Pneumonia for Christmas

So I get to spend the holiday in a somewhat over- air conditioned room at Bangkok's Samitivej hospital, feasting on intravenious drip instead of enjoying a lovely Chaucer experience:

Janus sit by the Fyhr with Double Beerd

and Drinketh of his Bugle horn the Wyn

Beforn him stand the brawn of tuskid Swyn

And Noel crieth every lusty Man!

How to deal with the boredom of it all? Well, I suppose I can finally get around to investigating the truth of the Thai conviction, forcibly set forth by another pretty girl who pounds my chest twice a day, that people get sick in Thailand when the weather changes. This is a theory that might be checked out, a future task.

And enjoy a few crumbs of pleasure chirping in Thai to the cute nurses.

But the air conditioning chills my feverish skin. I turn it off, paying the price of damp sweat in the warming room. Finally, an accidental solution: coming across and meditating on some online photos of German and American soldiers in bleak winter landscapes in the Ardennes offensive -- Battle of the Bulge -- of WW 2, which I find on my ipad,  I coax out a feeling of relative comfort. You'll say psychological, no doubt! (can't stand the word).

Better yet, I get this nurse to bring a small pedestal fan to the room, directing at lowest speed not on me but along the wall, to keep the room air slightly stirring. Much better than the air conditioning!

Pneumonia for Christmas

So I get to spend the holiday in a somewhat over- air conditioned room at Bangkok's Samitivej hospital, feasting on intravenious drip instead of enjoying a lovely Chaucer experience:

Janus sit by the Fyhr with Double Beerd

and Drinketh of his Bugle horn the Wyn

Beforn him stand the brawn of tuskid Swyn

And Noel crieth every lusty Man!

How to deal with the boredom of it all? Well, I suppose I can finally get around to investigating the truth of the Thai conviction, forcibly set forth by another pretty girl who pounds my chest twice a day, that people get sick in Thailand when the weather changes. This is a theory that might be checked out, a future task.

And enjoy a few crumbs of pleasure chirping in Thai to the cute nurses.

But the air conditioning chills my feverish skin. I turn it off, paying the price of damp sweat in the warming room. Finally, an accidental solution: coming across and meditating on some online photos of German and American soldiers in bleak winter landscapes in the Ardennes offensive -- Battle of the Bulge -- of WW 2, which I find on my ipad,  I coax out a feeling of relative comfort. You'll say psychological, no doubt! (can't stand the word).

Better yet, I get this nurse to bring a small pedestal fan to the room, directing at lowest speed not on me but along the wall, to keep the room air slightly stirring. Much better than the air conditioning!

Bangkok temperature plunges to below freezing!

Sky radiant temperature in Bangkok
 -- surprisingly cool, even on a hot season afternoon.

Believe it or not, the sky temperature the last few days has dropped to 0 deg C or a little below. 

People who write learned papers and books about tropical architecture and comfort --Floridians, Singaporeans, Australians, and, God knows why, even some Norwegians -- talk of "dumping" building heat, ie trying to find places where the enthalpy is low to which unwanted building heat can be efficiently transferred.

Alas, this is not easily done in Thailand because there aren't any cool places to be found. With a mean temp over the year of nearly 28 degrees(82 F), the earth itself is warm -- about 28 degrees, which does not provide much of a "sink" for heat. 


The sky, which cools the overheated brow and the roof in the night desert  is fairly warm in the tropics, except for a few weeks in the low humidity "cool season", and efforts to radiate heat into the sky from buildings are not usually considered to yield much benefit, especially in the hot season.

But since we have recently seen that we are not asking for much cooling, just a few degrees, I've been taking some night sky temperature measurements* with my little Radio Shack radiant thermometer. Here are the results on the graph above. Evidently the night sky temperature is a function of sky moisture, or dew point. And in the hot season, when there is a lot of moisture in the air, the night sky becomes less effective as a heat sink.

But still. How much can we get from a night sky of 15 degrees?

According to radiant heat theory, we should be able to transfer about

k*(Troof^4-Tsky^4) watts/m2
where k= 5.6697xlO-8 w/m2-°K. T

which comes to about 50 to 80 watts per square meter of roof. This is enough to lower the roof temperture, suppress it as we say, by two or three degrees.

The question is, can we use this natural cooling to some good end?
-------------------------------
* I know that this instrument is not really measuring the temperature of anything in the sense of say a thermometer, rather it is feeling how much radiation is being emitted by whatever you point it at. Or whatever you point it's 30 degree "eye" at. It thinks that the emittance of everything is the same, maybe 0.9, which is not true or things like aluminum and skies. But since radiation is what we are talking about here, I'm just going to go ahead and figure the heat transfer as if the "temperature" of the sky was what the radiant thermometer says it is.

Bangkok temperature plunges to below freezing!

Sky radiant temperature in Bangkok
 -- surprisingly cool, even on a hot season afternoon.

Believe it or not, the sky temperature the last few days has dropped to 0 deg C or a little below. 

People who write learned papers and books about tropical architecture and comfort --Floridians, Singaporeans, Australians, and, God knows why, even some Norwegians -- talk of "dumping" building heat, ie trying to find places where the enthalpy is low to which unwanted building heat can be efficiently transferred.

Alas, this is not easily done in Thailand because there aren't any cool places to be found. With a mean temp over the year of nearly 28 degrees(82 F), the earth itself is warm -- about 28 degrees, which does not provide much of a "sink" for heat. 


The sky, which cools the overheated brow and the roof in the night desert  is fairly warm in the tropics, except for a few weeks in the low humidity "cool season", and efforts to radiate heat into the sky from buildings are not usually considered to yield much benefit, especially in the hot season.

But since we have recently seen that we are not asking for much cooling, just a few degrees, I've been taking some night sky temperature measurements* with my little Radio Shack radiant thermometer. Here are the results on the graph above. Evidently the night sky temperature is a function of sky moisture, or dew point. And in the hot season, when there is a lot of moisture in the air, the night sky becomes less effective as a heat sink.

But still. How much can we get from a night sky of 15 degrees?

According to radiant heat theory, we should be able to transfer about

k*(Troof^4-Tsky^4) watts/m2
where k= 5.6697xlO-8 w/m2-°K. T

which comes to about 50 to 80 watts per square meter of roof. This is enough to lower the roof temperture, suppress it as we say, by two or three degrees.

The question is, can we use this natural cooling to some good end?
-------------------------------
* I know that this instrument is not really measuring the temperature of anything in the sense of say a thermometer, rather it is feeling how much radiation is being emitted by whatever you point it at. Or whatever you point it's 30 degree "eye" at. It thinks that the emittance of everything is the same, maybe 0.9, which is not true or things like aluminum and skies. But since radiation is what we are talking about here, I'm just going to go ahead and figure the heat transfer as if the "temperature" of the sky was what the radiant thermometer says it is.

Phaking in Phnom Penh

Chez Gaston, Phnom Penh

Ou-la-la, lovely food and people here in Cambodia where I am spending a few hot bright days in late November. Bright blue sky radiant temperatures are 15 degrees C, but the sun creates a fiery glare that makes it pretty hot along the tree-short (and watershort)  riverside area. My hotel room was catching it on the outside walls with inside wall temps at 33 deg and the sluggish aicon was not keeping up. I asked for another room at the desk but they showed me a great trick instead. Get a castrated room key card and when you go out leave it in the slot by the door so the power and aircon remains on.

Meanwhile the astrologers (?) are predicting worse to come as per the local English language news this morning.

Phaking in Phnom Penh

Chez Gaston, Phnom Penh

Ou-la-la, lovely food and people here in Cambodia where I am spending a few hot bright days in late November. Bright blue sky radiant temperatures are 15 degrees C, but the sun creates a fiery glare that makes it pretty hot along the tree-short (and watershort)  riverside area. My hotel room was catching it on the outside walls with inside wall temps at 33 deg and the sluggish aicon was not keeping up. I asked for another room at the desk but they showed me a great trick instead. Get a castrated room key card and when you go out leave it in the slot by the door so the power and aircon remains on.

Meanwhile the astrologers (?) are predicting worse to come as per the local English language news this morning.

My modest Bangkok electric bill

At about ten cents US per kilowatt hour the electric bill for our condo was less than forty dollars US last month, a cool one. Our hot June bill (750 kw-hrs) was nearly double; even then our nightly use of aircon for a single shaded bedroom amounted to only about $1 extra a day -- not too bad. On the other hand, this would amount to perhaps ten percent of the income of most Thai workers -- making aircon a threshold luxury for them. 

This is also consistent with the observation that aircon amounts to roughly half the electric power use in Bangkok.

My modest Bangkok electric bill

At about ten cents US per kilowatt hour the electric bill for our condo was less than forty dollars US last month, a cool one. Our hot June bill (750 kw-hrs) was nearly double; even then our nightly use of aircon for a single shaded bedroom amounted to only about $1 extra a day -- not too bad. On the other hand, this would amount to perhaps ten percent of the income of most Thai workers -- making aircon a threshold luxury for them. 

This is also consistent with the observation that aircon amounts to roughly half the electric power use in Bangkok.

Air conditioned tents

At Mecca. Sufficient for 3 million people. Used 5 days a year.

Air conditioned tents

At Mecca. Sufficient for 3 million people. Used 5 days a year.

If the sun doesn't rise in the East, where in hell does it rise? And how do ants know this?

During the hot season in Thailand, it rises in the northeast, at an azimuth of 23 degrees above due east, same as the tilt of the earth's axis toward the sun, as you can see on my pub sketch.

And it sets in the northwest, 23 degrees above the west. So really all you need to know is the tilt of the axis toward the sun, and that will tell you the direction of sunrise and sunset.

Here is an equation for the angle:

azimuth (above east or west)=-23.4*cos(360*(m+.3)/12)

where m is the month 0 to 12 (eg 1.5=feb 15)

Now the amazing thing is that with an MIT degree I didn't know this when I came to Thailand, I thought that the sun rose due east! 

Even an ant, with no MIT degree, knows better! (More on this later). My mother, with 2 years of Boston Teachers College, who taught me astronomy with an apple and an orange, knew better!

If the sun doesn't rise in the East, where in hell does it rise? And how do ants know this?

During the hot season in Thailand, it rises in the northeast, at an azimuth of 23 degrees above due east, same as the tilt of the earth's axis toward the sun, as you can see on my pub sketch.

And it sets in the northwest, 23 degrees above the west. So really all you need to know is the tilt of the axis toward the sun, and that will tell you the direction of sunrise and sunset.

Here is an equation for the angle:

azimuth (above east or west)=-23.4*cos(360*(m+.3)/12)

where m is the month 0 to 12 (eg 1.5=feb 15)

Now the amazing thing is that with an MIT degree I didn't know this when I came to Thailand, I thought that the sun rose due east! 

Even an ant, with no MIT degree, knows better! (More on this later). My mother, with 2 years of Boston Teachers College, who taught me astronomy with an apple and an orange, knew better!

Is there really a blazing sun in the tropics?

Solar irradiation graphic by William Connolley based on HadCM3 data.

The heat was growing worse and worse. April was nearly over, but there was no hope of rain for another three weeks, five weeks it might be. Even the lovely transient dawns were spoiled by the thought of the long, blinding hours to come, when one's head would ache, and the glare would penetrate through every covering and glue up one's eyelids with restless sleep. No one, Oriental or European, could keep awake in the heat of day without a struggle.  --George Orwell, Burmese Days TNR 16

Actually, the sun in SE Asia is not especially blazing, rather 50 to 75 percent blazing. George Orwell is not really talking about the heat of the sun in his novel/memoir Burmese Days, it's mainly really.... other stuff that make it so uncomfortable. We'll be looking at all that.

But for now, take a look at this map which shows how much energy actually reaches the earth on the average over a year. Thailand -- and much of SE Asia including Orwell's Burma, is about 200 watts per square meter over the year, the same as the US south and most of the central and South America.

And why aren't we seeing a smooth red belt of blazing heat right across the map in the tropical region between The Tropic of Cancer and The Tropic of Capricon? Because over much of the area, high water vapor including clouds are blocking 25 to 50 percent of the solar radiation. This potent factor may be enough to offset global warming in these regions.

Is there really a blazing sun in the tropics?

Solar irradiation graphic by William Connolley based on HadCM3 data.

The heat was growing worse and worse. April was nearly over, but there was no hope of rain for another three weeks, five weeks it might be. Even the lovely transient dawns were spoiled by the thought of the long, blinding hours to come, when one's head would ache, and the glare would penetrate through every covering and glue up one's eyelids with restless sleep. No one, Oriental or European, could keep awake in the heat of day without a struggle.  --George Orwell, Burmese Days TNR 16

Actually, the sun in SE Asia is not especially blazing, rather 50 to 75 percent blazing. George Orwell is not really talking about the heat of the sun in his novel/memoir Burmese Days, it's mainly really.... other stuff that make it so uncomfortable. We'll be looking at all that.

But for now, take a look at this map which shows how much energy actually reaches the earth on the average over a year. Thailand -- and much of SE Asia including Orwell's Burma, is about 200 watts per square meter over the year, the same as the US south and most of the central and South America.

And why aren't we seeing a smooth red belt of blazing heat right across the map in the tropical region between The Tropic of Cancer and The Tropic of Capricon? Because over much of the area, high water vapor including clouds are blocking 25 to 50 percent of the solar radiation. This potent factor may be enough to offset global warming in these regions.

Does the tropical sun rise in the east?

...and sink in the west?

Well not exactly, at least here in Bangkok in the hot season, April of every year. The illustration here which I made in the pub the other night shows this for June 21, summer solstice. It actually rises in the northeast and sets in the northwest, and that is a very important detail because it affects which condos get deadly solar heat at different times of the day.


Worth a book in itself? Maybe. It would have saved me a lot of discomfort, and money too, if I had understood this fifteen years ago. 

Does the tropical sun rise in the east?

...and sink in the west?

Well not exactly, at least here in Bangkok in the hot season, April of every year. The illustration here which I made in the pub the other night shows this for June 21, summer solstice. It actually rises in the northeast and sets in the northwest, and that is a very important detail because it affects which condos get deadly solar heat at different times of the day.


Worth a book in itself? Maybe. It would have saved me a lot of discomfort, and money too, if I had understood this fifteen years ago. 

What to wear at a hot and humid funeral, US style. But no flip-flops, please.

USA fashion website advice: These days, a sleeveless dress and bare legs is appropriate at most American funerals, especially when it’s a very hot climate. Consider a lightweight cardigan if there’s a service inside the house of worship and a hat to protect yourself from the sun at the grave site. If your shoulders are bared, your neckline should be very modest, the fit not too tight, and the hemline at the knee.

Reader Comment: One thing that set me off at my Dad's funeral was the minister, a woman in her 30s, in flip-flops. She had on a black robe and I imagine she thought since she had that on that her feet didn't matter. 

funeral entertainment in Asia

Now there will be those who disapprove of the lack of gravity here, but they would be more surprised at village funerals in Thailand, where rock bands and sexy dancers are the norm, or in Taiwan, where even nude dancing is OK.

What to wear at a hot and humid funeral, US style. But no flip-flops, please.

USA fashion website advice: These days, a sleeveless dress and bare legs is appropriate at most American funerals, especially when it’s a very hot climate. Consider a lightweight cardigan if there’s a service inside the house of worship and a hat to protect yourself from the sun at the grave site. If your shoulders are bared, your neckline should be very modest, the fit not too tight, and the hemline at the knee.

Reader Comment: One thing that set me off at my Dad's funeral was the minister, a woman in her 30s, in flip-flops. She had on a black robe and I imagine she thought since she had that on that her feet didn't matter. 

funeral entertainment in Asia

Now there will be those who disapprove of the lack of gravity here, but they would be more surprised at village funerals in Thailand, where rock bands and sexy dancers are the norm, or in Taiwan, where even nude dancing is OK.

Thermal misery index: Bangkok v Phnom Penh

Having spent some time in Phnom Penh over the past month, it seemed to me that the Cambodian city was much more hot and glaring than Bangkok. So today back in BKK I checked this by compiling one of my favorite indexes for the two cities: Extreme Cooling Degree Days (CDD29). This was derived from the excellent web site degreedays.net which allows you to calculate cooling degree days based on any temperature base you like. In this case I used a base of 29C (84F) which is the maximum allowable temperature for comfortable (sweat-free) sleeping IMHO.

Cambodian expats escribe PP as insufferable in the hot season (April-May) and the above graph suggests it is a little but not much worse than Bangkok at that critical time of year.

On the other hand PP has many fewer high-rise buildings than BKK, and the shading seems to me much less there, the sun penetrating down to street level. A more accurate comparison would require a careful comparison of downtown urban microclimates, and also, I conclude, consideration of the degree that uncomfortable glare aggravates the subjective sense of thermal discomfort.

Thermal misery index: Bangkok v Phnom Penh

Having spent some time in Phnom Penh over the past month, it seemed to me that the Cambodian city was much more hot and glaring than Bangkok. So today back in BKK I checked this by compiling one of my favorite indexes for the two cities: Extreme Cooling Degree Days (CDD29). This was derived from the excellent web site degreedays.net which allows you to calculate cooling degree days based on any temperature base you like. In this case I used a base of 29C (84F) which is the maximum allowable temperature for comfortable (sweat-free) sleeping IMHO.

Cambodian expats escribe PP as insufferable in the hot season (April-May) and the above graph suggests it is a little but not much worse than Bangkok at that critical time of year.

On the other hand PP has many fewer high-rise buildings than BKK, and the shading seems to me much less there, the sun penetrating down to street level. A more accurate comparison would require a careful comparison of downtown urban microclimates, and also, I conclude, consideration of the degree that uncomfortable glare aggravates the subjective sense of thermal discomfort.

Pope Francis on air conditioning

Many people were surprised, some even outraged (in these parts of the world where SIN brings other things to mind) when His Holiness singled out air conditioning as a sin for our times in his recent Encyclical Letter, Laudati Si.  Here is what he had to say:

“People may well have a growing ecological sensitivity but it has not succeeded in changing their harmful habits of consumption which, rather than decreasing, appear to be growing all the more. A simple example is the increasing use and power of air-conditioning. The markets, which immediately benefit from sales, stimulate ever greater demand. An outsider looking at our world would be amazed at such behavior, which at times appears self-destructive.”

Many papal critics harped on the idea that air conditioning is a necessity for "modern life" in the tropics. I suspect that most of the criticism came from the northern latitudes or tropical-based expats, and refers to themselves, not the locals. Perhaps  experienced equatorial native views, along the lines of The Thai King's "sufficiency economy", which call for restraint, a middle way, and mindfulness of behavior, including in hot weather, are a fair but yet unappreciated response in Western countries to these criticisms of the pope's advice and teaching. I suspect that contemporary US ideas on what is really "necessary" for life will be soon much influenced by Francis' fresh new views from the southern latitudes, which remind me of the idea of quality v. quantity that were suggested by one of my favorite books, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, many years ago.

Pope Francis on air conditioning

Many people were surprised, some even outraged (in these parts of the world where SIN brings other things to mind) when His Holiness singled out air conditioning as a sin for our times in his recent Encyclical Letter, Laudati Si.  Here is what he had to say:

“People may well have a growing ecological sensitivity but it has not succeeded in changing their harmful habits of consumption which, rather than decreasing, appear to be growing all the more. A simple example is the increasing use and power of air-conditioning. The markets, which immediately benefit from sales, stimulate ever greater demand. An outsider looking at our world would be amazed at such behavior, which at times appears self-destructive.”

Many papal critics harped on the idea that air conditioning is a necessity for "modern life" in the tropics. I suspect that most of the criticism came from the northern latitudes or tropical-based expats, and refers to themselves, not the locals. Perhaps  experienced equatorial native views, along the lines of The Thai King's "sufficiency economy", which call for restraint, a middle way, and mindfulness of behavior, including in hot weather, are a fair but yet unappreciated response in Western countries to these criticisms of the pope's advice and teaching. I suspect that contemporary US ideas on what is really "necessary" for life will be soon much influenced by Francis' fresh new views from the southern latitudes, which remind me of the idea of quality v. quantity that were suggested by one of my favorite books, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, many years ago.

Deadly heat at Mumbai? Bangkok compared.

Mumbai's "Deadly Heat Wave" this year at top; parallel Bangkok, routinely much worse without all the fuss, bottom. Maybe all this fright mongering is a phony form of global compassion,  a PR creation of global warming enthusiasts?

Deadly heat at Mumbai? Bangkok compared.

Mumbai's "Deadly Heat Wave" this year at top; parallel Bangkok, routinely much worse without all the fuss, bottom. Maybe all this fright mongering is a phony form of global compassion,  a PR creation of global warming enthusiasts?

Bangkok heat: cause of death?

A friend of mine, Greg Baecher, has spent much of his academic career analyzing risk for complicated failures. He recently wrote to me as follows:

I am increasingly of the opinion that failures seldom occur as we have analyzed and predicted them. They occur from system interactions which are essentially unidentifiable ahead of time: the odd combination of usual events which taken together in a particular order become malicious. The probability of any such set approaches zero, but their combinatorial number is extremely large; hence, one such might happen with non-neglibible probability.

Now thinking as one does at times at this time of life on the subject of mortality I propose that this comment is applicable to problems to be reckoned with by us elders. As our fragility increases with age, so do the potential causes of our demise become more complex and similar to the "system interactions" Greg describes.  The man who sat next to me in The Londoner a year ago fell and broke his hip, or perhaps, as another version of the story has it, was knocked down by a bag-snatching thief while returning unsteadily from the pub. In any event a month later he is dead. Rendered immobile, he could no longer spend his evenings at The Londoner talking with his friends. "He lost his point," we mumbled gloomily at the bar.

John Updike's unforgettable character Rabbit (in the novel Rabbit at Rest) tries to recover past glory by playing basketball on a hot day with a teenager in the local Florida park; a fatal heart attack follows.

Hot weather in Bangkok, late April 2015

In this entry I want to describe what happened to another pub friend of mine, I'll call him Hector, dead now two days ago at the Police Hospital but not yet buried or burned as is done here in Thailand.

Hector drank a good deal of beer like many of us and was perhaps a few pounds heavier than necessary, but his better daily habits included a brisk 5 km dawn walk around the local park on Sukhumvit, the one established by a famous Thai politician as penance for his former deeds as a world-class brothel keeper and briber of police.

Now it is evident from the daily weather chart above for Don Muang airport that the humidity and heat in the early morning has been quite high here, and we would expect that toward the end of April Hector would have been sweating profusely at the end of his walks, with a tendency toward dehydration, perhaps exacerbated by the dehydrating effects of his beer the previous evening. (The latter contributing factor would be triumphantly overemphasized by those moralizing but otherwise minimally useful "health newsletters" so beloved in the nanny states of America.) Now it happened that Hector made much of preferring beer and Coca Cola to water, and out of deference to the time of day and maintenance of his weight he would avoid these preferred beverages at seven in the morning when he finished his walk but at the same time be less inclined to drink the amount of fluid, namely water, that might have been optimum for his condition.

It is well known that dehydration increases the level of salt and other wastes in the bodily fluids and urine which not surpisingly changes the electrical properties of the body and its organs, specifically the electrophysiology of the cardiovascular system. This promotes irregular heartbeats not infrequently causing one and sometimes several skipped beats, sometimes resulting in cardiac arrest for several seconds. Spontaneous refiring of the heart is the norm, but syncope, or fainting, may occur, with a serious hazard of falling. This was explained to me patiently by a cardiologist at the Samitivej Hospital (see my previous entry on this for details).

Hector was not so lucky.  (To be continued)

Bangkok heat: cause of death?

A friend of mine, Greg Baecher, has spent much of his academic career analyzing risk for complicated failures. He recently wrote to me as follows:

I am increasingly of the opinion that failures seldom occur as we have analyzed and predicted them. They occur from system interactions which are essentially unidentifiable ahead of time: the odd combination of usual events which taken together in a particular order become malicious. The probability of any such set approaches zero, but their combinatorial number is extremely large; hence, one such might happen with non-neglibible probability.

Now thinking as one does at times at this time of life on the subject of mortality I propose that this comment is applicable to problems to be reckoned with by us elders. As our fragility increases with age, so do the potential causes of our demise become more complex and similar to the "system interactions" Greg describes.  The man who sat next to me in The Londoner a year ago fell and broke his hip, or perhaps, as another version of the story has it, was knocked down by a bag-snatching thief while returning unsteadily from the pub. In any event a month later he is dead. Rendered immobile, he could no longer spend his evenings at The Londoner talking with his friends. "He lost his point," we mumbled gloomily at the bar.

John Updike's unforgettable character Rabbit (in the novel Rabbit at Rest) tries to recover past glory by playing basketball on a hot day with a teenager in the local Florida park; a fatal heart attack follows.

Hot weather in Bangkok, late April 2015

In this entry I want to describe what happened to another pub friend of mine, I'll call him Hector, dead now two days ago at the Police Hospital but not yet buried or burned as is done here in Thailand.

Hector drank a good deal of beer like many of us and was perhaps a few pounds heavier than necessary, but his better daily habits included a brisk 5 km dawn walk around the local park on Sukhumvit, the one established by a famous Thai politician as penance for his former deeds as a world-class brothel keeper and briber of police.

Now it is evident from the daily weather chart above for Don Muang airport that the humidity and heat in the early morning has been quite high here, and we would expect that toward the end of April Hector would have been sweating profusely at the end of his walks, with a tendency toward dehydration, perhaps exacerbated by the dehydrating effects of his beer the previous evening. (The latter contributing factor would be triumphantly overemphasized by those moralizing but otherwise minimally useful "health newsletters" so beloved in the nanny states of America.) Now it happened that Hector made much of preferring beer and Coca Cola to water, and out of deference to the time of day and maintenance of his weight he would avoid these preferred beverages at seven in the morning when he finished his walk but at the same time be less inclined to drink the amount of fluid, namely water, that might have been optimum for his condition.

It is well known that dehydration increases the level of salt and other wastes in the bodily fluids and urine which not surpisingly changes the electrical properties of the body and its organs, specifically the electrophysiology of the cardiovascular system. This promotes irregular heartbeats not infrequently causing one and sometimes several skipped beats, sometimes resulting in cardiac arrest for several seconds. Spontaneous refiring of the heart is the norm, but syncope, or fainting, may occur, with a serious hazard of falling. This was explained to me patiently by a cardiologist at the Samitivej Hospital (see my previous entry on this for details).

Hector was not so lucky.  (To be continued)

Smelly tennis shoes?

Now here is a remarkable fact. When I lived in California, and especially when I drove down the Mississippi valley on a trip back to the US last summer, I noticed the old problem of bad smell developing in my tennis shoes. Disgusting and ineradicable!

Amazingly this does not happen here in Thailand?

Why?

Years ago as an engineer I used to consult on legal problems arising from mold in houses. Erin Brokovitch was my client! What I learned is that mold grows best at moderate temperatures, not where it is very hot. Even the mold can't stand Bangkok in the hot season!

Smelly tennis shoes?

Now here is a remarkable fact. When I lived in California, and especially when I drove down the Mississippi valley on a trip back to the US last summer, I noticed the old problem of bad smell developing in my tennis shoes. Disgusting and ineradicable!

Amazingly this does not happen here in Thailand?

Why?

Years ago as an engineer I used to consult on legal problems arising from mold in houses. Erin Brokovitch was my client! What I learned is that mold grows best at moderate temperatures, not where it is very hot. Even the mold can't stand Bangkok in the hot season!

Everyone complaining about the heat

Even my long-time expat friends -- three in a row today -- describe this week's weather as being miserable. Most mention the humidity but of course the Thai say simply "hot" -- and give you a blank smile when you say "humid"!

Objectively, I must be scientific and measure the wet bulb temperature, which I do by using the wet rag technique. It hovers around 28 C, even as my condo interior surfaces and floor are 30-31 and the afternoon temperatures outside hover around 37.

A strong fan and minimal clothing make 30 C in my condo perfectly comfortable during the day, but we use the bedroom air conditioning, set to 24-25 C, for sleeping. This doubles my electrical bill from about $35 to $70 per month. A dollar a day for comfortable sleeping. A fan works for the Thai but doesn't do the job for us because of our higher body mass index and soft foreign bed that impedes heat transfer from the body and leads to the dreaded wet pillow syndrome.

Late mornings are the worst in May, a bit of a breeze makes it more tolerable in the afternoon. My luxo Japanese-style massage place, normally overbooked, is oddly empty today; I'm told that the heat is just keeping those rich customers at home

Everyone complaining about the heat

Even my long-time expat friends -- three in a row today -- describe this week's weather as being miserable. Most mention the humidity but of course the Thai say simply "hot" -- and give you a blank smile when you say "humid"!

Objectively, I must be scientific and measure the wet bulb temperature, which I do by using the wet rag technique. It hovers around 28 C, even as my condo interior surfaces and floor are 30-31 and the afternoon temperatures outside hover around 37.

A strong fan and minimal clothing make 30 C in my condo perfectly comfortable during the day, but we use the bedroom air conditioning, set to 24-25 C, for sleeping. This doubles my electrical bill from about $35 to $70 per month. A dollar a day for comfortable sleeping. A fan works for the Thai but doesn't do the job for us because of our higher body mass index and soft foreign bed that impedes heat transfer from the body and leads to the dreaded wet pillow syndrome.

Late mornings are the worst in May, a bit of a breeze makes it more tolerable in the afternoon. My luxo Japanese-style massage place, normally overbooked, is oddly empty today; I'm told that the heat is just keeping those rich customers at home

Saved by a shift in wind

Though temperature hit a moderate high 38 at Don Muang today, the wind shift from off the humid gulf to the south to the drier western uplands, bringing dry air relief (lower humidity)  by noon. Good day for drying laundry.

Saved by a shift in wind

Though temperature hit a moderate high 38 at Don Muang today, the wind shift from off the humid gulf to the south to the drier western uplands, bringing dry air relief (lower humidity)  by noon. Good day for drying laundry.

2015 a moderate hot season so far

Notwithstanding some excited tourist twitters on the subject, I fail to find anything special about hot season heat this year. In fact early rains have tended to moderate heat buildup. If SE Asia is being threatened by global warming, it is not showing up in Bangkok temperatures.

Red is temp at Don Muang, green is dew point. Temps are topping out at about 35 C. So far, anyway.

2015 a moderate hot season so far

Notwithstanding some excited tourist twitters on the subject, I fail to find anything special about hot season heat this year. In fact early rains have tended to moderate heat buildup. If SE Asia is being threatened by global warming, it is not showing up in Bangkok temperatures.

Red is temp at Don Muang, green is dew point. Temps are topping out at about 35 C. So far, anyway.

A wet pillow last night

This is my idea of the time to turn on an air conditioner, when you begin to sweat into your pillow in the middle of the night. Turns out the room temperature was 30 degrees (86 F), dew point 25, "wet rag" temp 27. This exceeds the limit for sub-sweating body temperature equilibrium when lying on a western-style mattress. (see free sample chapter for more on this).

A skinny Thai sleeping on a bamboo mat will be able to put up with more.

A wet pillow last night

This is my idea of the time to turn on an air conditioner, when you begin to sweat into your pillow in the middle of the night. Turns out the room temperature was 30 degrees (86 F), dew point 25, "wet rag" temp 27. This exceeds the limit for sub-sweating body temperature equilibrium when lying on a western-style mattress. (see free sample chapter for more on this).

A skinny Thai sleeping on a bamboo mat will be able to put up with more.

Moral dangers at Songkran: you've been warned!

Songkran hot season holidays: Thai Moral Promotion Center describes “great danger from sexual assault due to inappropriate attire“ even as it suggests “it’s advisable to wear as little as possible ."

Hmmmm....

Moral dangers at Songkran: you've been warned!

Songkran hot season holidays: Thai Moral Promotion Center describes “great danger from sexual assault due to inappropriate attire“ even as it suggests “it’s advisable to wear as little as possible ."

Hmmmm....

Something else to worry about?

Just when we learn that doing things to "detoxify" your body is a medical myth, we now have to worry about mephitic air! 

Naaw, just kidding. This is something that Ben Franklin cooked up way back in the old days, with the result that his friend John Adams almost froze his ass one night in New Jersey on his way to sign the Declaration of Independence. Never mind, my Boston mother believed it anyway!

Read about it in Chapter 3 of the book --- If I ever get it finished! (But meanwhile get a free copy of what I hope is one of its more entertaining chapters by clicking on the cover image to the right.)

Something else to worry about?

Just when we learn that doing things to "detoxify" your body is a medical myth, we now have to worry about mephitic air! 

Naaw, just kidding. This is something that Ben Franklin cooked up way back in the old days, with the result that his friend John Adams almost froze his ass one night in New Jersey on his way to sign the Declaration of Independence. Never mind, my Boston mother believed it anyway!

Read about it in Chapter 3 of the book --- If I ever get it finished! (But meanwhile get a free copy of what I hope is one of its more entertaining chapters by clicking on the cover image to the right.)

It's a bit of a breeze you'll be needing

Contrary to what you might read in standard western books on thermal comfort, people in the tropics are not really troubled by a slight breeze, by which they mean 1 to 2 meters per second. But this vastly changes their perception of temperature as you can see here. Even temperatures up to 35 deg C can be accepted with a “slight breeze”. Right axis is temperature in Celsius, left is wind velocity, meters per second. Most people find the blue zones comfortable.

MODELLING THERMAL COMFORT FOR TROPICS USING FUZZY LOGIC

Henry Feriadi, Wong Nyuk Hien
Department of Building, School of Design and Environment National University of Singapore
4 Architecture Drive, Singapore 117566

It's a bit of a breeze you'll be needing

Contrary to what you might read in standard western books on thermal comfort, people in the tropics are not really troubled by a slight breeze, by which they mean 1 to 2 meters per second. But this vastly changes their perception of temperature as you can see here. Even temperatures up to 35 deg C can be accepted with a “slight breeze”. Right axis is temperature in Celsius, left is wind velocity, meters per second. Most people find the blue zones comfortable.

MODELLING THERMAL COMFORT FOR TROPICS USING FUZZY LOGIC

Henry Feriadi, Wong Nyuk Hien
Department of Building, School of Design and Environment National University of Singapore
4 Architecture Drive, Singapore 117566