The rainy season is officially over in Shanghai, and it’s now becoming seriously warm. Today’s temperatures should reach 38 degrees (>100 degrees F), and overnight it will not go below 30 degrees (86 F). Luckily we have air conditioning everywhere, and except for the 10 meter between my parking space and the office entrance I should be cool the whole day. At least that’s what would be the case outside China. Because yesterday the building management came to our office to check our air conditioners. Not to check if they were working properly, but to make sure the temperature was set to at least 28 degrees (82.4 F). It seems they decided that 28 degrees is cool enough to work, and that putting it lower only costs more expensive energy. He also told us that for our game.com.cn office space (200 sqm+) one airconditioner should be sufficient (we now have 4 or 5 to cover the whole space), but that he could not enforce that.

So now we working in a 28 degree office, a lot better than the hot and humid air outside, but a bit too warm for me. Problem is that we cannot say no to this, because our office is located in an incubator center and the rent is heavily subsidized by the government. What I do now is that when it gets too hot I close my door, put the air conditioner at 22 degrees and the highest wind speed and leave it on for 10 minutes. Then it’s OK again for at least 1-2 hours.

I am not sure where the 28 degrees limit came from, as far as I know the official lowest temperature for hotels and shopping malls is 26 degrees. And Marcel Ekkel told me yesterday on Twitter that for Hong Kong the official inside temperature is 25.5 degrees. That seems more reasonable to me.