“It’s hot today” “Yeah, it’s really hot”

Tokyo is hot now. Forget my earlier post on this, it's become even hotter and more miserable and this time I have no contingency plan in place...

Obviously this is the main topic of conversation inside the company and neighbor blogger John Turningpin wrote a post on this and I can only concur with in his description of the obvious conversations about heat in the office environment.

However, I do not agree with his distain for the subject of heat, quite the contrary, I embrace it. In fact, I can carry on a conversation about the heat for a pretty long time and I frequently do. Please observe how I skillfully talk about the heat in the example below, the scenario is me and Mr. A in a meeting room, waiting for Ms. B and Mr. C to join us. Again, please feel free to act this conversation out with a friend, collegaue or long lost lover.

Mr. Salaryman: It's hot today
Mr. A: Yeah, it's really hot…
Mr. Salaryman: I don't like the heat
Mr. A: No, it's too hot now
Mr. Salaryman: It was hot yesterday too
Mr. A: Yeah, yesterday was really hot
Mr. Salaryman: I think they said on the news that it'll be even hotter tomorrow
Mr. A: Seriously? It's so hot
Mr. Salaryman: Yeah, it's really hot
Mr. A: Way too hot
Mr. Salaryman: Last summer was hot too
Mr. A: Yeah, but it wasn't this hot
Mr. Salaryman: Swedish summer is nice
Mr. A: Oh, is it cold?
Mr. Salaryman: It's not so hot
Mr. A: Do you have high humidity in summer
Mr. Salaryman: No, it's dry and nice
Mr. A: That sounds pleasant
Mr. Salaryman: Yeah, I don’t like the Japanese summer, it's too hot
Mr. A: Yeah, it's too hot here in Japan
Mr. Salaryman: Hokkaido is nice in summer though, not so hot
(Ms. B and Mr. C enters the room)
Ms. B and Mr. C in unison: It's so hot…

I can carry on a conversation about cold for almost the same duration, but since I hate the heat more I can't really put my heart behind it in the same way. It's also a very convenient way of avoiding any form of serious conversations with colleagues you might not have anything in common with except the work, so I have decided to not fight it and just embrace it.

It is really hot by the way...