Another Sunny Day

No one could complain about the weather in the bay area. With a temperature ranging from 55F to 75F, it seldom surprises people with sweating summers or harsh winters. If you travel in the bay area in January and visit it again in June, you'll find the temperature amazingly similar: the average temperature in Jan 2011 was around 60F, which increased to 68F in June (source: http://www.wrh.noaa.gov.) You can hardly notice the changes. Every day is similar to the day before: pleasantly cool. It rains sometimes in the winter, but never chilly. All you need is a t-shirt, a windbreak and jeans for all year round - no skirt, no boots, no down jacket.

Nowadays we have air conditioners (ACs) which create a spring-like weather indoors, and sometimes we had the illusion that ACs can help us adapt to the weather. Even if we're living in desert, we can still have 75F summers - like in Las Vegas, as long as we stay in the casino, we can't really tell whether it's hot or cold, day or night. However, ACs are not real solutions. On contrary, they make us more fragile to the weather outside. Once we're used to the AC's accompany, the blazing sun outside looks even worse, which in return discourages us from going outdoors. This may partly explains why Las Vegas earns so much from its visitors - the longer you spend in casino, the less likely you're willing to leave.

This is exactly how I feel about the bay, where there must be an invisible AC which functions day and night without any noise, and keeps the temperature within the comfort zone. I always find sunny days much more delightful than gloomy ones, and it's a great treat to wake up with sunlight touching my face in the morning (or noon in my case.) As a result, I feel blue when it sprinkles, and complain about the heat when it reaches 80F. It's so easy to get spoiled in the bay area that I strongly missed this place when traveling. Marseilles is too hot, Geneva is too humid, Seattle rains too often and the east coastal cities are just unbearable. All the natural landscapes, historic sites and gourmet are much less attractive when you're sweating or wetting. Many people don't realize the importance of pleasant weather until they have really enjoyed it, and then they can't go back. I'm one of them. I never realized that I'd be so sensitive to weather. I have lived in cities who are notorious for its severe winters and mid-summers, I survived in tiny rooms without AC or fan. But now, I don't think I can do that any more.


It's sad to find myself under such a constraint of location while it's always said that young people should bravely explore the unknown world and travel all around. Nice weather also deprives me of special joys in midsummer. When I was in Beijing, where temperature can reach as high as 110F in July, my favorite dinner in summer was cold watermelon, which I believe is a master piece of God designed specially for scorching summer. Gang and I got a watermelon here a few weeks ago, but were still not able to finish it. It's not surprising that we both lacked the appetite for cold watermelon when the temperature was around 65F. Swimming seems less fun too. I used to go swimming at noon and find cool water very enjoyable during the heat of the day. Berkeley has swimming pools too, but much less attractive with its cool weather. People also complain about how boring the bay area can be because there is hardly any change of natural scenes in lack of the changes of seasons. Fall is probably a little different from the rest as the leaves are changing, but basically I can only tell the seasonal transition through calendars, dishes in restaurants and apparel discounts. 


All this said, I'm not leaving this place. Born and lived in places with distinct seasons for years, I now appreciate this gift of nature.