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Comment by mskullcap | Hacker News Reader

I am Canadian, I lived in Joburg for 2yrs. You are bang on: huge gaps in doors, windows that can't fully close and uninsulated homes. It was bloody cold in the winter, with my indoor temp being around 10C in the morning! And of course, all sorts of creepy crawlies appearing in my living room (scorpions, prawns) at random times. Loved the cloudless skies, however.

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> I am Canadian, I lived in Joburg for 2yrs. You are bang on: huge gaps in doors, windows that can't fully close and uninsulated homes. It was bloody cold in the winter, with my indoor temp being around 10C in the morning! And of course, all sorts of creepy crawlies appearing in my living room (scorpions, prawns) at random times. Loved the cloudless skies, however.

I live in JHB, have been for most of my life. Still not used to how cold it is in the winter.

But the creepy crawlies? C'mon - you're in Africa, what did you expect? In my experience, the benefit of moving to JHB from the east coast was the lack of creepy crawlies!

I grew up on the coast, and there's no end to the wildlife (including creepy crawlies ... maybe the occasional leopard).

The east coast of South Africa is a pain to live in; monkeys frequently raid the garden, large, flying cockroaches get into any food, people will frequently find frogs and/or crabs getting into their pools, snakes frequently getting into the house ...

I'd rather have the cold.

I'm from a place that (I'm told) has similar weather, and it's common for people from colder climates to complain about lack of insulation. The quick answer is, here you don't have winters that are as cold, therefore developers can get away with shoddy construction without killing its inhabitants... so they do. If you built something like this in Toronto, people would literally freeze to death inside, so it can't be done.

Also, take into account that spring/summer is warmer, and construction practices also have to take this into account.

I'm guessing "prawn" is local slang for some insect, because I'd only ever heard it refer to the seafood (like shrimp) or those aliens in District 9

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parktown_prawn

> The Parktown prawn or African king cricket

The term used in District 9 also comes from this

Oh man the pictures on the wiki don't do it justice - I checked for one with scale and they're a fair size!

According to the wikipedia article they jump and shoot ink and are generally very annoying, to the extent that there's an april fools day story that they were genetically modified...

one of the sources has some funny stories/comics/attestations to the horror of prawns https://ourfiresidestories.com/the-parktown-prawn-chronicles...

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