As Nelly said, it's getting hot in here...

MALAYSIA has always been a tropical country, for those of you who might not have know (hey, some people may have been in the dark, guys). It gets really panas here (though not to desert levels), and when that happens, everyone looks for the nearest shade they can find. It's no surprise that none other than Lee Kwan Yew himself has said that the greatest invention ever, as far as South and Southeast Asians are concerned, is the air-conditioner, because it allows us to work despite the hot and humid conditions.

Interestingly, the word panasz literally means "complaint" in Hungarian (I learned this whilst at university, thanks to my good Magyar friend Reiff Adam). Granted, the spelling is different, but the pronunciation is the same ("sz" in Magyar is pronounced like an "s" in English, whilst "s" sounds more like "sch"). So I remember teaching Adam the phrase "Hari ini sangat panas!" ("Today is so hot!"), and it effectively became a complaint — brill, as the Brits are wont to say.

And yet, one thing that has been bothering practically everyone I meet nowadays is just exactly how hot it is getting. The answer: very. I remember last year going out at night to meet up with some friends for a movie (it was J J Abrams' reboot of Star Trek, and we loved it), and I saw the electronic billboard outside the shopping complex. It was 8pm, and the temperature was 30°C; at night, people.

I remember when growing up that if it ever reached 26°C, it was unusually and ridiculously hot. And that was in the daytime, never at night. When I go home at night, my colleagues and I (we carpool) always pass by the hills where our Parliament building is — and it tends to be both hazy and hot (there's an electronic billboard near there too).

Daytime temperatures in Malaysia of 36°C are not strange anymore; there have been news reports that temperatures even reached 46°C in Brazil. And everyone certainly noticed that the Year of the Metal Tiger started out as if said tiger was out in the sun too long, and decided to growl and foist that heat onto us.

Let's start with a few key facts (don't you just love Wikipedia? In case you haven't please contribute some money to them every year, even if it is a small amount — it's worth it). Our sun, which is the star at the centre of the Solar System, is 1,392,000 kilometres (or 865,000 miles) in diameter, which is roughly equivalent to 109 Earths. It alone accounts for about 99.86% of the Solar System's mass, and possesses a surface temperature of approximately 5,778°K or 5,505°C — it couldn't get hotter if Monica Bellucci and David Gandy decided to start modellling lingerie.

Of course, global warming as a phenomenon is hardly new; even when I was in school, kids were aware about the harms human progress was inflicting on Mother Earth. It seems that the levels experienced back then are getting worse; it doesn't help that since 1997, Indonesia has been annually experiencing forest fires so severe that the whole of Southeast Asia gets clouded in a hazardous haze.

The number of cars has been creeping up too — and since we are still using vehicles based on designs and conventions created from around the time of Karl Benz and Henry Ford instead of clamouring for the Nissan LEAF, it means that Nelly may have been on to something when he had his hit song (though there are definitely more than enough people in the world who should not take off all their clothes, no matter what the circumstances). All the posturing of politicians that something must and will be done — most recently during the Copenhagen Summit — lack credibility; after all, they couldn't get America to ratify the Kyoto Protocols after several decades, so the only result is more hot air polluting the environment and our collective knowledge.

I am of the firm opinion that a big contributor to the overall heat is none other than the very roads themselves, especially in Asia and particularly in Malaysia. Let's face it, the roads are made of tar and petroleum-based chemicals too. In Western nations, which tend to be a lot colder or cooler than Asia, heat emission from the roads would not be that much of an issue.

However, equatorial nations like this one are much closer to the sun (relatively), and thus the heat released is oppressive — particularly after a light rainfall, which accelerates the release and causing that particularly uncomfortable condition of environment which we call muggy. You know you hate that feeling.

Think about it: all those cars (themselves releasing smoke and heat) travelling all along the roads generating extra heat through friction. Is it any wonder that global warming exists? And we happen to be approximately 149.6 million kilometres (or one Astronomical Unit) away from the sun on average — imagine how much more oppressive it would be if ever the Earth's circumlocutions around the sun were shortened even by a mere 1,000km.

Seems to me that several things need to happen: our scientists need to come up with better alternatives as far as fuel and chemical compounds are concerned (if I were a scientist, that is exactly what I would be pursuing). The energy companies in the world need to buck up, stop being greedy and start allowing better alternatives through. The politicians too need to buck up, wean themselves off the contributions of said conglomerates and start listening to the people whom they are supposed to be serving — after all, we don't owe you a living, but you owe us all results.

But more importantly, people all over have to get it into their heads that everyone has to chip in, both mentally and physically. We all have to accept the idea that we can do it only if we all pull together. One friend suggested showering together too, both to combat the heat and to save water. An idea so hot, it's cool...

Ahmad Azrai is seriously contemplating investing in Häagen-Dazs and all the other ice-cream manufacturers. No need for dividends, loads of ice-cream to the house will do...