98

Over the past few weeks I have been constantly hearing this phrase: "98 days of summer." Canada's Wonderland, a gigantic amusement park thirty minutes by bus from where I live, is handing out season passes valid for all "98 days of summer." Ads for grills, barbecue sauce, inflatable pools and swimwear gratuitously use it as a tagline. Erin Davis, one of the morning DJ's on CHFI, never fails to use it at least once every morning; once, she even clarified that she had, in fact, checked her calendar: summer would last for 98 days.

I'm not entirely sure which 98 days everyone's talking about since 30 (June) + 31 (July) + 31 (August) = only 92. The difference probably means summer either started early, or it will be extending into mid-September. Or I have it all wrong and there really is a separate seasonal calendar, but I don't want to look it up. In any event, while some days are certainly starting to feel like summer, others - like this morning's windy, overcast offering with a temperature of 10C - definitely don't.

Back home, there were only two 'season's really: dry/hot and wet/not-as-hot. The climate was especially great in Davao - you would get sunshine at 5.30 in the morning, and it would stay like that all day. It usually rained at night, too, so by then you were probably home already anyway. Best of all, unlike Manila and the other provinces around and North of it, Davao never gets regularly trashed by hurricanes and flash-floods. And while hurricanes and storms often meant joy when classes were cancelled, they were not that much appreciated on the days I found myself stranded in Project 4 with little more than a wallet and a feeble umbrella to my name.

But I digress. For all of eight years we lived in Davao City, my family never checked the weather on TV. Never, not once. It would pop up for around five minutes everyday near the end of the 6:00 news, but by that time we were clearing up the table, or arguing loudly over who got the last scoop of Queso Real ice cream. It was just that much of a non-issue. But not so here: every morning the kitchen TV is set to channel 23 - the 24-hour Weather Channel. We tune in to the forecast at night so my dad knows if he needs to bring an extra jacket. My mom even looks it up online beforehand to plan weekend barbecues - our entire lives here are dictated by the whims of the weather.

And here the weather is very fickle. It can be freezing when you leave the house and suddenly bright and cheery after work. Sometimes it will rain in the middle of the day...for all of ten minutes, before it stops and clears up again. Hail hurts - a LOT - and to add insult to injury, stops the moment you're safely in your car.

So in retrospect, maybe it's not so much about making a big deal out of summer, to the point of counting down the days. We welcome it, of course (since Canada is cold by default), but I think maybe it's part of something bigger: a general, perpetual concern for the weather. While back home, people talk about the weather when they have run out of all other topics in the universe, here it is the first thing on everybody's mind. And it better be; when it changes from day to day, even hour to hour, we'd best be paying attention.

"So how's the weather there today?"