Saturday, May 17, 2008

Orh

Today I found out that my wife nodding and replying "orh" to what I say does not constitute agreement or even understanding of what I am saying.

Case in point: Lately it has been very hot in Mountain View, reaching over 37 degree Celsius in the past two days. Our house, which does not have any inlets except for the main door, is generally not in the direction of the wind. This causes the apartment to a furnace during hot days and starts baking the occupants - something that I start hearing about in the afternoon when my wife calls me and yelping for mercy from the heat.

One solution we found is to switch on the fan while the door is opened. The fan draws the cooler air from the outside and cools our apartment. This solution is not ideal as it leaves, well, the door open (i.e. you can't be sleeping). As an added bonus, insects get in.

I started proposing an alternate solution to my wife over lunch - use a fan to blow air out of a window, and open the other windows while leaving the main door closed. As air is being drawn out of that one window, this creates moving air (aka wind) and circulates the cooler air from outside to inside. And even if the air outside is just as warm as it is indoors, the air movement will cool the insides of the house, thus preventing baking of the occupants.

Arriving home in the evening, I proceeded to close the main door, bring the fan to the bedroom window and face it outside. My wife walks in and demands to know what I am doing. To which I replied, "trying out that hypothesis I mentioned earlier today". I walk outside to the living room and show her that cool air is starting to be circulate through the house, and say "see... it works!"

My wife exclaims: "oh is this what you were talking about over lunch? I still have no idea what you are talking about though."

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6 Comments:

At May 22, 2008 8:06 AM , Blogger Christopher said...

I'm glad that it actually works, never tried this. I too was wondering why back in the coffee shops and markets in Singapore, the fans face inwards. I thought that it should actually face outwards so that there is circulation of air instead of having the fan keeping the warm air circulating inside instead.

 
At May 26, 2008 11:23 AM , Blogger Weiyang said...

guess we still need to work on our communications skills eh?

 
At May 31, 2008 1:08 AM , Blogger lanethan said...

lol.. hilarious.

 
At May 31, 2008 9:43 AM , Blogger yj said...

Christ: Yes, the most obvious solution is to blow air towards you. It takes a leap of faith (or a partner who doesn't not understand you) to have the fan face air away from you. :P

WY: Orh.

 
At June 6, 2008 9:21 AM , Blogger Michael said...

"Christ", is that how they abbreviate Christopher in SG? Here in NA, we usually use Chris... Orh? :P

 
At June 6, 2008 12:56 PM , Blogger yj said...

Mike: Holy cow! My bad. Orh....

 

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