Sunday roast

This Sunday afternoon I was alone and I took to the streets walking, no more than a slight film of sweat on the brow on this fine California-like afternoon, then sitting in the park for a while then consumed a giant roast pork dinner and the Financial Times in the Robin Hood.

The steady graphed points are a recording of the temp and dew point on my deck at home, beneath a large mango tree. The irregular traces are a recorder that I carried with me, you can see every time I go into an air conditioned space where the temp and dew point both drop a few degrees. Consultation with Carrier's chart indicates that each cubic meter of conditioned air has been subjected to about 10 KJ of enthalpy reduction--at considerable energy cost.

Sunday afternoons bring a few families out and into the pubs, you can see this sixty-something guy with his thirty-something Thai wife and "half child", the dream of many a Thai girl. Some of the foreign-Thai relationships are disastrous for the man, but this one looks pretty pleasant for all, arguably more interesting than playing golf and visiting prospective nursing homes back in the old country (or obsessively recording temps in the new), and certainly a step up in comfort and respectability for the girl from an poor Isan village.