Summer

Well this last weekend was Mother's Day weekend, and unfortunately I wasn't able to see my mum, but I did give her and my grandmothers a Skype call to wish them a Happy Mother's Day.

It may not officially be summer, but summer weather is HERE. Today the daytime high was around 97 degrees (Fahrenheit) and yesterday it was only a few degrees cooler, with a high around 91-92.

One big difference between here and back home is you see LOTS of girls breaking out their umbrellas as parasols, which at first glance struck me as kind of funny/silly, but then at second thought, actually makes a lot of sense. In Florida it gets hella hot and humid, but for the most part, you don't spend too much time just outside. Either you're inside, or you get in your car to go somewhere, and once you arrive, you walk maybe 20 meters into the nearest building.

The exceptions of course are if you are laying out on the beach or something like this, but then in THAT instance, you DO see people with umbrellas.

Anyway, here at school the students primarily walk everywhere, and its a half a mile walk to the nearest bus stop, its actually pretty reasonable as protection against the sun.

The good news is that the weather is supposed to cool down a bit later this week with a forecasted high tomorrow of around 89 and then Wednesday and Thursday highs of 71 and 75 respectively.

On a completely unrelated note, I was listening to the "Lingua Franca" podcast the other day, a podcast published by the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) whose episodes are each about 15 minutes long and whose subjects are always based on language. It's really quite interesting. Anyway, I listened to an episode recently that was talking about Latin and its influence, and at the end of the podcast, the host read this passage, which I found tickled my brain rather nicely:

An emeritus professor from my alma mater had been advising me to write my magnum opus. She offered to provide some bona fides for me to her publisher, but when I finally did carpe diem and write the thing, I became persona non grata with the publishers. When I tried to send them a facsimile of my masterpiece it caused a paper jam. I suggested, almost as a non-sequitur, that if I fixed their fax machine for them pro bono then, as a quid pro quo, they should publish my magnum opus et cetera. This, as my professor has since been telling me ad nauseum, was not a good idea. What I should've offered them was a mea culpa.