So, how hot is it?

Well, hot enough apparently for the SA Government to send every single resident in Adelaide the following text message;

"For urgent assistance phone 000. Do not reply to this message. IMPORTANT S.A GOVERNMENT HEAT HEALTH WARNING: Heat Stress Can Kill; Stay Cool; Stay Inside; Drink plenty of water; Check the safety of vulnerable neighbours; Listen to your radio"

Apart from the strange use of capital letters, it shows just how serious this heat wave is. Up to 30 deaths have been recorded over the last three days which are suspected to be the direct result of the heat.

Thankfully, as I type this, the temperature has slipped into the mid-twenty's & I've got a healthy breeze flowing through the house. My fish are still alive & the frogs keep returning every night to the pond, but the lawn is well & truly dead & my palm trees have been burnt to a crisp!

 

So how hot is it?

Well, for starters, the screens on my local atm's have turned black, so you can't perform a transaction (unless you've memorised the sequence of buttons required.)
 
On the Expressway I take to get home, there were no less than a dozen cars broken down after the first hill. I watched one woman open her bonnet as I drove past & the cloud which followed had gone beyond the steam stage & was more of a blueish shade & I would expect, rather expensive.

In order for buses to get up cetain hills, they need to turn off the airconditioning so they have the power to make it to the top. Of course, said buses are like sardine cans because the tram & railway lines have all buckled.

Officially, Adelaide hit a temperature of 45.7C. That's 114.26 degrees Fahrenheit for those readers up in the Americas. Unofficially, I recorded a higher reading just after leaving work....



I snapped this at a set of lights, but I did see it get up to 49.5C at one point & yes, that is the external temperature, it was much hotter in the car when I got in.

It wasn't too much cooler when I finally made it home....



Thankfully, the insulation in my house works pretty well & it was nearly 10C degrees cooler inside than out.

My horror story for the night was while watching the tennis with the aircon working overtime. My focus shifted from the TV to a spider hanging a few inches in front of my face. It was only tiny & I nailed it with a shoe. However, I then looked upward to see dozens of baby spiders scampering all over the ceiling. 

They had snuck in through the a gap between the light fitting & the roof, probably to escape the heat within the roof & I had to chase each one with a vacuum cleaner. In all, I would have caught 40 odd & smeared a few on the roof which I couldn't quite suck up. I then used bug spray to fill the gap, leaving a nice wet spot. I've since sealed any gaps with blu-tack as a temporary measure until I can get up in the roof & sort out if I have an infestation or not. I'm waiting until it's a bit cooler before climbing up there though!

Adelaide had 13 consecutive days of over 35C in March last year & it was considered a freak weather situation. Now, it's looking like the city might have a crack at the record with this heat wave expected to continue for at least the next week.

I admit to liking hot temperatures, but this may just test my limits!!

 

Here's a scam which comes from Sydney & has been slammed as a fake so quickly it makes your head spin.

Heidi Clarke (not her real last name) posts a video on youtube with a claim she's trying to find a man she encountered in a cafe when their breakfast orders were mixed. She then stole his suit jacket after he conveniently left it behind. She now wants to find the guy & is using the internet to do so. Does this sound a little like the New York Subway incident from last year?! Why yes, yes it does!

The video itself is quite disturbing. The lack of sincerity, the numerous times she states "I'm not a stalker" & the sniffing of the jacket is, well... just creepy. If I was the owner of the jacket, I'd be emailing her to drop it into a police station & collect it from there.

Then there is the website, with Heidi wearing the jacket in provocative poses! The website is here - "maninthejacket" but due to the traffic it's getting, the site may not be up again for a while.

I'm betting it's a scam & a bunch of people are suspecting it's a clothing label behind it. Whatever it is, the girl has done herself no favours & if the mystery guy does exist, he'd be a brave man to come forward!

The story does make me flick back to an incident I had just before Christmas 2007 when I came across a girl who caught my attention in a few separate incidents over as many days. I first spotted this particular girl as she walked into Harris Scarfe in Rundle Mall. She was amongst a number of people, but my attention was drawn to her. A few minutes later I found myself, by chance, walking directly behind her & thought how cute her braided ginger hair was. I got back to shopping, thinking nothing more about it, but a few minutes later someone said "excuse me" & it was the same girl asking for help to find something in the store. I said I didn't work here & she said "I know, but I thought I'd ask you because you are nicely dressed."

It happened very quickly & she continued on her way. I can't explain why I kept thinking about the incident (probably because it was such an unexpected compliment), but I even mentioned it to a colleague once I'd got back to work.

The very next weekend, I was walking through the Marion shopping centre & as normal, I only go shopping when it is absolutely necessary. Like all guys, I know exactly what I want, where it is & the shortest possible route to get in & out of a shopping complex. For some reason, during the express walk down my pre-chosen path, I looked up & to the side subconsciously to spot the same girl walking in the opposite direction. I thought I'd made a mistake, but about ten minutes later, I encountered her again when I recognised her voice in a store. We never made eye contact, but I was floored that I had come across one random person coincidently on multiple occasions.

Perhaps that's all it is though, pure coincidence. I took the encounter as a warning for something else that was going on at the time & it proved to be correct. Maybe fate was playing a part, but I suspect I'll never see her again & as much as I'd like to know more, I feel like I'm not supposed to, at least for the time being.

& this is as close as I'll get to putting out a public campaign to find someone. There shall be no separate website, no artist rendering, certainly no video & without a doubt - no sniffing of any garments!!

 

Somehow, we all just crept into 2009 & it's barreling along as quick as 2008 left us. I've tried to gather a few thoughts to conclude the last year, but it's nearly too late to be relevant anymore & I hate that!!

The second half of last year was filled with a new house & I'm seriously struggling to remember anything at all from the first half of 2008. Celebrating my birthday at the Clipsal 500 was about the only thing worth mentioning. By July, I was running around filling out paperwork & getting ready to move on from the place I've called home for so many years to my own little patch which now possesses my financial soul!

I'm not too sure what's coming up this year. With all the crap hitting the fan internationally, I'm more than likely going to keep my head down & weather the possibility of a depression. I suspect it may get pretty ugly for the next few years & I really want to come out the other side & not be living on the street. Unfortunately, from my view of things, many people think they will be immune to losing their jobs & houses & livelihoods, but it doesn't take much research into the Great Depression in the 20's to see the potential for carnage. If you believe any of the financial "experts", you're being an idiot, because none of them have forecast any of what's happened, so how can they possibly tell us what's coming!

Now I've brought the mood down, let's try & recover it!

The internet & it's respective components will be causing some change around this little website shortly. The site which hosted the comments has finally shelved their service, so they no longer work & Blogrolling, which hosted the blog roll to the right has been hacked & therefore down for the last couple of months. It also seems that nearly all of my old reads have given up blogging, so that needs a good shakeup.

I think it's also time to go back to old school blogging. I had ambitions of having every post here having photos, which later changed to include bigger topical posts, but something has still been missing. My original blog from 2001-2006 was full of random thoughts as they happened, but now I'm over-processing & whilst I've still got the enthusiasm, when I sit down to start typing, it all becomes a bit muddled & incoherent. Invariably, getting back to where it all began means more posts, more often & I was known to get a bit fired up, so strap yourselves in.

Changes afoot, circa 2009.