When we get back to Singapore on Tuesday, we’re going to die!
Monday 11th January 2010
Sunday 10th January 2010
I’m typing this post from a small café next to our hotel in Dublin and boy it’s freezing! There’s snow lightly falling outside and the footpaths are slick with ice which has caused more than a few bruises in the last few days, but we’ve still been thoroughly enjoying ourselves! Anyway I was going to save blogging until I got back to Singapore, but I couldn’t resist when I saw the above ad.
Monday 24th August 2009
That is the view outside the Boatdeck Cafe where I typed up this post early this afternoon as I drank a huge cup of frothy coffee to warm me up. The rain stopped as soon as I came in of course.
Weather is an unpredictable beast, to the extent that meteorologists can sustain their lives by attempting to predict it with newer and more expensive equipment which themselves are funded by the preoccupation we all have with not getting ourselves wet when we leave the house and ensuring we’re wearing adequate clothing for the temperatures we’ll be facing. That was a very long sentence, especially when compared to this one.
In a day where other cities in the country were experiencing mini heatwaves (Sydney and Brisbane I’m looking at you!) Adelaide was blustery and frigidly cold. Blustery is a word right? It was insanely windy, so windy that the glass in our windows was rattling and creaking and the rain was falling almost horizontally. I also saw a semi trailer loaded up with bricks and cinder blocks literally sailing through the air outside the window, though that could have just been a Matchbox car.
The screenshot above was from the SBS World News bulletin from earlier this evening. We were told two low pressure systems acting on each other so disruptively isn’t unusual in itself, but that it typically happens in Australia in September-October not August! Adelaide is right in the middle of the two bands of white cloud stuff.
Why am I boring you with bad weather talk this evening? It has to do with personal safety, from personal experience. You can safely ignore the nonsense I’ve belaboured so far, but I’d start taking notes from here on if I were you.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you per chance find yourself facing the daunting task of taking on extremely heavy rain and strong winds, do not take a very large umbrella thinking it will help to shield you from getting too wet. For one thing it’s entirely ineffective; when rain isn’t obeying gravity or the laws of physics your crappy piece of material held together with tiny metal rods isn’t going to do squat.
Secondly, and more importantly, by using a huge umbrella in strong winds and rain you are essentially unfolding a gigantic sail which if you hold on to makes you the servant in the relationship, not the master. This afternoon the wind was so strong I was being pulled by the umbrella and as a result was nearly forced off a bridge twice and onto the road in the path of an oncoming automotive driver in their motorised vehicle. I would not have wanted to be the person to clean up that mess.
If my terrifying message of hope has been useful, consider donating me a cup of coffee by clicking the link on the right hand side of the site here. It’s a small price to pay for your safety am I right? Wait, that really didn’t sound right. Did I mention I saw a semi trailer loaded up with bricks and cinder blocks sailing through the air?
Sunday 22nd March 2009
Ever wanted to see what a severe snow storm radar chart looks like? CalgaryGuru forwarded me to a site from Twitter showing the current weather in Strathmore, Alberta in Canada. Looks like scary stuff.
My dad really loves Canada but he says the weather is the only thing he doesn’t like. Then again he has been stationed in Singapore since the mid 1990s where the weather is 32C every single day of the year. One assumes what you’re acclimatised to would affect your perceptions of weather. For example it doesn’t get cold enough to snow in Adelaide other than the Adelaide Hills, and yet I find it absolutely freezing by comparison!
We kept conversing on Twitter and he directed me to a photo of Calgary with the mountains in the distance:
From http://www.cnam.ca/images/calgary_skyline.jpg, copied here so I’m not hotlinking.
The closest photo I have is one I took in the other direction, a photo of Adelaide from Mount Lofty. Certainly looks warmer if a bit drier!
But back to CalgaryGuru, we all hope you’re okay and are able to get along those roads safely tomorrow.
Sunday 15th March 2009
UPDATE: This post was originally written yesterday on Sunday, but I hit the "Save Draft" button instead of "Publish". Looking back at it now, I wish it were still Sunday.
I’m sitting here at the Boatdeck Cafe this Sunday afternoon with just my iPhone and a stable wireless network. Sometimes I need to lug the glorified monitor and keyboard stuck together, but today just typing on this feels fine.
It is definitely starting to show that it’s Autumn here in Adelaide; after almost every day being as hot as Singapore when we came back here, this weekend has been in the low 20s and drizzling. To the astonishment of many a person in the real world and online I’ve readily admitted I prefer overcast days; there’s something about them that allows me to relax more. Perhaps it was the positive cool change overcast days have on tropical climates that made me think of them positively.
Mugachinos are good!
As for today, despite university now being back for a fortnight now I’ve still been having a nagging enrollment issue that I thought would have been fixed but clearly not, so I had intended this afternoon to work on that, but unwittingly I forgot the online enrollment system isn’t functional on Sundays! Or at least the part I’m trying to access. I still haven’t even got a new student card yet!
So to be productive I’ve been watching some more Code Geass and going to the Boardeck Cafe! I figure my life is so dreadfully confusing and filled with anxiousness and dread that a Sunday where I only have a few responsibilities is, for an Atheist wanting a better word, a godsend! Plus it’s overcast, good times!
I’ve also finally recorded a Rubenerd Show again, the first since coming back to Adelaide. I had forgotten that I was supposed to be keeping shows under 10MiB so people on iPhones and iPod Touches (the phrase "iPod Touches" just doesn’t sound right, if you know what I mean) can download them on mobile phone networks, so I rambled on just as I’m doing here without any thought to the time until it was just time. The result was I had four things I wanted to discuss and I ended up discussing one thing, then getting sidetracked and talked about something else! Good times.
Well that’s my Sunday! Now if you’d excuse me, I’m going to turn to the Stanza iPhone app and continue reading The Counte of Monte Cristo [Wikipedia] while I finish my Mugaccino. Sundays are fun.
Wednesday 11th March 2009
Google Map showing the Eyre Peninsula (blue pushpin)
AdelaideNow is reporting that a tornado and freak storms ravaged parts of the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia with as much as 37mm of rain falling in less than an hour and a half. Adelaide isn’t in it’s path but they say it could potentially reach Mount Gambier, Naracoorte, Bordertown and Lucindale.
The Bureau of Meteorology is warning "severe thunderstorms" are likely to produce very heavy rainfall and flash flooding across the south-east in the next few hours. An updated warning will be issued at 8.45pm.
For future reference for us; or if you find yourself in the path of a tornado; The State Emergency Service advises people to:
- SECURE or put away loose items around your property.
- MOVE cars under cover or away from trees.
- STAY clear of fallen power lines.
- NOT to drive, ride or walk through flood water.
- KEEP clear of creeks and storm drains.
- REMAIN indoors and away from windows, while storms are nearby.
Having lived in the tropics most of my life I’ve had my share of huge, loud and scary thunderstorms, but certainly not a tornado. Until now I wouldn’t have known what to do if I did encounter one… aside from jumping out of my skin.
Current banner on the SES website
Sunday 30th November 2008
A shamelessly recycled photo I took at the Boatdeck Cafe where I am now
It is a stunningly gorgeous afternoon here in Mawson Lakes in Adelaide, Australia. I do admit sheepishly to liking overcast days but even I can appreciate the beauty of a blue sky with a few cirrus clouds and a warm but not hot 24 degrees (75 Fahrenheit) At the risk of sounding even more cheesy than I already have done here, I’ve been walking around the shops and the park just for the sake of being out in this weather. I’m sitting at the Boatdeck Cafe across from the lake now having a coffee and looking out the window, iPhone in hand of course.
While we’re on the subject, perhaps one of the things I like the most about Singapore is the weather; I know there are tons of horror stories about how stinking hot it is over there and how humid it is, but its the kind of place where you only need one wardrobe, where you don’t ever shivver (unless your in frigid air conditioning!), where you can hop out of bed and have a shower without being scared of leaving a warm bed for the cold, where you can comfortably go for evening and late night walks and still wear light clothes. I guess I was acclimatised to such weather having lived there my whole life, but there you go.
I started this post with the intention of talking about living problems, but as usual a digression on my part morphed into two gigantic paragraphs. And as usual, I’m thinking of leaving it at that because my digression was more interesting than what I was going to talk about anyway.
Singapore and Australia are two of the most beautiful places on Earth, and I’m so pleased I’m spending my life living there. Now I just need some sort of wormhole between Singapore and Perth and Adelaide built I’ll be happy.
A very high tech looking Star Trek wormhole ;)
If you galactic construction workers are listening, my dad would also like some other wormholes connecting Singapore to Ubud (the art, food and cultural precinct of Bali) and Singapore to Canada as well. He loves Montreal and Toronto, but would also like a wormhole directly to one of their national parks.
This would work wonders for me of course because then I could get an exit aperture somewhere along the said wormhole from Singapore to Canada that drops me off in Seoul/Incheon, then Kyoto, and further along to Talkeetna and to Denali. My dad wouldn’t be able to exit the last two apertures because he’s flagged on a US warning list now for his business trips to Iran, but that’s the beauty of the wormhole system: he wouldn’t need to! Not too hard to implement right? Genius!
I’m in a good mood today and thinking positively about the world, only happens when I wake up around 5% of the time, so I’m going to take advantage of it! That’s right I’m getting up from this table to order an éclair. Sometimes I’m so wild and unpredictable I scare even myself!
Sent from my iPhone
Monday 24th November 2008
I love clouds, and taking photos of clouds because no two skies are ever the same. Some have said it’s a silly thing to do, but having my hobbies labelled as silly hasn’t stopped me in the past and that’s not going to change any time soon!
I never used to upload my cloud photos on my Flickr gallery because I figured most people wouldn’t be interested in such images, but I’ve caved in and started an I Heart Clouds gallery. Here are the two I took earlier this afternoon in Adelaide:
Sunday 23rd November 2008
The freak Aussie weather and iPhone 2.2 episode!
Freak weather in Australia (torrential storms in Brisbane, fluctuating temperatures in Adelaide, snow in Victoria a week before summer!); my cheesy slogan from primary school; my dad’s plant designs in Pinkenba; the iPhone and iPod Touch 2.2 update (still no copy/paste, the amazing street view feature, the new weird MobileSafari layout); Toronto, Adelaide and Dublin; the IntoYourHead show; and utopian science fiction writers!
UPDATE: I referred to the CEO of Microsoft as Steve Jobs not Steve Ballmer! The blasphemy! Please forgive me!
Download MP3 to listen ↓ 21:05 9.7MiB
You can also stream this episode and view its Internet Archive page.
Thursday 13th November 2008
Screenshot from the PktWeather iPhone app from yesterday
We had a sweltering 36 degree day (98.something Fahrenheit) yesterday here in Adelaide; and if it wasn’t bad enough even the breezes themselves felt like they were coming out of an oven. Fortunately it’s a much cooler 27 degrees today, though UV is still "extreme".
For comparison, Singapore generally averages 32 degrees (89.something Fahrenheit) during the day, every day, all year!
