Next time you come down to Australia PLEASE visit Perth!

I guess I would assume that houses there are designed for sweltering temperatures, even without AC, although that may not be a safe assumption. The problem here is that they\’re not–e.g., we would have installed the more expensive double-pane windows with the special low-transmission rating if there was any reason to expect more than a handful of over-90 days, much less a big handful of 100+ days.

[Addendum: Not Western  Australia--which we do need to visit some year--but I remember three days we spent on the East coast eight years ago, in Cairns, when the combination of heat and humidity was enough to start rotting sandals even inside the semi-air-conditioned hotel...but it was worth it for the Kuranda center and the Great Barrier Reef. Other than that visit, which we added at the end of a glorious two-week cruise starting in Auckland, I\'ve only been to Melbourne and Sydney in Australia. I know, I know, typical ignorant tourist--or in the case of the two earlier visits, typical busy speaker.] 

Fortunately, the fog seems to be returning to the coast, and a cooling trend is starting. Got it down to 77 degrees this morning, and it never broke 90 inside yesterday and was at 85, not 90, at 10 p.m.: That\’s a big improvement, the difference between warm and sweltering. 77 is, of course, quite comfortable–pretty much ideal.

I\’m just about halfway through the detailed \”research\” phase, losing some blogs along the way (for various reasons)(and I\’ll probably do a separate post about that). There weren\’t any blogs with nonroman titles in any of the directories, so I don\’t expect any Chinese language, and I don\’t believe there are any Malay. You have access to the same resources I used; I\’d guess that such blogs just aren\’t well known outside their local areas. (Actually, you can look at my Bloglines subscriptions to see whether there might be any Malay or Indonesian blogs in the candidates.)

If I do, I\’ll certainly take you up on your offer. (But I\’m not adding new candidates at this point!)

I’m looking forward to reading your survey once it’s done, though. If you need any help with any Chinese language, or Malay or Indonesian blogs (hoping that you’ve turned up librarians’ blogs in the last couple of languages in particular, because I certainly haven’t!), let me know!