After my niece’s wedding in London, I took several days off to explore the city, mostly on foot.
It was summer, but the temperature was comfortable. I was a flâneur during those few lovely days, sauntering around town and enjoying the fascinating sights and sounds of London.
While my home city of Singapore is as pedestrian-friendly as London, with sympathetically preserved historical buildings and precincts, interesting contemporary architecture, and even a Unesco World Heritage site (the beautiful Singapore Botanic Gardens), the extreme heat always makes me think twice about venturing outdoors there.
There must be a flaw in the nerve receptors on my skin, because prolonged exposure to the tropical sun makes me physically ill, even when I have spent most of my life in a city where it is sweltering pretty much all the time.
Extreme summer heat is used as a plot device in a pivotal episode in Outlaws of the Marsh, a famous Chinese novel from the Ming dynasty (1368-1644).