British Expat Newsletter:
9 February 2005

By Kay McMahon, 9 February 2005

Hello, and welcome to those who have joined up since our last newsletter.

In this issue

This week: Climate
Virtual Snacks
Sponsor
Bizarre Searches
Joke and quotation

This week

In last week’s newsletter I said I was going to leave rock ‘n’ roll for another time. Well, this week isn’t the time – you’ll just have to keep waiting!

No, I’m much more interested in climate. We’ve been having an interesting discussion on the general community forum as to why so many Brits seem keen to settle in Canada. (Our Canada country boards on the in-country forum are easily the busiest.) For many of them, it seems, the winters are a major attraction!

Personally I couldn’t stand nine months of cold. Having spent the early years of my life living in the North East of Scotland, I got enough cold weather to last me a lifetime. Disregard anything you might have read elsewhere – the coldest place in the world is Aberdeen railway station. Even worse, it was cold AND damp. I suppose Canada has at least got the edge on that score – it’s too cold for damp.

Mind you, if the latest climate change predictions are anything to go by, the UK could have a markedly different climate much sooner than anyone thought. A distributed computing project at climateprediction.net recently published results that show the earth’s average temperature could rise by as much as 11°C by the end of this century. That’s twice as much as previous models have suggested. Even a rise of 2° – the minimum the model has come up with – would mean the displacement of millions of people from their homes and a drop in agricultural output. And it’s also been suggested that the Gulf Stream might be diverted or even switch direction, which would make the UK colder than it is now. One more reason for me not to return!

Give me warm weather any time. I don’t even mind if it rains here in Thailand – at least you get a good honest downpour, rather than the half-hearted stuff you get in the UK that gradually makes you damper and damper. And the heat generally dries you off pretty quickly anyway.

Oh yes, and Dave was delighted when I found his weather station the other day. For those of you who wonder what a weather station is, it’s a barometer with two extra dials for temperature and humidity. I don’t know what he was so excited about – it’s not as if the weather changes much from day to day here anyway. Barring a couple of mango showers last month, it’s been sunny and warm since the end of October. Even at night it rarely goes much below 20°C.

What’s the climate like where you are? Do you prefer basking in glorious sunshine, or setting your cheeks tingling in the bracing winter air? Why not let us know?

Virtual Snacks

Just a couple of suggestions if you have a little time to spare:

On the climate side of things, the climateprediction.net research project is still going on if you’d like to get involved in that and you have the machine capacity to take it on. It’s a massive exercise, it’s looking at something that will affect the whole world, and it’s British-led – don’tcha feel proud?
http://www.climateprediction.net

And if you want to learn about forecasting the weather yourself, why not try the Met Office’s series of online leaflets? Each leaflet has a quiz attached so that you can test your newly-gained knowledge.
[Obsolete link deleted]

Bizarre Searches

Some strange search terms which have led people to visit British Expat recently:

seeking the journalists from abroad (10)
red wine and nightmares (4)
heap of stored potatoes (3)
hire a monkey (3)
shitsu (3)
expats=canada (2)
emigrate richard (2)
lochness ness monsters (2)
foreign costumes on chacha dance (2)
pump my wife (2)
sharp bedrooms (2)
british dodgy address (1)

Till next time…
Happy surfing!

Kay
Editor
http://www.britishexpat.com

Quotation

“Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.”
– John Ruskin (1819-1900)

Joke

Helpful Household Hints for Dog Owners No. 523

To tell what the weather’s like, go to your back door and look for the dog.

If the dog is at the door and he is wet, it’s probably raining. But if the dog is standing there really soaking wet, it is probably raining really hard.

If the dog’s coat looks as if it’s been rubbed the wrong way, it’s probably windy.

If the dog has snow on his back, it’s probably snowing.

Of course, to be able to get a consistently reliable indication of what the weather’s like, you have to leave the dog outside all the time, especially if you expect bad weather.