Epitome Anatomy: SUFFER IN THE CITY
EPISODE SUMMARY:
"I just don’t like being disregarded or making fun of when I don’t really like summer that much."
HEATWAVE! Wish shares her personal frustration with extreme heat in the city and reflects on what it means to feel physically and emotionally affected by the weather. Alongside that lived experience, she explores the urban heat island effect, how city design can intensify heat, and why some places are beginning to respond with greener, cooler solutions.
Reference from this episode:
European Commission Joint Research Centre on Urban Heat Islands
Singapore Housing Development Board (HDB) Green Towns Programme
Listen to the Episode
MAIN TOPICS:
00:00 Weather as a Universal Topic
07:54 Suffering in the City: Personal Experiences and Preferences
16:07 Urban Heat Island Effect and Climate Change Solutions
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Wish Ronquillo Peacocke (00:00.044)
It's hard not to talk about the weather, especially when you live in a four-season country. Then there's a preference of either you're a city person or a country person, or you prefer hot or cold, or you tend well or not during summer, or simply it's such a big subject and at the same time small enough or simple enough that everyone can have a say about it.
Welcome to Human Thesaurus Presents Epitome Anatomy. My name is Wish, a retired tech operator, indie author, cat mom, and self-aware life explorer.
Epitome Anatomy is an opinion piece on the power of words and their ethos that I extracted from this life. Ready for the epitome of suffer? Let's go. Our keyword is the lighthearted side of the word suffer. It means to put up with, especially as inevitable or unavoidable.
According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Synonyms of suffer include bear, endure, abide, tolerate, and stand. Its first known use was in the thirteenth century. Its etymology came from the Middle English sufferen or suffren, borrowed from Anglo-French suffrir, going back to the vulgar Latin, I love vulgar Latin sufferīre.
Wish Ronquillo Peacocke (01:55.936)
It's nice to talk about the weather, especially series of big heat waves that is happening in Europe. Being a sufferer of the weather here in London when it was reaching above 35 to 40 plus degrees, somewhat at least it happened already like a few times in the past few weeks.
And since we're in London and a lot of the beautiful structures here are meant to trap heat, so we don't have an air con, but I got awesome, awesome fans. But that doesn't still help, especially when we were in Singapore, we're so used to having massive ceiling fans in every room, and most of the rooms have air cons in them.
So it's a different world for me, even though this is the hard thing to try and explain. I don't know why I'm even trying at this point. Yeah, I I I probably need to change that. That's a thought for myself. going back, this is what is hard for me to explain normally to others. I grew up in the Philippines where it's tropical.
There's only rain or shine. Summers are hotter of course, but we don't have four seasons. There's just like a typhoon season where there's always a lot of stormy type of weather that's really high gush winds and rain. And there's sunny when it's hot and it's dry and sometimes it's hot and humid.
So it's been like that growing up and we never really had an air con for so long. I think when we had our first air con was I was already 16 or 17 years old. Yeah, so I I've been a sufferer of the heat for a long time and you would think that anyone who's got the same profile as me who grew up this way will be used to the heat by now. And I'm already living in the world for 46 years. But I really don't.
Wish Ronquillo Peacocke (04:20.236)
I never really liked the heat. I never did. If I become half robot, half human, I will immediately request to have some kind of air conditioning in the robotic part of my body. It's just me. This is not my preference. You know, I'm talking about the weather right now.
Because again, of the conditions that we have right now, so it's a good time. This is not a brain fart, or I'm running out of topics. I think it's just fascinating for me. I think this is more universal, but there are cultures when the conversation starter is about the weather, it's just who they are as a culture. But I think this goes universally for all cultures, but perhaps.
It's more prominent for cultures who would have four seasons because when the season change and sometimes you know the likes of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia, or here in the UK, you can experience four seasons in one day. So it's a topic that's pretty benign, but at the same time, it does make sense to become a part of the conversation all the time. It's just
fascinating that way that at least there's something, right? Sometimes weather conversation becomes the filler for a group conversation or an awkward encounter with an individual when you don't have anything to say. Because yeah, it is a conversation starter. What do you think about that? On my side, it's just fascinating to talk about the weather in a podcast. There's a portion of
Talking about the weather that I quite dislike, that it's now becoming my pet peeve. When I complain, not even whine, I would whine about the weather with only the people that I'm super close with. When it comes to acquaintances or even strangers or people who are just around me, when this becomes a topic, my pet peeve is whenever I say, for example, everybody's enjoying the heat.
Wish Ronquillo Peacocke (06:38.27)
Or the summer. It's like, my gosh, it's summer, but it's so darn hot. Keep hydrating. And then I would say, this is so hot. I can't. I really don't like this weather. I love the cold. I am a cold person. All of these lead up to this conversation. My pet beef is would be people trying to disregard my own personal preference and opinion about the weather. You don't need
To ignore or disregard my view for my own physiological self of what I feel about the weather. Also telling myself, Am I doing this to other people when they say, my gosh, it's so cold? Do I cancel their feelings and say, it's not that bad? Come on. We all have
Preferences, we all have this different physiological setup in our bodies. It's valid. It's nicer to have a mindset that when we all talk about this menial subject of weather, that we accept everybody's preference or feelings about the weather. They're all valid.
They all make sense. We all have a different genetic makeup. We all have different bodies. We all have different preferences and feelings about the weather. I just don't like being disregarded or making fun of when I don't really like summer that much. I like three other seasons, but definitely not this one. It's just my preference and I'm not even gonna defend myself for that.
It doesn't even help. I'm going through the onset of perimenopause and I do run hot. I am a human radiator. I love that to bits when it's cold because I don't get cold easily. But you know when it's summer, I do suffer in the city. So this suffer in the city title, by the way.
Wish Ronquillo Peacocke (08:46.558)
I've gotta give you the background how I came about this. it's just probably a month ago when we had this first heat wave here. My husband and I were walking around town. I'm complaining so much because I'm already sweating and I hate sweating and it's so hot. I was really becoming a little bit irritated. And then at some point we were having some conversation and then I said to the effect of
I love this city so much. I like the sun, but I don't really like summer and heat wave because I'm suffering in the city. And then Luke was like, are you coining sex in the city? Instead you're saying suffer in the city? And then he chuckled and he said, That's actually a better title for a TV show. So yes, if I will have my own TV show.
I think I will name it suffering the city. It will feature probably the subject of perimenopause and what women have to go through during the perimenopause. And even though we say one of the major things about perimenopause is equivalent to hot flushes, it's not just that, it's just a factor, and not every woman would suffer hot flushes at all. Again, different physiology, different bodies.
Speaking of sufferer in the city, it feels hotter in the city. I I just read about this because but I kind of knew this for quite some time because I always live in the middle of the city of different countries where we used to live. It's hotter in the city due to the urban heat island effects. I've learned this through the European Commission Joint Research Center.
So for example, in the cities, this urban heat island means that in the city the contrast is, you know, harder or there are darker colored surfaces in the buildings and the roads that dominates the urban landscape of each city. So these darker colours in the buildings they all absorb the
Wish Ronquillo Peacocke (11:03.936)
energy of the sun rather than reflecting it out, meaning they're just in all of these different blocks. They just store the heat. So this slowly released into the air. And it doesn't even help. For example, there are cities that are built with air conditioning units and then you add, you know, millions of
Commuters and tourists and humans and vehicles as well. So they're all trapping heat into the city. That's why it's hotter in the city because, for example, like in the countryside, the heat dispersed because there are more cooling factors in the environment. For example, the rivers, the lakes, the trees, they absorb the heat. They are also sources for moisture. It's it's so interesting to understand this term urban heat island effect.
There's another fact that is very interesting. During heat waves, city centers, it's hotter in the cities on average of four to six degrees Celsius or seven to ten degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the countryside. Man. And in extreme cases, what we suffered through a few weeks ago and even
Over two weeks ago. The difference can be as much as 10 degrees Celsius or 18 degrees Fahrenheit, especially when there's no air, there's no wind coming through during that kind of heat wave. Then the city tends to be hotter. And it's getting hotter here again, but thankfully, I'm gonna go somewhere else in the countryside just to have a better and lower temperature for once during this period.
There's climate change. I don't know if you believe it or not. I'm not gonna convince you it's your choice. But it does not help these urban heat islands at all. According to United Nations, it's just gonna get worse. That's the thing. I just probably need to go to the polar camps by that time.
Wish Ronquillo Peacocke (13:17.58)
But you know i when it comes to suffering in the city. There are some model cities that I admire who are trying to mitigate by now the urban heat island in their own cities. For example, is Singapore. In Singapore it I think half of the size of the country is full of greenery.
This is how they're trying to mitigate it because it's a highly humid country. They have been incorporating open spaces throughout the years around older buildings because you know a lot of their government housing called HDB, Housing Development Board, blocks of their buildings. They try to make the colours lighter, and then even the rooftops, they're lighter colored.
And they put up a a lot of these green spaces, whether big or small. They've been planting a lot of trees. This is consistent all all throughout the years that whenever I had visitors for the first time in Singapore, the first thing that it would they will tell me, as soon as they get out of the airport, everything is so green and they never expected it. Even for me when I w when it was my first time a long, long time ago in Singapore, that's the first thing that I've noticed.
Also another thing Spain in Barcelona at least they have climate shelters. So these climate shelters is definitely shielding people from extreme summer heat. I remember two years ago was the last time I was in Spain, it was hitting forty-three to forty-five degrees Celsius. And I think they were suffering like that right now in there.
So yes, they they provide comfortable seating and free drinking water in those climate shelters in Barcelona. Other cities would have same initiatives in different parts of the world. Even in the US, in Arizona, in Phoenix. So they've been trialing lighter colored roads and pavements. And this is the thing, right? The governments have to if they believe in climate change and they're contributing to it.
Wish Ronquillo Peacocke (15:38.496)
Everybody's contributing to it should have some mitigating factors to help the people in the city and help the city itself survive in these climbing heat waves, and it's just gonna get worse. And we all know that and we should not ignore that. It's just circling back to my pet peeve. We cannot just disregard that it's getting hotter. It's really getting hotter everywhere.
Therefore, we're suffering in the city. How about you? What's your favourite season? Do you like summer? Do you like the heat better than cold? Please comment. I'd love to hear from you. By the way, I have a direct message via text or voicemail on top of my episode summary, so please check it out. Until next time, ciao.
Drink water.
Wish Ronquillo Peacocke (16:49.134)
Comment, like, subscribe, and share wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also visit humanthesaurus.co. Epitome Anatomy is produced by me and Jeremiah Ronquillo. Music by Ketsa UK. All rights reserved by Wishblizz Media. Thank you, and see you in the next episode. Keep cool.
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