ReNe: easter monday

Some fun at Christie Pits park on Easter Monday. We initially had just planned to walk down to PAT for groceries, but as Ryan was asleep and the weather was fantastic (23C!), we bought a bit of snacks from PAT and went over the park instead.

Of course Mike whipped out his camera. I think I looked rather nice here.

Then Ryan woke up. Here he looks like he's standing by himself -- not really. He stood unassisted for just a few seconds, long enough for Mike to take a shot. And no, Ryan was not offering me a drink. He likes water bottles; he'd shake them and be very amused.

Some fun on the merry-go-round. This girl of about six or seven was pushing the structure round and round. I was amazed that not only was she not tired, she was also not dizzy. After many revolutions, I was pretty giddy but she kept on and on and on.

Ryan held on very well. He wasn't crying but he didn't seem terribly excited as well. I think he was just concentrating hard on holding on!

And some fun on the swings. Just last Saturday (two days prior), I placed him on a baby swing at Kensington Park and he was quite frightened. (The last time he was in such a swing was in fall, when he was about five months old. I'm sure he had forgotten.) He was not comforted even when I sat with him in a regular swing. So we're pleased to see him enjoying himself here. He's not squealing with delight but at least he's smiling.

This is an interesting swing. I'm quite sure it's for the disabled; the tan plastic harness comes down and clips in place to hold one in securely. We found it quite comfortable.

ReNe: warm fall

Fall temperatures this year are higher than last year. I remember walking home one day in late October and it was snowing. The flakes were tiny and melted as soon as they hit the ground, but it was definitely snowing. This day last year, we went to catch the Santa Claus parade and it was, again, snowing. I remember feeling very, very cold, and ducking into a Tim Hortons for a warm chocolate.

In contrast, it hadn't snowed yet this season, and the temperature for the past couple of weeks have been hovering in the low teens. It's rather nice, actually. Cool and brisk, but not bitingly cold.

ReNe: wettest summer record

It's official -- this summer is Toronto's wettest on record. 272.8mm of rain, so far, over the months of June and July. It's fairly funny because all throughout winter, there was a lot of hype in the local news about breaking the all-time snow levels record, and I was excited as well because it was my first winter in Canada, but it only turned out to the third-heaviest for the record books in the end. In contrast, this summer didn't seem especially rainy and suddenly, it seems, Toronto just broke the heaviest rainfall records.

Unlike the locals, it does not seem terribly rainy to us. So I had to google -- what's Singapore's heaviest rainfall record?

In 1978, the highest rainfall recorded over 24 hours was 512 mm while the second highest rainfall recorded was 467 mm in 1969. And on 19 Dec 2006, the third highest on record, the 24-hour rainfall recorded was 366 mm.

All those numbers are rainfall recorded over ONE day.

And, because we actually remember that December of 2006, the amount of rain was 765.9 mm, which was a record for December since 1869.

We remember riding through the one on 19 December; we were on our way back to Singapore from KL. When the rain got really heavy and visibility dropped, we slowed down from 140km/h to 120, then 90. The North-South highway was jammed at parts so we had to occasionally moved to the shoulder to overtake the cars, and we passed by a few accidents. I remember the first accident: cresting the top of a hilly stretch, I looked down and was wondering about the black object in the middle of the road. Visibility was pretty poor, so I slowed down, and realized it was a smoking car, black because it was burnt. After that, we slowed down to 90km/h.

ReNe: missing the monsoons

Apparently, this summer in Toronto is one of the wettest to date. For this June and July, a total of 240.4mm of rain fell. That's apparently astounding because last year, Toronto received a total of 88mm for the whole summer, which was drier than usual.

Er, and here we were thinking that lately, Toronto's weather was feeling like Singapore's. Warm and humid, even if the so-called 'thunderstorms' here can't match the monsoons in South-east Asia. Last weekend was especially rainy and we especially enjoyed it. To us, it didn't seem especially heavy, but the local news said the recent rainy weather was creating 'chaos'. In the GTA, many traffic lights were out and some roads were submerged in water.

Average rainfall for Toronto and Singapore, figures pulled from World Climate's website.

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Year
Toronto	68.1	59.5	66.3	64.7	71.1	68.3	77.0	70.0	73.3	61.6	69.5	67.2	817.5
Singapore	238.5	165.1	173.6	166.4	170.7	163.1	149.8	171.3	163.5	191.0	250.1	269.7	2272.2

ReNe: summer solstice

Today is the longest day of the year -- the summer solstice. In Toronto, today, the sun rose at 5:36am and will set tonight at 9:03 am, resulting in 15 hours and 26 mins (and 46seconds) of daylight.

(I'm not sure what counts exactly as 'sunset' because I've noticed that even as late as 9:30pm, there's still quite a fair bit of light in the sky. This far up north, as compared to the tropics, it takes the sun a long time to set.)

Toronto is very lively in the summer. Last week we went to the Luminato festival, and upcoming festivals we hope to catch include Pride Week and a Toronto Jazz Festival.

The nice thing with the long hours is that we get plenty of time to do stuff and enjoy all these festivals. Last Saturday, we lazed around until we finally hauled our ass out of the door at 2pm. We cycled down to Mill Street to catch a food fair, one of the many events held as part of the Luminato festival. The food was a bit pricey and disappointing, but the Distillery district had gorgeous architecture and some funky shops. We then cycled down to St Lawrence Market to pick up a sandwich before catching the ferry to the Toronto Islands, where the Cycle Messenger World Championships (CMWC) was taking place. It was fun to gawk at the cyclists zooming past with odd-sized FedEx boxes stuffed in their messenger bags, and the race-hub/meeting point felt more like a rock concert than a race administration area. Cyclists and friends lounged on the grass, lean and tanned, often tattooed and pierced, as a live band played on. The atmosphere was competitive but in a rough and fun way -- we cycled past a checkpoint for the racers, where a big sign hung, "Park here, stupid!" By then, it was past five and the sun and our mood was still high, so we hopped over to the Waterfront, where many of the Luminato events were held as well (the events were spread out over the Waterfront and Distillery districts). We caught a free film (Whale Rider) and it was great. When we emerged from the theater at 8:10pm, the sky was still bright. We wandered around, listened to yet more live music (everywhere we went, it seems there was a stage set up and some band playing) and though about hanging around to catch some fire performance, but we were rather tired by then so we headed back. Later that night, I found out that the World Naked Bike Ride also took place that day; we were quite disappointed to have missed it.

ReNe: our place is a greenhouse

One of the things that we're astounded and confounded by is the weather (as compared to what we were used to in Singapore). More precisely, the temperatures and the rate at which it changes, as well as the delta's. A week ago, temperatures were in the low twenties, then a heat wave spike temperatures over the weekend to over 30C. As average winter tempeartures can drop to -20C and summers 25C, that's a annual delta of 45 degrees; if we consider the record low of -30C last Feb and 31C last weekend, that makes it a delta of 61C!

30C? That's standard fare in Singapore. When people tell us summers here in Toronto will be "unbearably hot and humid", we scoffed. It surely can't beat the weather in the tropics, we thought.

But we forgot a couple of important points. One, after many months, we've been too well-acclimatized to the cold that Canada is famous for. Two, the houses here are designed to maximize warmth -- they are well-insulated and have large windows with tiny openings. Our current place, for example, has a fairly big window and skylight, but the actual area that can be opened to ventilate constitutes about 30% of the large window, which is about 1m by 40cm or so.

In short, it's a effing greenhouse.

We ended up taking cold showers about three times a day. There's no air-conditioning here; poor rentals are too cheap-skate to include air-conditioning as part of the rent. I'm actually fine with that, as the outside temperature isn't too unbearable and it saves on electricity, but why don't they build in better windows and ventilation then?! Will it kill the building's insulation capacity to have windows that actually open wider?

Happily, it stormed last night, cooling the air significantly. But, like I said, ventilation in this place is poor and sleeping in the bed-loft in warm weather is murder, as warm air rises. We brought the fan up but all it does is blow hot air at us. After tossing for an hour last night, a headache and stuffy feeling steadily building, I gave up and insisted we sleep on the futon 'downstairs', which is beside the only opened window.

The new laminate floor is nice and cool... if summer continues like this, we would probably end up sleeping on the floor instead.

MiKE: Spring is here

yes, no exclamation mark and all that. It's late, and I'm not pleased. Heh. Well, not that bad, and not as if I can do anything about it. It started about a week ago, but it really got warm today, with a maximum temperature of a warm 19ºC (imagine that - 19ºC is warm).

Some photographic evidence:

Well, ok, not so much this one - there could still be a pile of snow on the ground, but we were walking around last weekend, and the skies were really clear, bright, and blue, and the no, there was no snow on the ground. Just wanted to include this because I thought it was a nice picture.

Or how about this one:
Somewhat better eh? See, no snow on the ground, bikes are out on the roads again, and the skies are not grey anymore. Quite appropriate to see the BMW R80GS (??? - as in, I'm certain it's a BMW, R series engine, and pretty sure it's the GS variant. But R80? not so sure) outside the antique shop. Interestingly enough, thanks to my exposure to tinkering around on the RS125, I can identify many of the parts on the engine, and given enough tools, manuals and time, I suspect I probably could do a minor overhaul of that thing... :)


This is one of those classical 'signs of spring'; that of a shoot arising from the soil. Yes, this is hardly a fresh shoot, it's probably at least a week old, but I've been chained to my computer crunching assignments and procrastinating and reading about cameras instead and panicking and writing assignments and and... you get the picture. This picture was taken today, after I submitted another assignment, and had time to go out for a walk:

MiKE: So distracting...

So, I'm sitting here, trying to finish my last paper so that I can finally take a break. And I've spent so much time looking out the window; perhaps because it is bright outside, with daylight, even through the thick clouds. But mostly because there is a huge snowstorm going on outside. And it is really interesting to watch. Yes, part of the attraction is due to my having not seen a snowstorm before, but I think the other is that the snowfall is so interesting. It'd be wispy powder one moment, falling gently as if someone were dusting icing sugar from the roof, then I'd hear the whistle of the wind in the tiny gap I left in the window to cool the room down somewhat, and then I'd look out and see the wind whip the snow till the trails fall almost horizontally. Then, the flakes falling would suddenly change size to huge almost pellet-sized chunks, and fall at the speed where one would expect rain to fall. There would be gusts, and amid the large flakes that fall, one would see the snow dust being swept up in vortices accompanying the large flakes, appearing as if there were multiple turbulent air streams outside my window. Suddenly, the wind will stop, and the flakes would all hang in midair, wondering what to do before remembering, cartoon character style, that it was supposed to fall down. All in all, mesmerizing.

And not to mention almost human drama of seeing cars stuck by the side of the road. There was this one car, that parked for a while by the kerb. When he wanted to set off, all he could do was to make his front wheel spin aimlessly in the snow-ice. He kept trying and trying, coming out, desperately pushing the snow away from under the front tyre with his shoes, and some small implement which was evidently unsuitable for the job, until someone offered to lend him a snow shovel, and I watched him clear the snow from in front of the car, pausing once in a while to stuff his frozen fingers into his jacket pockets, then continuing to shovel furiously, pausing to go back into the car to try again, failing to gain traction, shoveling again, and then finally managing to move his car out.

The snowstorm is really heavy, starting yesterday around noon, it was on and off, and got really heavy this morning. Apparently, even Environment Canada has issued warnings, predicting up to 40cm snowfalls over the weekend, windspeed during gusts at up to 90 km/h, and suggestions that it could be the worst storm in this region for 60 years. No kidding; I woke up this morning to see snow lodged between the inner and outer sliding windows, and they had been closed overnight(!):


Looking out, during the heavier snowfall period, it's clear visibility has been seriously obscured:


If i manage to shoot a picture of severe whiteout conditions, I'll post it up here.

The Environment Canada Warning:

Warnings

City of Toronto
11:15 AM EST Sunday 16 December 2007
Winter storm warning for
City of Toronto continued

A major winter storm with heavy snow and blowing snow occurring over all of southern and eastern Ontario.

This is a warning that dangerous winter weather conditions are imminent or occurring in these regions. Monitor weather conditions..Listen for updated statements.



At mid morning a massive winter storm was giving snow and blowing snow to all of southern and eastern Ontario. Some places such as Toronto were also reporting thunder and lightning.

The low responsible for the storm now lies over Lake Erie. It will track slowly eastward across New York state today then accelerate off the northeast tonight.

The snow associated with the storm is forecast to end over the Windsor area this evening, most of southern Ontario during the night, and early Monday morning over extreme eastern Ontario.

Further amounts of 10 to 15 centimetres are expected over most of southern Ontario but with higher amounts likely over portions of Niagara where winds off Lake Ontario will enhance the snowfall.

Over eastern Ontario further amounts of 20 to 30 centimetres are expected.

In the wake of the main storm northwesterly squalls will develop off Lake Huron this evening then continue into Monday morning before weakening. This will delay the end of the stormy conditions over areas to the southeast of Lake Huron until Monday.

MiKE: Overnight snowfall

Last night, or rather, this early morning, the snow fell again. Since the last snow I reported about slightly more than a week ago, the snow had been receding and melting. With this week's forecast temperatures not exceeding 5˚C, I think it is safe to say that the snow that fell will stick around for a while. Take a look:


Once again, this is looking out my window, east across Spadina Avenue, with the concrete tunnel for the streetcars. One thing that I'd bring attention to, is the depth of snow - as you can see from the cars that have been parked overnight, the snow is at least 5cm deep, and at that side of Spadina Avenue, somehow, the pavement has not been cleared. Think about it this way: the cars you see are parked along a road. There is now no distinction between road and pavement; the snow is at least as deep as the height of the curb. Interestingly enough, Spadina Avenue, a medium density North-South road for downtown Toronto, is very quiet this morning; car density has dropped from the usual 5 cars per minute (or so) at this time I'm writing (11am) to about 1 car every 5 minutes (or so) (okay I may be exaggerating somewhat, but the density is really low, ok!). And they are driving very.slowly. I saw a car drive out of the side road (along the street where the cars were parked), and it was moving so slowly. I guess it has to be so for safety's sake - at one point I think I noticed the drive wheel spin when it lost grip on snow.

Interesting.

And oh yes am I glad that I went to Sanko yesterday and not procrastinated till today or even later.

MiKE: It's snowing!

So, on Wednesday afternoon, talking to some locals, I heard the rumour that there was going to be up to 20cm of snow that night, and also on Thursday. I spent most of the evening awake, till about 3am, waiting for Serene to arrive - she was hitching a ride with her friend who drove up, and was supposed to arrive around midnight. More on that later; but in the meantime, it was a cold and rainy night - in fact, it had been raining for about the whole of Wednesday, a incessant drizzle that was not impossible to walk through, but at times increased in intensity, especially after the sun set at the very early time of 5pm these days.

I got her position reports via sms, and learnt that she was being held up by jams before the border, and also at the crossing itself. Apparently, what was planned to be a 12 hour journey turned out to be closer to 18 hours total travel time. I'll let her tell her side of the story recounting the trip, but as for me, I was staying awake, finishing a draft for submission, and then watching episodes of South Park.

By the time she arrived, it was after 2am, and I did not envy her - for some reason they had to leave the windows cracked open a bit or else the windscreen would mist up, so as a result, she arrived here practically an ice cube.

The next morning, when we awoke, I took a look out the window to find this:
The rain had turned to snow overnight, and because my outer window was ajar, it had blown in and almost jammed the window. It was still snowing when we woke up. Looking out, we saw this:
For people who have been following this blog, you should remember how this looked like when it was still sunny and the trees were still fully green; it was an amazing sight - the snowflakes falling were so light and being blown by the breeze in all directions.

When the snowfall lightened somewhat, the brightness went up a bit, and the view cleaned itself up:

And then we decided to go out for a walk, even though it was still snowing, albeit lightly. We wanted to go to the MEC Store - Mountain Equipment Co-op sells good outdoor stuff, and we walked the 1.5 km or so after lunch at a Japanese restaurant along Bloor Street.

Along the way, we decided to stop and take a picture:
and we walked on, went to MEC, bought something, and then promptly returned it even before leaving the store as it seemed that the product was not working as well as advertised. Sigh. We walked home, empty handed, in medium snowfall, in the dark.

This post is very boring. I need to write more, but not for now... Feeling sleepy and tired, and I thought to just post these pictures up first, and then maybe talk more later.

MiKE: Autumn is here. Don't believe?

Hard not to believe that autumn is here, and winter is actually approaching. The sun has now been setting no later than 7, and most of the time anyway, the heavy clouds make sure there is no direct sunlight even at 4-5pm, like now as I write. The temperatures have been maxing out in the teens, though there have been a couple of days, especially last weekend, where it was unseasonably warm at 25 or so. Anyway, here are a couple of pictures that I thought to upload before i accidentally delete the project folder, which i did twice(!):

Bloor Street West, looking west. This is the street along which I have three 24 hour grocers, where I get my food from. I happened to have the camera in the bag this particular grocery trip, and had to stop and take a shot of this.

and also this picture. Same scene.

On the way to OISE this morning. This is looking north at Spadina. I am actually on the road median, and the streetcar actually runs underground to Spadina subway station, just under where I was standing.

Someone probably had to walk home barefeet that day... These trees are outside the U of T department of sociology, which shares the building with the University of Toronto Schools, a gifted education program run by the U of T. If I were a betting person, my money would be on the teenage kids that did this.

A wider shot of the same scene. As you can see, it was pretty sunny. Trees have really turned colour, and it is starting to look really pretty.

On other fronts, work is getting pretty interesting. I remember writing someone and saying that I'm actually happy to be this busy. There is a certain aspect of being happily engaged with work that is satisfying, and I'm experiencing that right now.

Ok, gotta go. Have to work... :)