.24pm

this must be the highest temperature we will be getting today. its very pleasant. i used to think 25C is ideal, but now this one is ok too. i am very glad to be living in london with such pleasant temperatures. i think the humidity must be low too. certainly i dont get sweaty. 

 

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a humdrum look at what happens on the streets. pavement resurfacing. it hints of the fact that in a city, such maintainance is ongoing, otherwise the infrastructure gets run down and shabby. it suggests the city is well managed, and prosperous. this pavement do not get much traffic. that is why it is the first time i seen it being replaced to such an extent. about midway along the length is the entrance to the little garden on the right. and that pavement there is more worn out. though not really by much. recently the road itself has been repaved.

 added 8.16pm 22.3C took another few pics of that pavement. to show progress after 1day.

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view at both ends taken today. 1 day after the two pics above

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. 

hooray, more rain forecast.

london wednesday 2016 17.6C rain earlier, now gone and brightening.

seems there was a huge downpour yesterday causing flooding in some areas. 

added. 10.6.16. one of the pictures in that link showed a guy who drove into the flood water and sank, and you might have wondered as i have done why did he do it… but this clip shows he was just being impatient and overtook all the other cars who were not going in,  he paid for his impatience, the silly git.

over where i am it  happened in a short time, and i missed seeing it. though simon said it was real fierce when it happened. it was over quite quickly where i am.

there was no sound in my flat , of wind or rain hitting the ground, to alert me to it. it really is a cocoon of calm inside the flat… unlike in malaysia when there is a thunderstorm, no one can sleep through it. lightning and thunder and the furious beat on rain on the zinc roof will wake anyone up. but here all is calm. 

now the forecast is more rain. so that is good, i am thinking. rubbing my hands with glee. no hay fever , hooray.

 

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mews houses. it means that those big houses u see fronting the streets dont have gardens. it being taken over by these mews houses. used to be garages i think with accommodation above for the staff.

hot summer

london 1.57pm 24.4C cloudy but bright. tuesday 2016

this weather reminds me of malaysia, though not so humid , it being only about 50% . but i have to be careful that nostalgia is not biasing my memories…i doubt this weather now is anything like malaysia. malaysia will be much hotter. 

it gives  me some idea of what 25C is like. it is going on the top end of pleasantness… any higher and i think it will tip over into unpleasant… that is because today is cloudy and the sun is not out in its full force.  and it is forecast to rain a lot about now. 

but also reminds me it is nothing compared to the searing heat and humidity of malaysia when the day can be  32C and 80% humid. even the torrential downpours dont seem to make it cooler.  i have forgotten about that heat and cannot imagine it now.

i was at the library and they have anthony burgess malayan trilogy , a series of books he wrote set in malaya during 1955-57. i read a bit of it while at the library, but did not borrow it. those stories are so old now… he does sprinkle the story with malay words… kedai , kiri (which he use meaning toting up the bill on his shop account.) it is the story of a english man  working in the civil service in what was then malaya just before the country got independance, and all the characters he lived with during those days described from a british point of view;  at least that was my impression. i did not read it all… somerset maugham did a similar thing too, with his malayan stories… a lot of drinking and drunkeness i recall.

no mention of the lovely foods that abound in malaysia… unlike nowadays when it is all that people talk about now whenever u read blogs in that region. now that ramadan has started, there will be huge range of foods in the evening for sale.

it is a paradox really that at a time of fasting… is really the signal for such a vast array of foods to come out around now, foods that are not prepared or on sale any other time. and for feasting to occur in the evening. it does not only happen in malaysia, it happens in saudi arabia and that middle east region too… and for all i know, in pakistan too. i wonder whether in the edgeware road, it is all dead in the day time but come bursting to life when the sunsets… daylight is from 4.44am to 9.14pm. such long hours to be fasting, dont u think? 

 

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london near hyde park corner, that plot of green with wellington arch in it.

peaches

london 7.10am wednesday 2015 17.1C sunny

i have eaten ripe peaches last week, bought from aldi, 50p pack (of 5) and they were so delicious that i went back yesterday to buy some more . this time they were larger and so 4 to a pack. i have forgotten how delicious peaches can be. though u have to wait till they ripen. when the flesh falls off the stone seed that is the time to eat them. peaches have such a strange looking skin. the label says they are ‘sweet love’ from spain, white flesh.

here is a link to 10 strange and rare peaches.

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