Whither the Weather

Some of you may have heard me complain ad libitum about the (imho) overly-warm and humid weather in S'pore and my penchant for cooler climes (which is one reason why i like to holiday in faraway atas places where possible, as well as partly why global climate change vexes me so much and hence why i'm quite environmentally conscious, but that's another story). Anyways last year around this time i was on the last leg of my time in the States - over the holidays after exams i went to places like Boston and St. Louis. And it so happened that in all these places they were experiencing above-average temperatures - fair enough. So i didn't get to experience snow and what not, hardly the end of the world.

Now that i've cable though, and hence watch CNN/Headline News in lieu of Channelnewsasia (cos imho, the latter sucks and i really could not care any less for mediacrap), i've been observing the weather patterns in North America quite a fair bit - and lo and behold, places which i'd visited last year in the Midwest and New England have already experienced crippling snowstorms, stuff strikingly absent when i was there. Not that i'd have liked to be there during such frigid conditions, but it still seems to reinforce the conclusion that i've arrived at, which is that the mercury always seems to head upwards whenever i'm in town. Apart from this prime example, i also recall last year when there was quite a bit of snow in Chicago just the week before i arrived there, which of course had all disappeared by the time i got there, and which reappeared just after i flew back to Chapel Hill. Even when i went back to the Philippines earlier this year, my cousin-in-law told me that there was hail the morning of the day i arrived (of course, i only arrived at night). And there are more examples where those came from... Sigh - how to ever do stuff like skiing like that (and i don't count snow city as a legitimate example)?

CORS bidding is just around the corner, and i'm as indecisive as ever. Experience obviously doesn't breed ease of action in this case... It doesn't help that i never got around to doing the pre-allocation this time round cos i was occupied with other stuff, and so it totally slipped my mind. I'm as fussy as ever when it comes to choosing classes, even though i've only three to choose in total, and i've already decided on one of them... Anyone else is shopping around for a good s/u-able (and hopefully non-examinable) breadth class?

Managed to go down to Esplanade to watch ACJC Choir caroling the other day - got to meet some of the people from my batch as well which was good... Miss those days quite a bit (well ok, maybe only parts of it) - i could still remember a good deal of my parts from the songs, especially since they've by and large remained the same even after seven years.

Yesterday's PRC camp, by God's grace went well - i think that was the only truly sunny day we've had in the whole of this month (and to that end i now have a painful reminder that i musn't forget to apply sunscreen on the back of my neck...), and thankfully no one got injured or anything like that. Once again, just like the prc camp i was at three years ago, i'm pretty sure that i spoke more Mandarin the whole of yesterday than i have in the rest of the year put together. And i was reminded why i'm so reticent about ever taking a holiday in China/HK/Taiwan etc - language frustrations would just drive me bonkers...

I totally concur with what mr brown posted about taxi drivers. Government affiliations aside, i think that it's just not right that basically no matter how bad the situation gets for the drivers, the cab companies basically are hardly the worse for wear, since regardless of how much (or how little) the drivers earn in a day, they still have to pay a fixed rental to the company. Talk about being out of touch. This latest fare increase basically affects the demand for taxi rides, at the expense of the drivers, whereas the companies themselves definitely feel less pain. It's situations like this that make me more sympathetic towards a proper labor movement in terms of unions and what not (and please NTUC so doesn't count). Of course, this has many messy drawbacks, but still nevertheless the drivers deserve to have it better than they do now (and yup, i'm speaking up for them even though they have caused me many an angry moment when i'm cycling).