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NOTE: Before you read this entry, take note that I am only talking about the northern hemisphere here--there's a totally opposite thing going on in the southern hemisphere, below the equator, but to avoid confusion, I shall not mention about that in this entry, so please also don't comment about that fact below, because I shall tackle that specific point in a later entry.

I've fond memories of summer in the Philippines as a child. They were ones filled with long hours of gung-ho bicycle-riding, lazy kite-flying, swimming pool cavorting, reading adventure classics such as Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, and the Narnia Chronicles. There was the never-ending cartoon watching, both on broadcast television and Betamax. The day would then be topped off and concluded with warm, star-filled nights armed with a pair of binoculars. However, we Filipinos have a difference concept of what 'summertime' is. On first glance, it is virtually identical to the 'summertime' that Americans and Europeans have, beng a time of vacation, a long break from the daily grind of school and work. It is associated with warm weather, blue skies, sunshine and long, lazy days of doing absolutely nothing. That's precisely how we Pinoys also envision summer. But the thing is, the 'Western' concept of summer, which we Filipinos effectively 'borrowed', occurs at a different time frame than ours.

The seasons as defined in the higher latitudes (temperate zones) are known as the 'calendar seasons', namely, Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall/Autumn. These seasons are actually astronomical, in the sense that the climate is affected by the 23° tilt of the earth's axis. From March 21 to June 21, this tilt is towards where the earth came from in its counterclockwise orbit around the sun. Thus when facing the sun, this tilt is towards the 'left' side. But, since the earth is spinning around its axis, it acts like a gyroscope, maintaining this tilt while going around the sun. When it reaches a point when the date is June 21, the axis now effectively leans towards the sun. This means the northern hemisphere of the earth gets more sunshine than the southern hemisphere. And thus, officially, 'summer' begins in the northern hemisphere on June 21 or 22, and NOT on March/April.

However, since we are a tropical country, and not temperate, we do not experience the calendar seasons. For one thing, even towards winter (September 22 to December 21), our latitude is not high enough that it will allow us to experience icing and snowfall. That alone is clearly an indicator that we experience a rather different kind of climate adjustment. We in the tropics experience a 'dry' season (which sometimes is also confusing, because it does still rain from March to September) and a 'wet' season. The dry season in the Philippines roughly begins sometimes as early as February, up to July or August. Then, when September comes, it brings torrential, sometimes all-day-long rains with it (Monsoon), and this lasts until February or March again. The lessening of rainfall after February or March, increases the air and ground temperature in the Philippines, substantially, that it is noticeable and brings discomfort, and thus, this is the moment that makes Filipinos nonchalantly (but erroneously) utter "SUMMER NA!"

So as you can see, we Filipinos have been using the term 'summer' erroneously since forever. But then, when we say 'summer', we are of course not referring to an astronomical season, but rather, we are referring to THAT SEASON of hot, lazy vacation days, which, even though is a good excuse, is still unfortunately wrong.