After two typhoons over the past few weeks, I’m wo…
After two typhoons over the past few weeks, I’m wondering if Mother Nature read this article and said to herself, “Oh, yeah?”
The last one, “Matsa”, didn’t actually come ashore, but its effects got us a typhoon day on Friday. In fact the strong wind was already full of gusting, horizontal rain by the time I got back home on Thursday night. To my dismay, the entire block was dark. I live on the 12th floor, and the thought of all those stairs hauling my shopping wasn’t a pleasant one. I wondered briefly if I should just go to the Sandcastle, which apparently still had power, and wait it out. Perhaps, if I was particularly lucky, Jojo would have baked a pie.
I was in the lobby of my building, thinking these thoughts, when the power came on again. A gaggle of people who had been waiting there immediately rushed into the elevator. Of course, about a second after the doors had closed, the power went out again, as power that has been recently restored is wont to do. Immediately, the sound of wailing and pounding on the elevator doors filled the lobby from inside the shaft. Sighing, I put my rain poncho back on and trudged back down to the guard station. “There’s a bunch of people stuck in the elevator in building 2,” I said. The guard looked at me and shook his head.
“I told them to stay out of the elevator. Idiots. They’re just going to have to wait,” he said. I nodded, went back and climbed the stairs to my room, thinking I would light some candles and work on storyboards. By the time I got there, the power was back. Air conditioning has seldom felt so welcome.
There was no work on Friday, so I did laundry next door, listened to the gusting wind, felt the window glass vibrating in rhythm, and watched the water rise in Bitan. That afternoon I wrapped myself up in a 7-Eleven poncho and went out with my camera to take some pictures of the flooded riverside and the gates downstream. As you can see in the picture above, the water reached the mouths of the dragons under the bridge, which are really decorated drain pipes for the freeway bridge. Usually they’re quite a ways above the river.
A pole attached to a guide rope leading down into the water was jumping wildly from the force of the torrent. Downstream, a group of young men ventured into the water to catch fish. Apparently floods are prime extreme fishing opportunities.
The whole thing was over by Saturday, and the heat and humidity returned, along with afternoon thundershowers on Sunday. I’m not going to put away my candles, though, no matter what I read in the papers.
