just shopping for bargains

london 1pm 7C overcast thursday 2018

i see it is snowing in paris, it seems quite unusual, that it snows , and coming after the highest water level in the seine, parisiens are having an interesting life as the chinese would put it haha.  (it is 4C now in paris, with lows of -6C forecast for tomorrow morning,)

 i have a suspicion that france (even truer of northern france) is not that warm in winter, even though their summers are really warm.

those trying to escape our british winter cold might be better off going to live in london, (as the queen is doing, i read a report that she has come down to london recently from her winter stay up north where she had been there since christmas; or go and live in the  south coast of england instead of the continent.

used to be that people winter in the south of france. i wonder does Nice still have nice winter weather, or is it just that the english winter has become milder nowadays. i see it is 11C in Nice now, 2pm their time.

they have better weather than paris, Nice’s forecast weather is 12C/5C for the next few days, unlike paris where they will get 5C/-2C the next few days. with london forecast of 4C/1C i suppose u could say london is not doing any better, but it is nothing extreme. at least it is not freezing. haha. so Nice still have nice winter temperatures. i wonder whether there are any brits still doing the winter run to the south of france, or have they all gone to s.e.asia, india, or to spain. 

anyway life here in london is very pleasant. i was at the circuit training yesterday, 6 people , and new people too; so the attendance figure is holding up. and now when i come out , even after spending time in there afterwards enjoying a long hot shower, the sky is still bright, sunset being at 5pm now.

this morning i went to the asda in clapham junction to buy their egg noodles, it has gone down to 59p, when before i bought it for 65p a 250mg pack. so useful for a quick meal as it is made up of 4 bricks of noodles; each brick is about 50mg. 

 i found a reduced price 3kg pork shoulder joint  from £10.50 to £6. it expires today, that is why it is reduced. it is quite a good price. came to £2/kg, where the normal price is £3.50/kg. it has very little fat over it, which is the case when u buy a more expensive cut. (the cheaper cuts sell for £2.75/kg, but with it u get a lot of fat).so it is now chopped up and in my freezer, i filled 6 plastic takeaway containers with it. i find pork is such a versatile meat, it can be used in a lot of dishes and the variety of cooking it is enormous. 

the stir fried noodle dish i made. those greens are really delicious. in the past i did not like them, because i stir fried them from the beginning. now i steam them first and cooked them before i add them to my stir fry. and with oyster sauce they are heaven. 

added. 4.27pm 7.8C dry cloudy. this article came up in my wordpress reader and i realised it had fooled me too. it says the winter olympics hosted by south korea is in a town called pyeongchang, and people have been fooled to think it is pyongyang, which is in north korea. i had put it in my diary as pyongyang too, as in ‘pyongyang winter olympics start today’ and thought north korea had got it…like russia, which is communist and so i figured if russia can host the olympics it is not inconceivable that north korea could too. its only reading that article that it dawned on me that it is south korea that is hosting it. i think this hosting of the olympics is a bit of nonsense really. just a big waste of money by the host country who are wasting their people’s cash.

If PyeongChang wins, South Korea will become the second Asian country to play host to the Winter Games; Japan held them in 1972 and 1998. That would help South Korea market itself as an affordable winter sports destination for a potentially huge market in Asia, attracting Chinese, Singaporeans, Malaysians and others from hotter climates who have never seen snow, let alone skied. link

they want more tourists, but i am malaysian and i am not that interested in skiing, because we can never get to learn how to do it seeing our country has no snow. we like to see fresh snow, and play in it. but that is all. maybe put us in a sleigh ride over snow, that would be nice. but ski down a steep mountain side, with the danger of being buried in snow… no thanks. that is a bit of reality too far. 

a robin in winter

london 6.25pm 3.1C dark now. sunday 2017

i saw a robin today. i am glad the cold dont affect them. it had been snowing in london earlier, though by the time i woke up at about 8am it has stopped. all that remains of evidence is the sprinkling of white on the cars and the roof of the sheds. it seems to have snowed up north.

but i was right glad to see that robin. it is unusual to see it, because it was in the centre of london. or near enough. haha. it was near the waitrose in porchester road. with its red breast and all. looking very chirpy and ruffling its feathers to fluff them up and lifting its tail up and down to keep its balance. i wonder what it finds to eat at this time of year. googling it, i find it likes fruits and seeds and mealworms. which are the larvae of a beetle. how it finds them is a mystery i mean are there any mealworms even in this winter weather. but robins dont migrate away from england in winter. they hang around so they must find things to eat. 

i was too slow to get my camera out of my bag to take a photo of that robin i saw , so this google image will do. they are so cute, and really very small. 

this winter has been mild and dry

london 9.47am 7.8C sunny monday 2017

this latest report in the daily mail says this winter has been one of the mildest and driest. i noticed it was mild myself (though i did not notice it was drier than usual. i dont take much notice of the rain as i dont mind the rain and i like it to rain because it lifts the temperature up when it does.)  

and i recall i mentioned it was mild in passing in one of my posts recently. but i had thought it was just london. i am used to london being mild no matter what happens to the rest of the country. but if this report is right, it seems this winter was mild and dry for the rest of the uk as well. this winter is not only mild, but  is unusual for being so dry, as it seems it is more usual for it to be mild and wet. 

so the met office has been wrong (again) when it predicted this winter will be severe. this is the third year in succession that the winters has been mild. the met office should stop predicting long range weather as it is hopeless at it. i thought they said they wont do it anymore, but they recently installed a expensive new computer system, and thought they will chance it again. wrong again. back to the drawing board, fellas.

i really enjoy the winters here in london. and i do hope we get more mild winters so that it becomes the norm. but of course, i expect nature will bring in one severe winter , we are due for one.

who knows we might have a ferociously cold spring this year. snow in devon, anyone? it seems to me we are overdue for that one too.

we witter on about the weather here in uk, its a national pastime; and talking as if it is life and death if the winter is severe but really it seldom goes below -5C anyway… when u consider places like edmonton with -20C normally in their winter, you have to laugh at us really.

but it is a harmless pastime and is fun to do, so lets continue to do it. a good excuse to post lots of pictures of flowers in the sun.

the sun has moved round so that it shines into my flat now. so i have been getting lots of sunshine streaming  into the flat. 

its mild in london and uk. (correction, only central london)

london 8C sunny blue sky 11.30am thursday 2017.

they say we will be getting -2C this morning, but the lowest we got is 1.7C. granted it is in central london. i think poor old crystal palace is -2.8C haha. and in bournemouth too…(-6C) i have a friend who lives there, that was why i checked it. he said he dont notice it as he is nice and warm in his flat. 

 

 

i wanted to show the cold as it spread over europe but it is a gif, so it wont stay still. so no picture. haha.  and the link i give below is not going to stay still and will show the currant weather conditions. if u see this in summer, it will show very different conditions.

this is forecast to be the state of the weather in europe on saturday 7.1.17.  6am. it shows the cold extending all the way to mid spain region, and down to sicily and greece. as well as the usual cold in germany and the eastern europe.

what surprised me is the uk not experienceing cold weather.it is still green and  it is not awash with that cold blue smear.  even spain has its northern half getting minus C. and look at sicily and greece, i thought they are so south they should get warmer weather in winter than us in uk. the whole of europe is frigid with cold. brr.

added. 9.02am sunday 8.1.17. cloudy 10.5C. this report shows how cold it is in europe. we here in uk got it mild, by comparison. lowest temp this morning is 10.1C

i have always thought it is warmer in europe in winter, wasn’t that why so many brits used to holiday in the south of france in winter? and why so many have gone to france to live? if they are just as cold, if not colder than london in winter, why the heck are we going there to live? have we been had? fooled by their summer temperatures to think their winters must be warmer too?

and i see tv programs about brits there trying to eke out a living by doing b&b, or making wine, or offering paragliding … and i thought why? you got nice cushy jobs in uk, why go there to do menial work, with not much money? the only reason to go there to live is if u have got a rich pension from working all your life in the uk, and now you can live off your pension, then it makes sense to go to europe. well it makes sense before we voted to leave and the £ dropped. but if the pension is high enough it should still be nice to live there for the lifestyle. (by which i mean all that cheap wine!!!)

its such a nice sunny day out there, i shall go out, and bus to the aldi, where they are selling a pineapple and 6 gala apples for 60p. i suddenly crave something tropical and the pineapples sound good.

got a phone call just now and it was a recorded message saying this is an important announcement from the bank of scotland, press one for … another of those scam calls. and this one is brazen asking  you to call them and pay for the call… naturally i put the phone down on it. 

added 5.16pm 5.4C dark now. since i came back from the aldi at about 2.30pm, i got another of that bank of scotland scam call. it is strange they are so persistent. anyway i got the pineapple, 2 in fact, and the apples.(added. there was a woman buying a cart load of pineapples when i arrived at the 59p shelves. i can understand why she did it, sometimes u really want a bit of something that reminds you of  the tropics. )

and bought a chicken in a bag. i noticed they are selling these chickens where u can pop it in the oven, inside its bag and so u dont handle the chicken at all.

 so u dont contaminate your kitchen with salmonella by washing it. (not that people wash the chicken, they have been warned not to do it).

i wondered how they get the roasted skin,if it is inside the bag.  and now that i have cooked that chicken in its bag, i find they dont. you dont get a roasted chicken u get a steamed chicken. also normally i would season the chicken, before i pop it in the oven, but with it in its bag, i could not do so. i shall not bother with it next time, and just roast chicken in the normal way. 

the joy of roast chicken is that lovely crackling skin. if i want steamed chicken i much prefer boiling it in the chinese way. that uses so much less electricity too and you get lovely tender flesh and a pot of broth to make chicken rice with. so now i know enough to avoid these chickens in their bag. 

8.1.17 added. 9.08am sunday . it seems simon banks with bank of scotland , so that call was for him. i did not know till i saw a letter from the bank to him saying they have agreed an overdraft for him. so that was not a scam call after all. 

mild winter we are getting

london 3.9C sunny 8.58am thursday 2016 , doesnot feel cold, even though i dont have the heating on. it is 15C in my flat.

so far, their predictions of -2C in london is not borne out by the actual temperatures i see in the weather website for london. and from my own personal experience, it is not that cold. even though from the weather website i see it the lowest we got was 0C. can’t say i noticed it as that cold last night.

 i think it must have dawned on most people long before now, that a drop to below 0C now and then is not really that significant. with our good insulation due to fleece clothing, most of us wont really notice it.

and we are now at the end of february, the sun is getting higher and higher in the sky, and coming out earlier and earlier. and soon the equinox will come on 21st march.

london winters are really very nice. so even though i read now they are saying there will be a cold spell coming on friday morning,(-2C)  i think we can discount it. at least those of us here in london.

sunset today is  5.32pm, sunrise 6.55am

london 7.24am thursday 23.2.17 11.6C

Feb. 23, 2017	Rise	Set
Actual Time	6:58 AM GMT	5:30 PM GMT

Length of Visible Light	11h 40m
Length of Day	10h 32m Tomorrow will be 3m52s longer.

this year 2017 they were predicting a cold winter too. but it has been mild and winter is ending, so i guess they are wrong again.

nice weather we are having here in london.

london 15.9C sunday 2016 2.04pm. cloudy.

i was really surprised when i got back from the library to see this temperature on the weather website for 2pm.

when i was out and about earlier on,it did not feel that warm…maybe it was not sunny so i did not feel hot under my warm clothes . i remember all i did to cool down a bit was to remove the woolen scarf round my neck. (here, i can see how clothes can really create an enclosed warm environment round my body isolating me from the weather surrounding me. so much so that i dont really feel any cold or warmth from the outside surroundings. )

 though in fact i might have got an inkling of how warm it was, when i saw a man with very pale skin running on the pavement wearing only a singlet, and  running shorts (and they are really short shorts, haha) and trainers. it was in the bishop’s bridge road, near porchester road. i thought he was mad, but it seems he was not and from him, i can sense it was really warm after all. at least it was dry. no rain.  

london 5.31pm 14.7C, amazed it is still that high the temperature even though the sun has gone down. the road is wet, suggesting it must have rained .

 

Buckingham Palace aides under fire after 25 windows are left open on one of the coldest days of the year | Daily Mail Online

Buckingham Palace aides under fire after 25 windows are left open on one of the coldest days of the year  | Daily Mail Online.

this picture was taken to show the flag at half mast on the death of the saudi king recently, and people noticed the slightly opened windows and start grumbling about it.

i think it rather disingenuous to say it was -3C, it wasn’t at that time. it was never -3C in london that day , even in the early hours of the morning. it is somewhere in scotland more like.

in fact, i have some of my windows in my flat opened a crack like that shown that morning. it was that nice a day with blue sky and sunshine and i did not feel it being cold at all in the flat, because i always wear warm clothes.

i dont have heating on, so dont feel any qualms about opening the windows as there is no heat to get lost out of the windows.

 

and i doubt the palace had any heating on in those rooms if they are being decorated as they have said.

but they still have to heat the place even though  it is not cheap and it will still be cold.  it shows that it is not all that great owning a palace, and have all those huge high ceilinged rooms take forever to warm up. you can freeze in a palace. haha.

i just have a thought. those old palaces dont really have v good ventilation… and it just might be that they open the windows to freshen the air inside. nowadays modern buildings have ventilation shafts that worm their way all over the place and they are used to force air to circulate and expel stale air and bring in fresh air using hell of a lot of electricity during the process, but old buildings are less wasteful of power and rely on just opening the windows. 

flowers in winter

london

there is this flowering plant just outside the front door to the block of flats where i live that seem to in bloom the whole year ever since it was first planted. what an amazing plant. or more likely it is getting lots of heat warfing its way from my downstairs neighbour. her outlet pipe for her gas boiler in her bathroom is just near by.

taken today , we are in january, and just look at this plant. so many flowers. i call it japanese/chinese lanterns but i am sure that is not its name.

the camelias in the communal garden near the bus stop is also blooming, but that is normal for carmelias, they bloom in january. that is why they are my favourite flowers, because just when we are all in dire need of some colour in winter, there it is, bursting with flowers. sometimes when it snows, it can still flower poking its flowers above the snow.

 I got some pork selling for £2/kg. at asda, saw their advert this morning in the daily mail when i was at the library. it is a good buy. though i got one on boxing day that was even cheaper and wish i bought more. ah well, next boxing day haha. that one i have in my freezer now, intact as i will be roasting it. this one i shall cut up into 3 packs and freeze them and eat them pack by pack so i dont have to cook it all at one go.

ah well,  I hope that now the holiday period is over  the prices are coming down. when i was at the self service till, the machine refused to accept 2 of my £1 coins. after repeated slotting in, it accepted one but continued to refuse to accept the other. in the end, the assistant had to go to the manned till and ask for change , and she came back with two 50p coins.

i wonder if the £1 coin is fake. i kept quiet of course because if it is a fake i would be the one to lose out. haha. but the shop assistant did not think so, so maybe i am wrong. i hope there is a way to weed out the fake coins. i think the govt will have to make a new design soon to stop the forgery.

its 12.3C in london now at 22.58 wed 8 jan 2014

london

It’s very mild tonight. no rain; and indoors my thermostat reads 18C. no heating on. The weather websites says the outside temperature is 12.3C. the lowest temp today is 9.8C at 4.04am. 

I have a feeling we are having all this flooding because of the high temperatures keeping the rain as rain rather than snow. if it were very cold, we would get snow instead of floods; and the melting would take place over a long period of time and so we wont get flooding. so i guess it is either flooding or huge snow blanket over the whole country. like what they are experiencing in the usa now. i think purely for selfish reasons i like what we are having now, flooding and mild temperatures. haha. 

Sorry to those who are flooded out in some parts of the country and rail commuters stranded in london because of disrupted rail services. but that is the price u pay for not living in london. haha. as far as i am concerned, those of us living in london dont notice this flooding at all. Not for the first time that i am reminded of how lovely it is to be living in london instead of anywhere else in uk. 

I think this winter will be mild for those of us who live in london. As usual, one lot gets it cushy with the weather but another lot in another part of the country or in another country gets it in the neck. That is life i guess. and it is also likely that the parts of the country least able to cope will be affected. We here in london, even if the weather gets bad, like that time when it snowed here, (was it the winter of 2010/11?) london can easily cope and money is always available to deal with it. the city is rich and can afford to throw money at the problem, and also the city earns so much, it must keep its services running in spite of the weather. whilst out in the country side, if your  house is flooded or snowed under, not many are affected and/or those affected dont add that much money to the economy, so there is no priority to get them out of it quickly. That is why it is so good to be living in the big city. 

I benefit from it even though i am an insignificant person.It just so happens there are plenty of people who are productive living all round me. so plenty of services spring up to cater for them and they make the city run smoothly. 

Whenever anything go wrong around here, like a burst pipe so that water wells up and flood the road, i dont have to bother informing the services, as someone else always will have notified them allready, and it gets fixed. 

Of course all this comes at a price, collectively paid by all of us , in our council taxes, or in the sales tax, or for those who own cars through residents parking charges or fines, or congestion charges, but since there are so many of us, the cost is spread out and so no individual gets to pay a lot. but we forget businesses also pay their share, maybe quite a larger share, and help subsidise the cost for us who live here. I am a great advocate of city living. I think that might be the future, when the country side is virtually empty, only used to grow things and provide recreation like hunting, and everyone lives in huge connurbations that make up megacities. 

shortest day of the year

london

Just for the record.this winter solstice is on 5.11pm on Saturday December 21st 2013. (not sure what that means haha. I would have thought it should be 12noon that would be the sun being the lowest.

The winter solstice occurs at a specific time, not just day. This year, at 12:11 p.m. EST on Saturday, Dec. 21, the sun shone directly over the Tropic of Capricorn, the farthest south the sun reaches, leading to less light and colder temperatures in the north.

Read more: 5 Things to Know About the Winter Solstice | TIME.com http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/12/21/5-things-to-know-about-the-winter-solstice/#ixzz2o9PtHMhs

the sunset at 3.53pm, so what is that 5.11pm mean?).Today, Sunrise 8.03am, Sunset 3.53pm. GMT. daylight is 7hrs 49mins.  temperature now (2pm) is 11.8C in london. lowest temp today is 10.4C at about 2am.  It’s really very mild. 

from today, the day will get longer. I for one, won’t notice it much. in fact, most of us will have noticed something is happening to the daylight hours on  the day after the clocks go back on 24nov.

this one is so slow and gradual, if not for the calendar we would never notice it.

One nice thing about this is that we dont have to wait too long to see the sunset. And that is assuming( and it is a big If) the sky is clear and not raining as it most probably will be.

i think that is why sunset watching is not prevalent in uk. even those living near the sea in the uk dont go to the beach every day and watch the sun set. i remember when i was visiting Salvador, bahia, in brazil, people will sit on the beach near sunset time and just watch the sun set. it is part of their leisure activity or ritual. We know that any sunset watching relies on it not raining. maybe that is why sunsets in uk are not very spectacular. 

looking out of the window now, it is cloudy, and very grey and there is a drizzle. those guys in stonehenge will be disappointed as they wont be able to see the sun shining into stonehenge.

I wonder if people will be shopping today. they might, as shopping involves being indoors so it raining and dull is not a deterrant; and the papers have been shouting that the stores are discounting deeply which they dont normally do before christmas.  and today is pass the online delivery date , so anyone who wants to receive the gift before christmas will have to buy it from the shops.