There’s an old game any serviceman knows well, based on my years in the Air Force. Probably it is just as common in civilian life too. Among other things it is called “Can you top this?”. In practical and irreverent terms it is also called “First liar never stands a chance”.
Basically it involves a bunch of (usually) guys sitting around and (girls can play very well too, women take no back seat in story telling, especially if there is an ex-husband around, believe me) and talking when someone brings up a subject like, say, the weather. From then on, the tales mount. You’ve all heard them, kind of like grandpa’s “five miles each way to school and up hill both ways” stories.
Well, it’s only human nature to want to top the last guy’s tall tale, and I see no real harm in it … but if you are trying to learn about the Philippines .. and especially sitting on the cusp of a decision regarding making a move here or not, it probably would be best if you checked first and made sure you were basing your decision on fact instead of fiction.
A few days ago I visited a forum where a guy (from the UK, I believe he was), was opening up a discussion on whether or not his personal retirement plans should include the Philippines. In one of his first sentences he caught my attention when he said something like, “Of course this discussion is really kind of academic because I am sure I couldn’t stand the brutal weather there.”
Well, having lived in the UK, I guess you could call the weather “brutal” here in the Philippines, but then again, I’ve been all over the world, including Alaska, and England is the only place I ever lived as a young GI where I routinely shaved with my parka on over my uniform before leaving for morning formation.
Let’s face it, there are extremes of weather from time to time where ever you may travel, but to call the weather I enjoy here in the Philippines “brutal” would be a bit much to me .. the weather here is one of the big plus factors for me … in the same way a heck of a lot of 9especially older) Americns gravitate toward Southern California, Arizona and all across the southern border to the “Gray Panther” capital of the USA, Florida. (I think that is also the reason why cities like Colorado Springs … too damn cold for me … is infested with NODAKS and SODAKS … it’s so much warmer there they lose interest in going any farther south). Several other guys jumped in to the weather discussion thread and their stories amazed me, One guy, in particular, mentioned how he had been here in manila last year .. when I live … and was on and on about 4 or 5 days in a row where the temperature was over 105F. Huh? I don’t know how long records have been kept in manila (I expect a pretty long time) but I can easily check 20 years worth online and it has never been 105 degrees Fahrenheit in Manila that I can see.
It’s just past 4 pm local time as I write this and I just checked the weather .. it’s hotter in New York city (where it is 4 in the morning) than it is here right now on the outskirts of Manila. Warm? Absolutely. “Brutal”? I’d say that’s a bit “over the top”, mate.
Here are two charts showing a fill year of temperature highs and lows for two major Philippine cities, one down in the far south of the country and the other pretty well up north where I live.
Manila 2009:
Davao 2009:
Now, for comparison, let’s look at three big US cites, northern, central and south and see what the weather “back home” is like, objectively, not what grandpa says it was:
Minneapolis – St. Paul, MN, 2009:
New York, NY, 2009:
Dallas, TX, 2009:
They say that “Figures never lie, but liars figure”, or something else about proving anything you want to with statistics, but in all honesty, you be the judge … do you think the weather here, especially the heat, if “Brutal”? Hardly, mate, hardly.
True true… my husband said there has been worst temperatures in even Michigan than in the hottest months in Manila, in this year alone. I doubt if we ever reached 105 degrees fahrenheit. It still is relatively cooler here.
Funny thing, the day I wrote this … the reason it was hotter in New York at 4am than it was here at 4 pm was a terrific heat wave that has hit the Northeast US. Triple-digit temperatures all over. Brutal heat … oh, I forgot, that term’s already in use
Philly,
The Dew point is the killer in Philippines, not the temperature.
Hi Denny, thanks for the comment. However, the dew point … or the resultant calculation that comes from the dw point, relative humidity, is frequently as high, or higher in Miami. But I fear you have missed my point.
I am not saying it doesn’t get hot in the Philippines, in fact it can feel very, very hot often .. but what I wrote about is the BS artists who make up tales without knowing of what they speak. My point in including the graphs and the reference links is to try to keep things honest … it’s never 105 degrees here in Metro Manila, at least it hasn’t been in the 20 years I can find verifiable records for, and to publish information that it does reach 105 degrees just seems disingenuous to me.
Living here I know a lot about the good and the bad of it. And the Philippines gets all the bad press it needs when people report factually, I don’t see the need, as some seem to do, to make public forums (which many people tend to take as factual) a venue for ‘liars poker’ games. Godspeed.
I live in Oklahoma and it shocked me when I discovered as a youth that the part of Oklahoma I live in is classified as “Sub Tropical”. Temperatures can get extremely hot here, and with the added humidity, it is really awful during the summer for a light complected guy like me. Then some winters are hellish too here because of the wind chill.
I think the Philippines, though tropical, will be nice during some months compared to Oklahoma, or maybe the same.
My girlfriend in Surigao del Norte has sent me a lot of photos over many months, and one thing I noticed is that none of the people in the photos are ever sweating. I asked her why and she said maybe because where she lives they have a lot of wind. I know here in Oklahoma, I can be outside and in just a few minutes I could probably fill a 4 oz cup halfway full with sweat wrung from my shirt.