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london 10.38am 12.4C sunny tuesday 2020

i had my porridge, which is my usual breakfast, and normally that would be enough for me, till lunch at about 4pm. porridge is very filling. that is why i dont take any notice of the breakfast menu that cook books will load you with. i suppose they have to provide you with a large variety of menus. but i sometimes wonder how true it is that people want variety. i have porridge every breakfast and it does not vary and i dont get bored with it. in fact, i like that i dont have to think about what to have for breakfast. 

now and then, i like to have fried eggs and baked beans and fried tomatoes. and have fried bacon, or sausages if there are any in the fridge.today i make do without the bacon and sausages. and it is quite nice. 

it brings to mind that it is not necessary to have variety in meals. all the cookbooks say people want variety and so they give us lots of menus for all the different meals but my experience with myself is that i like eating the same things everyday, and never seem to get fed up of them.

so i cook a number of my favourites and rotate them, and every time it comes round i find i enjoy it anew. i wonder what is it… this forgetting what something tastes of, so that when i eat it again, i liken it anew, like it is a new discovery. i wonder if others also feel the same way too.

the sun is streaming into my living room now so i can pretend i am in the south of france, enjoying my breakfast in the sultry heat of a hot summer’s day overlooking the med sea.

i have found a website that families have joined to show their family life on live webcam, and i like seeing this one, which shows the view outside of the beach front of a italian town, loano. 

a hot day in london-relatively speaking

london 1.23pm 26C sunny saturday 2019 virgin lounge haymarket.

today is a hot day , relatively speaking. it might turn out to be the hottest day of the year so far. well, we are in summer now, seeing that 1 june is the start of summer. its all very nice, though i am not one of those who look forward to a hot day. that is why i am here now, indoors in airconditioned comfort in the virgin lounge, rather than outside enjoying this so called hot weather.

there are people in the uk who dont like cold and want hottest days like these  but i have been living in malaysia, where i was born, and i know hot days are not pleasant at all. i used to like them when i first came to london years ago, as i was not used to the cold, but now i have acclimatised so well, that i dread those hot days in malaysia. i sometimes wonder why those who are born here, have not acclimatised themselves to like the cold weather. after all, i have done so, and got to like the cold weather here. there is a caveat, i noticed i like the weather in london, and generally south england. i have seen what it is in scotland and the north, and i am sure i wont like that. my advise to those who feel the cold, come down south to retire instead of going abroad. 

perhaps it is not so much the cold but the lack of sunshine. many have convinced themselves that they are depressed because they dont see the sun often enough living here. they might come to realise when they do go off to live in spain, or some other place with sunshine that their depression follows them there and it is not the lack of sunshine that is the cause but something else altogether. 

this is quite pretty, growing in the courtyard , but i dont know what it is called. added. i googled the image, and it is called clementis vyvyan pennell

 

where have the sunshine gone over france?

london 12.23pm 5.6C rain saturday 2018 virgin lounge

i have a chance to see the guardian since it took on tabloid form. they have a copy in the virgin lounge. and i read an article in there today  saying north west europe has got the darkest december since records began.

i recently had a comment from francesays asking in a comment on my blogpost where is winter hiding. and it seems this confirms her impression. but as to why, nobody knows…lille in france got 2hrs 42mins of sunshine in the first half of jan.usually 61.4hrs average for jan. so they lost 30hrs for the first half of jan. south france like bordeaux and marseille got 10.3hrs and 26.9hrs respectively for the first half of jan. compared to monthly averages of 96 and 92.5. average sunshine in london is 62hrs. 

but no mention of how much london got for the first half of jan. i think we may have got more than them. just these last 5 days i have woken to a bright sunshiny morning. today is raining though. but no one here think of london as sunny , so we hardly notice if there is no sunshine, but do notice if a morning is sunny. it comes as such a surprise. 

but but we should count ourselves lucky, moscow got only 6mins of sunshine in the whole of december. haha. i got a chance to compare the print size of the guardian with the times, which has been a tabloid for some time. they are about the same size really. both very small. but maybe it is just me. it is like a deaf person who complains that everyone is mumbling and speaking softly. haha. i am well aware i maybe turning into that person and everything is so small in print. hehe. ah well, we all go old really. the important thing is not to let it bother you. i dont mind if it is getting smaller. i can still read it with my glasses so that is ok. the hearing is the one that is more difficult to handle. people get a bit bored with you if u keep telling them to repeat themselves. so i dont, and i find i gradually dont talk very much either. now you know why old people dont talk very much. in their head they are most probably having a lively discussion with themselves but you will never hear of it. 

a lovely morning today

london 11.09am 12.7C ! sunny 2017 monday

such a lovely morning today. blue sky and sunshine. and such high temperature for feb. and it has not even peaked yet. 

Digital StillCamera

Digital StillCamera

Digital StillCamera

 it was so nice i could not resist dashing out and taking some pictures of the daffodils that have bloomed a few days previously. its very early this year. 

3.53pm 15.6C but cloudy. i read a expat who blogs from penang, and he was saying he is going to move to chiangmai, being rather disillusioned by penang as a place to spend his expat years. and someone wrote in a comment saying is it possible he is bored , because she says  she can use herself as a example.  she mentioned her situation , that she and her husband lives in penang and are finding it very difficult to fill their days to stop getting bored. this is the first time i read of an expat willing to acknowledge that they are bored with it. everyone up to this point have never acknowledged the elephant in the room. that being an expat can be very boring. it seems rather ungrateful somehow, that you come to live in a country that have all this sunshine, and culture and festivities and smiling faces everywhere to admit that you are bored with it all. i can understand why not many will want to admit it to themselves, nevermind telling others. it is not often acknowledged that small town life , and life in small countries or developing countries can be very boring. people are too busy working to live, just to survive , to bother to provide entertainment for people like the expats who got lots of time and money on their hands always looking out for novel things to do or see or experience. and flitting from one swiftly to another not wanting to linger longer to savour that experience, but to move on to get their fix of the next one.

it makes me wonder if that is the biggest thing that being an expat have to deal with. boredom. after the intial excitement and novelty of their new place, it is all too easy to get to the end of things to do and see without it repeating the cycle. 

here in london, there are lots of things going on. so i doubt one can get bored.

even though it is easy to get bored doing the same thing over and over again, but there is so much variety of entertainment here in london, you can skip along to the next attraction and can go through a big long cycle of things to do before u need to come back to the starting point. and who knows along the way u find things that u are always interested in and so can latch onto it to keep boredom at bay. and there are many one offs, events that happen once only, or come round once a year, that gives some light relief. often times two events clash, and you have to decide. we are spoilt for choice in london.

well just as an example of a once a year event, yesterday i went to the olympia cruise show. i got given to me free entry tickets for two by the daily mail who are sponsoring the show.

i have been on a cruise before, a gay one, leaving from fort lauderdale and going round the islands in the caribbean, and find i am not really into them. these are full of gay men, and you would think i should like them, but even so, i dont, so i doubt ordinary cruises that cater to straights will be any better. well, seeing it is free entry i just thought it might be amusing to go see what they have to offer. 

waiting for the bus back i got chatting to an indian lady who had just left the venue. she was carrying a churchill bag, it is a company that specialise in protected retirement living. she said she was given it ,its quite a nice bag, and not really looking to join one. she told me she had been to quite a lot of cruises, mostly round the arabian coast. as she has the time now having retired.  i guess these cruises appeal to old people who have time on their hands and who like to have things organised and accommodation and food taken care of. i can see how that would appeal to many of them.

 

 

murder

london

We are all horrified at what happen in paris, and yet, we seem to revel in murder mysteries too.

later today at 9pm is the start of a new series of ‘death in paradise‘ murders. From the synopsis it seems it is the death of someone in a seance, in a locked room and everyone was holding hands, so who did it? my guess would be either of the two on each side of the victim who are holding the hands of the victim. it would be interesting to see how it is solved. we can see why we like these kinds of exercise. the gore is much reduced, there is hardly any blood which in real life would make the murder scene really horrific.

why do we like these kinds of things i wonder??? even me, who dont really like to read detective murder mysteries in novels, but i find this tv program quite fascinating, especially because it is set in the caribbean and we get all this sunshine when our real world now is winter.

i wonder if others living in the tropics like it as much because to them the sunshine is not such a draw.

i know for sure i wont be able to guess who did it so the revelation is doubly enjoyable because it would come as a surprise to me. 

a lovely day

london monday 2014

Many will be working today and some may be looking out at the fine weather and wishing they are out there. imagining themselves sitting in the sun and enjoying it. whereas here i am, all the time in the world and i am not sitting out in the grass bathing in the sun. hmm. why? i ask myself too, and wonder am i missing something?

i walk about in the sun, chosing to walk on the sunny side of the street, but i have noticed that i do so when it is in the early morning, as i walk to the library at about 9.30am. but later in the day, i find myself gravitating towards the shadowed side of the road.

I have to make a conscious effort to keep to the sunny side.

this makes me realise that just because a bit of something is good, a lot of it need not be better. well, i know that allready, so i should correct myself and say it reminds me rather than make me realise … 

and that is something that the world do not realise. that you hear of something that the world values, in this case the leisure time to sit out in the sun… and you put a high price on it. because so many work and can never do it. and you hear of these people spending a huge amount of money taking the plane to fly to places with the sun, and spending a fortune. and you dont appreciate that u allready have got all this … you can sit in the sun all day, and it is free… but u dont appreciate it. you think it is not worthwhile… because u have not spend thousands of £s to get it. the world do not value something that it can get free, but put a big price to it and they all want it… fight for it even. and there is a twist to this… you begin to feel u should value it, but then realise that it is not really that valuable, the sun is not all that great to sit in it… especially if there is a lot of it and it is very strong, and can burn you. so now u not only can pay a lot of money to get it, but it is not really very good for you .

like chocolate.

I saw in my wordpress reader a quartz article showing a video of some african cocoa farmers given chocolate to eat as they have never tasted the finished product of their harvest. the author laments that he finds it a disgrace that they are unable to afford the chocolate, that they cannot afford to eat the fruits of the end product of their harvest.

i was minded that if u grow something to sell, it is not wise to eat the end product.

i was thinking of heroin producers , the poppy farmers may well be wise to keep clear of the end product of their opium harvest. you might say now, now, that is taking analogy too far, but generally it is wise that producers dont get to be addicted to their products…  or there will be none left to sell.    

the interesting thing about the whole video is this… instead of saying how delicious the chocolate is, the first thing they all say when they taste it, is that it is so sweet. i think they got it right. it is sweet, you never can taste the cocoa in chocolate, because it is so sweet. u can taste cocoa in a drink, but that is only if u make it yourself and not add suger… otherwise a normal shop bought chocolate drink is very sweet and it kills any taste of chocolate. u can never get the taste of chocolate. what  u will like is the taste of sweet. give someone who says they like chocolate a cocoa drink without suger, and i can guarantee that they wont like it.

I have tasted cocoa without suger, i make it myself from cocoa powder, and believe me it is an acquired taste. it is slightly bitter. i enjoy it, as i feel i am getting the real taste of cocoa, but i bet not many will like it.

it is the same with coffee. a real coffee drinker will drink it neat, no suger, and as an espresso. any others who drink it with suger are simply drinking coffee for the suger in it. maybe u will say hang on, that is being rather harsh… harsh but true.

I have a feeling that those farmers are not so deprived after all, at least as far as not tasting cocoa is concerned. they should quietly thank the stars that the west is so brainwashed to value cocoa so much in their sugered drink, that they are willing to pay for the cocoa. And quietly thank the stars that they  have a product that finds ready buyers from the west.

 it seems to be  real easy to grow the fruit, as once the tree is mature it does not seem to take much looking after, and only need to be harvested once a year. they should use the rest of the time to find other work, or enterprises. or seek work elsewhere. then come back once a year at harvest time to get the fruit. and take it as a nice supplement and easy way to make some money. and if they have other sources of income, they wont be so desperate to sell the fruit too any middle man , and can hold out for a higher price.

so that if there is a low rainfall and less fruit, they can hold out for a higher price. and so poor harvest  wont be so devastating to them. there was talk of people getting rid of the cocoa trees and planting rubber, but if i were a cocoa farmer i will hold on, because there will be a shortage of cocoa if they all change to rubber and i should be able to sell my cocoa at a huge price. 

it is the desperate people who cannot hold out for a higher price for their cocoa that is spoiling the market for every cocoa farmer. that is what happens when u are poor, and have no other source of income. that is why low paid jobs are low paid, because there  are too many desperate people who want the job even though it is low paid. if enough people dont apply for these low paid jobs they will have to raise the wage. that is why all those who are waiters or macdonalds servers or lowly paid staff, they are in a market where too many people are willing to work , even though the wages are too low to make a living. those jobs are not a good jobs to seek work in. they are unskilled jobs. which is why it is generally not a good thing to seek work in those. it is better to find some skills and upgrade the kind of jobs you can get. jobs that not many can do, and so u can get higher pay for it.

i am thinking of nurses working for temp agencies… they can get a lot of money for each shift as they are skilled and in demand and there is a shortage. any locum work in jobs that demand is high will be good jobs to go for. look for any jobs where not many people want to do them, either because of unsocial hours or shortage of skills, or even jobs prone to wild swings of demand. if u are starting on the road of working, look carefully at what is in demand and chose those rather than just go for the low skilled jobs that everyone is fighting over.