Make it Rain

That's right, typhoon season has kicked off with a bang this year thanks to Typhoon Marakot. This begs the question: who names these things? Well, after some digging I found that here in "typhoon country", we owe our curious storm names to the Typhoon Committee, a group of meteorologists hailing from 14 Asian/ Pacific countries. The names are apparently not chosen with an emphasis on the people variety, and seem mostly to be natural plants, animals, phenomena, etc. The names added to the list by the Japanese members of the committee, for example, are from constelations. Marakot means "emerald" in Thai. The name seems strangley apropriate, considering this is pretty much what the view out my window looks like:
And after 3 whole days, I have to admit it's wearing on me. Thank gods there was a typhoon holiday Friday so that instead of suffereing the indignity of being blown into a pattern that resembles drunk scooter driving, all the while getting wet, I can relax at home and listen to the soothing sounds of a neverending downpour. The typhoon is slow this time, which is great for Taiwan, as the island has been in the grips of a near-drought for a couple months now.
Here is an image from Google Earth Thursday night when the typhoon was still fun and interesting (please disregard my sorely inaccurate approximation of the location of Taiwan and focus rather on the fact that you can't see Taiwan under all that cloud):And here is an update for Saturday night, after the typhoon has become one big, post-soul-crush meh in my life:So yes, I meant it when I said that my dear friend Emerald has come from a brisk swim out at sea only to crawl all over Taiwan and Eastern China. And since I've run out of enlightening or humorous observations, I'll wrap things up with a couple of videos I made to document the carnage earlier today:





This is the stuff indoor plants' nightmares are made of.

All this bad weather is making me think about comfort food. And I'm starting to wonder, what am I supposed to do with the money that I've saved for a rainy day? Maybe in a place of such extreme precipitation, we have to face that we've really just been saving for a rainy day pizza delivery.