Raining cats and dogs kind of weather and my current smart home ambitions

The rainy season has officially started and it has been raining cats and dogs the whole afternoon for the better part of the week. It felt very humid and uncomfortable when it just started raining, much worse than the dry summer heat, but the weather has cooled down considerably. It also helps that there have been some strong winds lately (a tropical depression is in the vicinity). There have already been reports of flooding in certain parts of Metro Manila. Heavy rains in Quezon City Given my obsession with the temperature and the humidity insi…

Celebrating special occasions in absentia

Eating out with a friend in a shabu-shabu restaurant to celebrate my late father's birthday. It would have been my father's 83rd birthday last Friday had he been still with us. To celebrate, I have decided to whip up our very traditional (in our family at least) birthday fare of Filipino-style spaghetti and orange butter cake (which my father was so fond of baking in his later years) for lunch and invited a friend to eat out in a nearby shabu-shabu hotpot restaurant for dinner. The Sunday after that was coincidentally also Mother's Day …

Hot summers in the Philippines

The week of lent is oftentimes regarded as the warmest time of the year in the Philippines (at least according to traditional wisdom). Sure enough, temperatures in Iloilo has been getting as high as 36 degrees C in the afternoon for the past few days (and for the rest of the week according to forecasts). I have been vacationing in Iloilo since early last week and on a whim, I have decided to bring my portable room thermometer/hygrometer to Iloilo. Perhaps it is my obsessive nature that makes me want to know the inside and outside temperature and humidi…