August

You may have noticed that I didn't post anything during August. I dislike August.

I also dislike January, February, and July.

Two of these months are bitterly cold and dreary. The other two are saunas.

We had a heat wave again this year. Heat index temperatures were around 116 degrees Fahrenheit by day and over 100 degrees Fahrenheit by night for about two months. I couldn't bear it. My activities were pared down to the bare minimum. Even Mimi didn't want to linger outside on her thrice daily trips downstairs to visit the grass. My electric bill was one of the highest I've ever had. I had to run the air-conditioners non-stop.

I hate to waste four months of the year. That's a whole third of the year! I keep telling myself I won't let heat or cold keep me from enjoying my life. But I don't have a car and getting out hurts sometimes. The heat wave broke three days ago. I have my life back now.

Brief updates: weather, friends, TV, movies, transport

WEATHER: June serves up pleasant weather where I live. July and August are unbearably hot and humid, but June's [usually] mild rains, known as the plum rain season, make for bearable temperatures. I'm trying to get out as much as I can before it becomes too hot. Today we had torrential rains instead of mild rains, but that's not common.

FOREIGN FRIENDS: Most of my foreign friends in town are leaving for the summer, but will be back in the fall. Chinese friends will still be around though, most of them anyway.

TV VIEWERSHIP: I get CNN International and Fox News on satellite TV, so for the most part, I hear the same news you do. I usually watch CNN in the morning (Anderson Cooper, et al) and Fox and Friends in the evening. (I'm in a different time zone, remember?) The toxic, argumentative political atmosphere bothers me though, so lately I've had have to turn off the TV often to maintain peace of heart and mind.

MOVIES: I don't watch movies much, but I watched the movie "Lion" on the airplane a few weeks ago, and I loved it. It is about an Indian boy who ends up being adopted by a family in Tasmania, where I once lived. The boy arrived in Tasmania the same year I did, in 1987. The movie is a tearjerker.

TRANSPORTATION: Bamboo Forest is opening more and more subway lines, and it makes life easier. When it rains and I have to get out, I stress out trying to plan the best way to get where I'm going and back. Taxis fill up with passengers during rainstorms and vacant ones can be hard to find; e-bike travel is not a great option; I'll get wet walking to and from the subway station, and sometimes at the other end, my destination is too far from the subway station. Buses seldom go where I want to go, so they are ruled out quickly. If you've always had a car, you've probably never had to think about this kind of thing.

Hope you've enjoyed these random updates!

The Weather

View from my balcony. The tall buildings in the distant mid-left look much, much bigger in real life.

The "plum rain" season of May and June has finally given way to the steamy days of summer. From now until the end of July, we have forecast highs of 100 degrees Fahrenheit every single day, with the heat index running anywhere from 114 - 121 degrees Fahrenheit. 

First the rain and dangerous lightning storms hindered gatherings of friends, and now it is the heat. No one gets out unless it is absolutely necessary, like to go to work or buy groceries. Since most people, including me, rely on pubic transportation, and getting to said transportation requires lots of walking and waiting, it becomes dangerous to be out. The humidity is the killer.

Usually by the middle of August, the humidity drops dramatically and it is just normal summer heat. I'm looking forward to that time, when life will start to get back to normal and the electric bill starts having lower numbers on it. 

The calendar says summer, the thermometer disagrees

This is the weirdest summer ever. Last year we were sizzling in the hottest heat wave since records had been kept. This year, August temps are only in the 70s and 80s range. I suspected the cooler weather would only last a few days, but it has lasted a few weeks and the forecast shows no change. I have never in my life experienced a summer this cool. It feels weird, and wearing summer clothes is out of the question. In August. I don't know how to act.

I know the weather was cooler in America some this summer too. What's going on?

Chinese people find it amusing that foreigners (that's us) always want to talk about the weather. But I just do, I can't help it.

(Like my butterfly photo?!) :-)

Getting there isn't half the fun -- it's no fun at all

I am about about to tell you something that will earn me no sympathy at all: I only have to set my alarm two times a week and I only have to make morning commutes those two days. One of those days is Sunday.

I am about to tell you something that ought to earn me sympathy though, if you have any feelings at all: I have no car. And I live in a place where it rains a whole lot.

Here are my options for getting across town to meet with like-minded people on Sunday mornings, and how those options are affected by rain:

Commute Option #1

E-bike. My preferred transportation is my e-bike. When my meeting is over I can roam around and take in different scenery. But when it rains, this option is really terrible. If I only had to go a few blocks, I could endure, but all the way across town? No way. The rain poncho worn by e-bikers is not efficient at keeping rain off your face and out of your eyes. I would arrive looking and feeling like a drowned rat. Ask me how I know. I am not good company when this occurs.

Commute Option #2

Subway. Subways are nice enough, but getting to and from the subway stations is the hard part. From the time I leave my door to the time I am at the subway platform takes at least 20 minutes by foot. It is a rough 20 minutes though, dodging cars, bikes, street vendors, crazy people on a narrow street. If it rains, it takes slightly longer and is more dangerous.

Once I arrive at the subway station platform, I may have to wait 10 minutes between trains. The subway trip across town takes 20 or more minutes. When I get to the other end of town, I have to walk another 10-15 minutes to get where I'm going. You do the math. This gets to be obnoxious, especially the part about walking in the rain for so long. And the math.

Commute Option #3

Taxis. Taxis are nice. Someone else does the driving, you just sit in back and relax. But finding a taxi is hard in good weather, and might-near impossible when it is raining. And if I do get lucky and find a taxi, then when I get to the other part of town, I may not find a taxi back home. I have waited for taxis for an hour or longer before.

If I am choosing the taxi option, then when I leave home I go to the main road, to the south of where I live. If I can't find a taxi, usually it is too late to go with a back-up plan -- the subway is the opposite direction.

Rainy commutes are very stressful. I had a rainy taxi commute this past Sunday.

Here I am waiting for a taxi. I'm on the curb between the bike path and the main road. See my umbrella at the top of the photo?

 E-bikes zoom by. 

Buses zoom by. 

Not a taxi in sight.

Pleasant weather

This winter has been pleasant. It's still plenty cold, but we've had far more sunshine than usual, and slightly warmer temperatures than in my previous winters here.

Weekend before last, we had a highly rare blast of warm winter temperatures, and it was 75°F on February 1st! I didn't have to wear a jacket or long johns. This has happened here NEVER before on my watch. Unlike Texas where the weather jumps up and down all winter long, here it is consistently frigid all winter, until now.

While the warm weather was here, a young friend came to stay for 10 days. We did some sightseeing in the nice weather.

The warm weather lasted only about a week though, then we had snow. It snowed again today.

I'm going to Thailand next Tuesday. It is in the 90s there. I'm digging out my summer clothes and sandals. Feels really strange to do so when it is snowing outside!

Insulation

My mom reminded me that most of you won't know that buildings in China are not insulated. Not even a little bit of insulation is in my concrete walls. That's why running the heaters in winter and air-conditioners in summer is expensive and somewhat ineffective. There is nothing to help retain the temperature, so once the machine is turned off, the indoor temperature quickly reverts to the outdoor temperature. On a sunny winter day, it is often warmer outside than inside. Either you can run your heater/air-conditioner non-stop, or in winter you can dress like an Eskimo every day.

Picture an bundled up Eskimo, washing dishes at the kitchen sink, mopping floors, typing on his computer. It doesn't really work well. I have no solutions.

If the Chinese are bothered by the weather extremes, you wouldn't know about it. They don't talk about the weather. (It is so weird, because Americans talk about the weather all the time. How can Chinese NOT talk about the weather? They talk about food instead. It's like when you meet a Chinese you might say, "hey the temperature is nice today!" And they'll look at you like you are a weirdo and ask what you had for breakfast -- or something like that.)

Let's see, where were we? Oh yeah, insulation. Bottom line is, very few if any trees died in the building of China. (Lots of concrete died though, haha.)

Talking about the weather

Some boys I talked with last week pose for a photo.

The news says we're having the hottest summer in the last ten years. That's saying a lot, because it was pretty hot those years too. [Update: We've had the longest heat wave since records have been kept, with over 25 consecutive days with temperatures over 100°F. In 1934, it was the actual hottest year on record for us, but even then they didn't have 25 days of consecutive heat.] Daily temperatures are over 100° with heat indexes around 116°F. My electric bill will be scary this time around, but at least I am able to run my air-conditioner. So many others can't run it all day (if they even have one at all). Today I saw a couple of people wearing wet towels on their heads. We've got two more weeks of this forecast before the weather "dips" into the 90s. Most summers, we have torrential rains to cool things off, but there doesn't seem to be much of that this year.

In related news, Chinese people don't talk about the weather much. Once I asked a Chinese man why and he said they couldn't change the weather, so why talk about it? They talk about food quite a lot though.

I'd like to return to normal, please

This is what the sun looked like about the last time I saw it ... a few weeks ago ... shining on my apartment building.

But the sun hasn't been out for quite awhile now. It has been cloudy and rainy, as you can see in my last post.

Incessant rain means my psychotic dog keeps me awake at night with her whining, thudding heart palpitations, and panting breath. I have to get out of bed, move to the living room and sleep on the sofa to calm her down. I wish she would go to the living room without me, but she won't.

(I thought sleeping on the sofa was for married couples, when one of them got in trouble with the other. How demeaning that I'm not even married and I still have to sleep on the sofa to keep the peace in the household! Good grief.)

I'm tired. I haven't had a good night's rest all week. She needs a doggy exorcism. (Kidding.) This must be how new parents feel when they complain about lack of sleep.

Okay, I'll stop talking about my dog for a little while now, since I know some of you couldn't care less about my beloved pooch. I hope she doesn't do anything really cute and clever in the next day or two though or you will just have to miss out on it.

Gonna be a long rainy season

I miss the good old days when a thunderstorm hardly caused her to blink. She'd shrug her shoulders in her doggy sort of way and continue to munch on her bone. Something happened in the past year -- I don't know what -- and now she is traumatized by the mere sound of rain hitting the window. Panic attacks. She whines, pants hard, paces the floor. Her heart feels like it is going to beat out of her chest. So, in the middle of the night, I get up to console her. On the sofa.

Poor Meems.

Is it normal for her to acquire fear as she ages? She's 8 and a half now. I try to make her feel better, but she is mostly inconsolable.

The dark clouds photo above was taken at 3:55 in the afternoon yesterday. By 3:56 a heavy downpour was in progress. We don't get tornados, just heavy rain and lightning.

It is like this today too, and for almost every day in the 15-day forecast. Rainy season isn't going to be much fun with Mimi's phobia going on.

Thundersnow

When I went to bed last night, I knew snow was in the forecast, and expected to wake up to a white world.

What I didn't expect was to be awakened at 4 a.m. with a loud roar of THUNDER. It kind of freaked me out a little, but poor Mimi was more terrified than I have ever seen her. She jumped off the bed, tucked her tail in, hid under a chair (it would presumably save her from being crushed if the sky fell on her), and wouldn't come out for hours. Not even the fireworks of Chinese New Year scared Mimi like this did.

I wondered how our snow storm could have changed into a thunderstorm. I peeked out the window and was surprised to see it was actually snowing after hearing that sound. I've never known of thunder and snow occurring in the same weather event. 

So then, I went back to bed, and I wondered if a meteor had possibly flown through the air like one did in Russia a few days ago. Yeah, that must be it. It surely could not have been thunder, right?

But I got on the Internet this morning, and sure enough, there is a rare phenomenon known as "thundersnow." 

Thundersnow is known for producing thick snow fast. True to form, this is the most snow we've ever gotten in such a short period of time, in all MY days in the Middle Kingdom at least. If you want to see a video of thundersnow -- not MY video, just some random video -- you can see it here: http://boingboing.net/2013/02/08/thundersnow.html

I thought when I moved south I was moving to balmy weather. We've had snow about 4-5 times already this winter. What's up with that?

One down, one to go

The women on the right are buying bundles of incense prior to entering the neighborhood Buddhist temple (gold building in the rear on the left side). They will burn the bundles and "pray" for good luck during the coming year. Red candles, also for sale at this table, are also burned inside the temple. Not everyone does this ritual, just some Buddhists (or people who are not Buddhists but hope to garner some kind of good luck anyway.) This temple is on my block and I can see it from my balcony.

The first week of Chinese New Year is over. One more week to go. This year's holiday hasn't seemed as chaotic as most. I think this is because:

• The holidays fell at a good time so that lots of people could travel to other places. Most of my neighbors have been gone for over a week, and I like it when it's quiet!
• It didn't rain on the actual first day of the new year, but it's a 15-day holiday and it has been raining most of the week. It's raining right now. The fire hazard from fireworks is greatly reduced when there is rain. Sure, I had my emergency evacuation kit ready by the front door the other night just in case, but I didn't have to use it.

[What exactly does one put into an emergency evacuation kit? 

For Mimi - leash, dog food, bottled water, drinking bowl, clothing in case we're stranded outside overnight and she gets cold.

For me - flashlight, money, cell phone, cell phone charger, gloves, scarf, hat, jacket, socks, earmuffs, shoes, and a change of clothes, lock box of valuables.]

Tree tunnel

A beautiful crisp, cool fall day in the Middle Kingdom. This is the BEST time of year here!

I've been having lots of trouble with my Internet these past few weeks and sometimes I haven't even been able to open this blog's website! My blogging absence is not intentional, and hopefully the problem will be resolved soon.

Just another rainy day

It was just another rainy day today. Dark clouds hovered, noisy park hanger-outers stayed inside for a change and I took a long nap.

My trip to America begins five weeks from today. Be seeing some of you soon.

Weathery Woes

I have four big picture windows in my apartment, and the view from all four is the same – gray skies. The blah weather is forever on my mind. And assuming you don’t want to hear about it, I figured it was best just to not write much during February.

That, plus my Internet hasn’t been working well enough to open my blog much lately. But don’t give up on my blog, it will all get better soon enough!

Sizzling

In Bamboo Forest, here are the heat/humidity index temperatures in Fahrenheit degrees for today and the coming week:

113*F

109

106

108

109

101

112

110

And next week it will be 113 one day. And it has been 118 several times this summer. Most of the summer it has been over 110 degrees.

I melt as soon as I walk outside. I get so wet with "skin dew" that my clothes stick to my body within half a minute.

According to the heat and humidity index, it is hotter here than in Texas.

But it is plenty hot in Texas. Where my parents live, the humidity index was 106 both yesterday and today.They've had 43 straight days with temps over 100 (I haven't counted them here, but it's been about the same).

Ya'll eat a popsicle and stay cool! Do NOT mow the grass in this weather.

Anyway, winter's coming round the bend, and its a whole lot worse to deal with than summer ... in Bamboo Forest anyway.