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Weather App Trumps

We ran this silly little feature weekly for a while in the old version of our blog. I liked the way Amar Hussain put a screenshot of the weather of his latest destination on his Facebook page and it gave us the idea to come up with a made up game we could do quickly.

The rules are we find someone on Twitter that mentions their location and over the next few days we compare their temperatures with ours. Thankfully when we did this game we lived mostly in Turkey – instead of just south of the Arctic Circle in Northern Ireland – and stood a chance of winning once in a while.

vs Gap Year Escape (October)

The Working Traveller (nr Izmir) 5 – 0 Gap Year Escape (Barcelona)

In your face, Amar. Not to go overboard or anything but…

Lionel Messi, Pep Guardiola, Salvador Dali, Arantxa Sánchez Vicario, Joan Gamper, Carles Puyol, Lluís Domènech i Montaner, Jose Carreras, Joan Miro, Antonio Gaudi – we have beaten them all, we have beaten them all. Amar Hussain, can you hear me? Amar Hussein, as they say in your language in the boxing bars around Madison Square Garden in New York: your boys took a hell of a beating! Your boys took a hell of a beating!

vs Yomadic (October)

Iran has been on my mind this week so I’ve been reading with interest the blog posts from Yomadic, in particular how he arrived in Iran with no visa on a one way ticket.

After getting turned away at the Syrian border ourselves for not having a visa I’m less inclined to try that again but flying to Tehran before hoping on a train to Turkey might have made a great way to get home from our Southeast Asian trip.

The Working Traveller (nr Izmir) 0 – 6 Yomadic (Esfahan)

So, no in your face’s this week. Instead we will ape a classic Alex Ferguson’s excuse for our defeat: “They gave us four minutes injury time, that’s an insult to the game. It denies you a proper chance to win Weather App Trumps.”

vs Travelfish (October)

We frequently use Travelfish lately when we are in or thinking of heading to Southeast Asia.  Founded and edited by husband and wife team Stuart McDonald and Samantha Brown, Travelfish is a travel guide to Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Though based between a volcano and the sea in Bali Stuart was in Singapore so it is against the island state that we threw down our weather related challenge:

The Working Traveller (nr Izmir) 0 – 6 Travelfish (Singapore)

This is the second Weather Apps Trumps we have lost in a row and enough is enough. Though we do not wish Stuart or Samantha to witness yet another sweary online meltdown (WARNING: skip the next couple of paragraphs if you don’t like swears) this week we have no choice but to channel John O’Nolan John Sitton for our post match analysis:

“That is the fucking straw that broke the camel’s fucking back and that is typical fucking Izmir! You’ve had two performances and you think “I’m fucking Bertie Big Bollocks tonight, I’ll fucking play how I like!”. But you won’t play how you like, because if you play how you like I’ll stick the fucking youth team in.”

“You, you little cunt, when I tell you to do something, and you, you fucking big cunt, when I tell you to do something, do it. And if you come back at me, we’ll have a fucking right sort-out in here. All right? And you can pair up if you like, and you can fucking pick someone else to help you, and you can bring your fucking dinner. ‘Cos by the time I’ve finished with you, you’ll fucking need it.”

vs Travellerspoint (October)

When we got chatting to Peter Daams, one half of Travellerspoint, a grand travel community site made up of over 30,000 blogs sharing 175,000 stories, Peter happened to mention he was competitive. This brought back memories of travelling around his country during the 2002/3 Ashes tour when Australia could still play cricket and England patently couldn’t. As soon as my English accented voice enriched the environment every Australian for miles came over to point out ‘England are a bit shit, aren’t they mate?’

Fortunately for my chances at revenge Melbourne was in its winter and we, thank heavens, were not competing under England’s rain soaked flag. We also remember it pretty much rained our entire time in Australia. Here, take a look:

It rained in Sydney.

It rained in the Northern Territories.

It rained at the beach.

Weep, Australian Tourist Board, weep!

It seems these people have been lying to us for years about how hot and sunny their country is. We travelled north from Sydney so didn’t make it to Melbourne. Perhaps things will be different there?

The Working Traveller (nr Izmir) 4 – 3 Travellerspoint (Melbourne)

In your face, Melbourne.

vs 1 Dad, 1 Kid, 1 Crazy Adventure (November)

After getting revenge on Australia for all the times their weather rained on us during our 2002/3 visit we turn our attention to a new opponent. As the first travellers to enter our Twitter or Facebook streams and mention where they are we chose the Windwalker Duo to represent Marrakesh. Talon chronicles the unschooling and raising of his daughter Tigger as a global citizen in 1 Dad, 1 Kid, 1 Crazy Adventure.

The Working Traveller (nr Izmir) 0 – 6 1 Dad, 1 Kid, 1 Crazy Adventure (Marrakesh)

Nooooooooooooo.

vs Aaron’s Worldwide Adventures (November)

Tidying up our email inbox we found a response from Aaron’s Worldwide Adventures to a comment I left to one of his Iraq posts and thought we would play him at this silly game. A quick stalk on Twitter revealed Aaron was in Las Vegas where on a head to head comparison the score was:

The Working Traveller (nr Izmir) 1 – 6 Aaron’s Worldwide Adventures (Las Vegas)

Ouch! The Working Traveller is answering questions in a David Platt mask this week.

vs Barefoot Beach Blonde (December)

When we played Barefoot Beach Blonde they were a new blog on the scene. The author, Oceana Setaysha, also tweeted @hostelzoo while working on Great Keppel Island, part of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The nearest we can find to Keppel to challenge with our game is Yeppoon:

The Working Traveller (nr Izmir) 0 – 7 Barefoot Beach Blonde (nr Yeppoon)

Well, waddayouknow, turns out those Aussies weren’t lying about their sunshine after all and, with our weather turning filthier by the day, there will be no repeat of the megagloat we inflicted on Melbourne.

vs Uncornered Market (January)

The Working Traveller was back on the road and occasionally comparing our changing local weather conditions with those of random bloggers in an excuse to highlight their website. Though we were warm and snug in a lovely loft apartment in Istanbul, the snowy conditions outside gave little cause to believe we were going to win this round of Weather App Trumps.

Then we spotted via our Twitter feed that Audrey Scott and Daniel Noll, the experienced travellers behind Uncornered Market, were in Edinburgh and thought surely Turkey can beat Scotland?

The Working Traveller (Istanbul) 3 – 4 Uncornered Market (Edinburgh)

Though Turkey isn’t the Auld Enemy and this is not quite a victory of goalpost nicking proportions the Scots must be happy with this surprising result over one of the big guns in the warm weather stakes.

vs Travel Writing Pro (January)

Moving on from snowy Istanbul and onto steamy Bangkok we felt we can give anyone a run for their money in the weather comparison stakes that we use as a veiled excuse to highlight another traveller’s website. The first tweet mentioning a location to fall into our eyeline was from Claudia Looi, who mentions that it is sunny in Orlando, Florida. Bring it on, Claudia, bring it on.

The Working Traveller (Bangkok) 7 – 0 Travel Writing Pro (Orlando)

No last minute header from our keeper needed to win this one.

vs Kaya Pansiyon (July)

It was a while before we next did another Weather App Trumps, perhaps out of the realisation our readers aren’t octogenarians glued to the weather channel all day in case a spot of rain is due to give their arthritis a bit of gyp. But, as we were soon to move on from our Chiang Mai home we felt it worth commemorating our mixture of sun, smog and rain.

Normally we competed against another blogger chosen randomly via our Twitter feed but decided to make a change this time around. We had hoped to go the Hunger Games route and pick 24 participants – one male, one female – from 12 districts and have them battle to the death based on who was in the hottest place but our lawyers pointed out this was almost certainly illegal. So we made our choice via Facebook instead.

The selection of Bodrum’s Kaya Pansiyon was easy to make. Aside from the welcome Mustafa and his tight-knit staff gave us when we last visited his town, Bodrum was where we decided to book the tickets for that Southeast Asia trip. Bodrum also has the added advantage of being only a couple of hours away from our home town of Didim and could show us just what we were missing by not spending that summer in Turkey.

The Working Traveller (Chiang Mai) 1 – 6 Kaya Pansiyon (Bodrum)

We had plenty of possession but they were more clinical when it really mattered.

 

 

 

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This piece was first published in an older version of our blog which included the following comments:

Suzy said: “Izmir is certainly winning. Having been to Barcelona, I wouldn’t mind experiencing the warm weather of Izmir at the moment from freezing Denver.”

– we replied: “I’d be very happy to visit Barcelona – despite their inferior weather.”

Peter said: “New to this – do you just compare temperatures? Looking at those two, 24-29ºC and sunny seems bloody awesome to me!”

– we replied: “Hi Peter, we just compare temperatures but really it is a way of highlighting another website or blog that may interest our readers. We may have lost this one but the temperatures in the Izmir area are still pretty good – we’re certainly not complaining.”

— Peter said: “Yah, figured as much. But you know, it’s a competition and I’m competitive, so I like to know the rules”

— we replied: “No rules really. Though I’m tempted to compare the weather with the colder places we used to live and shout ‘in your face, Wales,’ every week I try to make sure we win some, lose some. In theory the idea is to pick the first person I see on twitter that mentions their location but so far I’ve chosen the sites I’ve been poking around most recently. So, where in the world are you, Peter? Melbourne?”

— Peter said: “Yeah, Melbourne. Where the weather forecast is basically meaningless”

— we replied: “He he. I’m not going to peek as I think next week it will be The Working Traveller Vs Travellerspoint.”

— Peter said: “Ah well, the other part of TP is in Oslo. I think I’ll take my chances with Melbourne”

— we replied: “Melbourne or Oslo? Drat! Why didn’t I wait until you revealed that bit of information.”

— Peter said: “Grr… “

— we replied: “Aah, it’s all good – you did win the Ashes.”

Talon said: “And we’re eating yummy food to boot.”

– we replied: “Oooh, I’m envious – I do like Middle Eastern food.”