Rubénerd!

I'm writing this post as I sit here at the Earlwood Library, basking in its crisp air conditioning and drinking litres of chilled water from my fridge down the road. Earlier today, I was typing code and prose at the Euro Coffee Bar and chatting with the owner about the new air curtains he had installed to keep the aircon inside.

According to ADN and the Twitterari, Sydney had its hottest day since records were begun 157 years ago. Having blogged about the temperature reaching 41° earlier in the month, today it got past 47°C (about 117°F). I compared walking outside on that day to being hit in the face by a hair dryer. Today, it was more akin to stepping into a tandoori oven, and without the benefit of getting food afterwards. What an insult.

I'm lucky I didn't have to catch a train. Predictably, CityRail is in chaos (screenshot), with all but two lines reporting delays and skipped stations, including mine.

I'm super lucky to have been able to enjoy air conditioning all day today. Plenty of people weren't so lucky.

I am fully aware of the (albeit reversed) insinuation kaeru on Pixiv was... insinuating. Still, after a full day of heat in Sydney yesterday, and a terribly hot sticky night (I'm not doing anything to help this insinuation), the late morning was positively refreshing by comparison.

It's amazing how one merely has to spend a day being blown at by nature's hair dryer to render an otherwise normal summer day with a gentle sea breeze feel so wonderful.

The WordPress ID for this entry is 10707, the ending of which was Boeing's first commercial jetliner. I'm going to pretend this was done on purpose somehow to coincide with my passing mention of breezes. That made sense in my head.

Fortunately, I was able to ride out most of the intense heat at the UTS library with Clara today. Plenty of people weren't as lucky.

All this violent weather in Sydney reminded me of an experience I had years ago with loud noises, avoiding talking to people and the like. Many facts have been admonished, embellished or made up for convenience. Enjoy!

Rowan of Brethrin

Despite having neither the licence nor the skill to operate a motor vehicular device, I piloted the nimble automobile down a lonely, dark stretch of road towards somewhere. A guy's house flew past me on one side, and presumably someone else's house on the other side. The road felt like a tunnel with large, overgrown canopy trees stretching out from the footpath and reaching across to touch the branches of their brethrin on the other side. A rather rude display to be performing in public, if you ask me. Which you didn't, so I'll shut up.

As I was attempting to avoid a fork in the road lest it puncture one of my tyres, I heard a loud crash so loud it crashed. Just like that description.

Bolting out of my chair like a spring loaded... chair, I thrust the headphones I was wearing onto the table and hit the spacebar on the keyboard to pause the simulator. I'd paused it many times before, but not under such frigtening circumstances. Frankly, I was surprised the keyboard had absorbed the impact of my keysmash as nonchelantly as it did. I suppose it had plenty of practice from when I'd been debugging Java late at night. ExcessivelyCamelCasedException THIS!

When I'd calmed down from the shock, I adjusted my invisible tie and strained my ears to triangulate where the sound had emanated. The room was dead silent, save for the oversized cooling fan in my primary desktop computer system which ironically was positioned below my desk.

Just as my blood pressure had returned to as normal a state as caffeine normally afforded me, the crash sound thundered across the room again. This time, with my full and undivided attention, I realised (HEY, AN ANIMATED GIF OF A CAT!) the sound was coming from the front door.

Who's to say front doors aren't side doors? Isn't the front a side?

On my tippy toes, which was rather difficult in awkwardly fitting slippers in the masculine shape of bunny rabbits, I inched towards the door. Croutching on the bunnies, I peeked underneath as I'd done so many times before while attempting to avoid contact with people, but to my surprise I saw none of the telltale signs of a human presence. Feet, mostly. And shoes. None. Neither!

Relieved I wouldn't have to actually speak to anyone, I fumbled with the door knob then inched the door aside.

Laying in front of the door was the unmistakably wooden shape of a tree branch. As thick as a tree branch, and nearly as long, it lay there with a freshy snapped section on one end, suggesting it had snapped off from the tree of which it had branched from at some point. How it had sailed to my front door in the dead of night without human assistance baffled me to the extent that I couldn't figure it out. Unlike all those other times I was baffled, mind.

Still, where did that second bang come from? Oh wait, it did make sense, there was a second branch there. Almost as massive and menacing as it's brother, assuming they branched from the same tree.

Another loud bang, and I took an involuntary nap on the welcome mat. Surprisingly soft, though a little muddy for my tastes. For the next few hours, I supposed it'd have to do.

A news story about lightning strikes in Singapore lead me to the Singapore Civil Defence Force site, which has a ton of super cool posters and handbooks. Naturally, many of these have to be printed ^_^.

The Jakarta Times knows Singapore

First, to the story that sparked this post. Given the wild rain in Sydney again today, this news article from the Jakarta Times of all places seems oddly precedent:

Singapore, The Lightning City
Feng Zengkun & Kezia Toh - Straits Times Indonesia
November 22, 2011

[..] especially as Singapore is one of the lightning capitals of the world.

It also experiences an average of 186 days of lightning per year, according to the National Environment Agency (NEA). This is due to the tropical weather conditions. Each square kilometer of land in Singapore can be struck up to 16 times each year.

That's puts Singapore ahead of the UK in number of strikes on people a year, though far less than the United States. Per capita you've got to think that's awfully high though for a country that's less than 50 kilometres wide!

Treasure trove!

Anyway, the Jakarta Times article mentioned the Singapore Civil Defence Force website had a handbook detailing how to survive lighting storms. Given the rain is pelting us here in Sydney, I figured it could have some advice. Right?

What I didn't expect was an entire site with posters ranging from workplace safety, to fire hazard guides, to earth tremors, to posters detailing emergency procedures and handbooks... it's a veritable treasure trove! All are downloadable in PDFs, and in the English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil, the four official languages.

Unfortunately, this one about fire preparadness made me hungry.

We have an A3 printer, which for now has mostly printed anime pictures and scans (cough!) for walls and so on. I think I may have found a new source of posters!

If there was any remaining doubt in our minds that winter is on its way, they were erased after today's freezer! More dramatic than the temperature itself though has been how suddently the snap started... I took those two pictures within days of each other. With a low of 4 predicted tonight, suddently the 15 I was whinging about on Sunday seems practically luxurious!

Luxurious would have pretty cold winters. Would still like to go there though one day. I hear they export dentures. Do dentures chatter in the cold like my teeth are right now?

Some good news from Malaysia. Well sort of, 24,000+ people is still a heck of a lot.

The number of flood evacuees in Johor and Malacca has dropped to 24,712 this morning as floodwaters continue to recede in the affected areas of the two states.

Brazil, Malacca and Johor in Malaysia, Queensland and Victoria in Australia... all in the space in a month. And then there were those floods in Singapore last year (#1, #2). There's definitely something going on.

Melbourne has officially exported its fickle weather patterns to Sydney! After our two scorchers (2011.02.01, 2011.02.05), today was a gusty 24 degrees C (75.2 F) with a wind chill factor that sent me back home to grab a jumper. Literally we went from 42 degrees and no wind at all, to 24 degrees and deeply overcast. Those are the same numbers, just in reverse!

From our street in Earlwood we get a pretty good view of the Sydney CBD, so this afternoon I wandered down and took this picture. As I stood there shivering I just couldn't believe the contrast, from the same vantage point yesterday the sky was blue and I got heatstroke!

In other news, I've been told by my contacts in Singapore that it was 32 degrees today. As it was yesterday, and the 365 days before that! Ah seasons, how I forgot yee.

Allegedly it wasn't hot enough for us in Sydney! It was another scorcher today, it felt like stepping into a warming oven as I opened the front door. And to make matters worse, our central air conditioning died! As I type this, myself and our two little white fluffy animals that the vets assure as are dogs are camped out in my home office computer room thingy with a portable air conditioner set to stun. Marge, can you set the oven to cold?

What I was most peeved about though was earlier today the temperature hit 42 degrees Celsius (107.6 Fahrenheit), which from a DON'T PANIC perspective would have made a brilliant screenshot, and 107.6 sounds like a trippy radio station. Just saying.

After two months of an uncharacteristically cool summer here in Sydney, the heat finally arrived to exact its revenge for being denied access for so long. I could have just said "it was flipping hot".

It was so hot, the bridge drooped at either end

When we first moved back to Sydney in winter after a 14 year on and off stint in Singapore, we were fully expecting to shiver our rear ends off. We were right, having grown up in a city that has 32 degree weather 365 days a year, temperatures lower than maybe 25 seem practically arctic. Well, for as long as there's still ice there. Ice rhymes with nice.

Anyway we were all excited when summer was around the corner and we could feel some normal weather... well, normal for us. As Einsten said, relativity is a bitch. He never said that. Turns out nature had other plans, and other than a few warm days, most of the summer has been surprisingly cool, especially at night.

I had a wax sculpture of Salvador Dali, but it melted.

Waking up this morning in a lake of my own sweat, I checked the forecast and discovered to my horror and surprise that we were in for a 40 degree day. Yikies!

Yikies is a contraction concatenation Constantinople portmanteau of yikes and owies. I'm thinking it could be a trend. But I digress.

In its infinite wisdom, Google is telling me that 40 degrees Celcius is 104 Fahrenheit. I tell you what my American friends and readers (and enemies), your measurement systems make no sense to me whatsoever, but 104 sure does sounds more evil than 40!

Whatever it was, it was hot. I just got my bike recently and wanted to go for a ride, but the sun was so harsh I could barely stand walking from the train station back to our house. It was so hot, a block of chocolate I'd left on my computer desk had turned into chocolate sauce. It was so hot, my ThinkPad nearly fried itself running Flash. It was so hot, the colour from my iTelephone case started rubbing off on my hand while I held it to take the photos you're seeing here while I was at Circular Quay station. It was so hot.

Not to belabour the point, but...

• I've lived in Adelaide, travelled to Dubai and been in inland Australia.

• I've sat outside at the Sepang Grand Prix in Malaysia in the middle of the day and without a roof over my head.

• I've made lasagne and stuck my head in the oven during what I later deemed to be a contraction concatenation Constantinople portmanteau combination of a lack of foresight, an equal lack of judgement, and a sudden bout of abject stupidity.

• I've poured boiling water from a kettle down my arm in what I later deemed to be a contraction concatenation Constantinople portmanteau combination of a lack of foresight, an equal lack of judgement, and a sudden bout of abject stupidity. I'm getting deja vu, all over again.

• I've shared an enclosed space with a PowerMac G5, a homebrew Athlon 64 tower and more recently a Mac Pro.

• I spent an afternoon with Ana Brusic in high school while I fixed her laptop.

• I've put my hand on a motorbike exhaust pipe.

And yet

And I still, still say today was hot. I mean really, really, REALLY hot. Even comparability so. That was supposed to be "comparatively" so, stupid autocorrect!If you were in The Australia today, I hope you kept cool. I'm already very cool, you see.

As an update, my fabulous sister Elke just came back from the convenience store down the street. That's none too interesting itself, however she informed me they play the radio at the aforementioned convenience store, and that the station's news reporter just mentioned that Sydney's power demands were ridiculously huge owing to every man and his dog running and air conditioner. No kidding! It may also explain why my screens keep flickering ever so slightly, and why the street lights in Earlwood and neighbouring Kingsgrove are completely out too. Eerie stuff.