Bad Moon Rising

"I hear hurricanes a-blowin'.
I know the end is comin' soon.
I fear rivers overflowin'.
I hear the voice of rage and ruin."

So, last evening the sky suddenly—very suddenly—went black. My well-lit office suddenly plunged into darkness. I turned my head to look out the window and leaped into action, rushing to my bedroom, going out onto the balcony and pulling in the clothes that were hanging there....

Let's fade out to a time about two months ago. As before the world suddenly turned black, but I had no idea what was coming. Curiously I looked out the window at a world plunged into twilight grey. I watched as a lake whose surface is usually glass suddenly started to froth. I watched as a sign atop a nearby hotel suddenly lost one of its characters, the "letter" floating away like a leaf caught in a zephyr. Only the leaf, in this case, was a sizable chunk of metal.

I continued watching, still not quite fathoming what I was seeing as a large strip of stainless steel siding was stripped from a building's roof. As trees ever-closer to my apartment started sway and, in some cases, actually bend in the wind. Then it struck the building, just as I was getting out of my chair to investigate further. The wind blasting through my wide-open window (three metres away) nearly pushed me back into the chair.

Needless to say this started a big panic. Windows were shut everywhere and clothing, which was snapping in the wind like ever so many flags, was hastily collected. All just in time for the rain to start falling. Rain with drops so huge that at first glance I thought it was hail.So you can understand why, upon seeing the world go dark, I rushed into action. And none too soon, because the tempest that struck last night was far worse than the one I first witnessed.

First came the winds, easily stronger than the one that stripped the siding from a building and tossed it around like crumpled paper. The trees were all bending last night and, surveying the scene this morning, several of them snapped. A nice, tall pine, for example, that has always had a good, triangular profile now looks like it's wilting because the top snapped and is hanging to one side. Three trees right next to my building have had major load-bearing branches just break off, one falling toward and almost leaning on the building. A pile of wood palates in a neighbouring yard that was once stacked neatly is now scattered to the four corners and what's left of the pile proper has a thick tree branch stuck on it.

Next came the rain. Only the rain didn't come in drops. It came as a torrent. I sometimes joke about Niagara Falls opening up over Wuhan. Last night it did. I won't be joking about it anymore. Now unlike that last rainstorm I detailed, East Lake didn't jump its banks and flood streets. This rain didn't actually last all that long. It fell out of the sky and briefly turned all the streets into rivers (I'll explain how I know this below), but the torrent lasted maybe five minutes. Then it turned to regular rain for about 20 minutes. Then it went away leaving only (much-weakened) wind behind.

And lightening. Oh man was there lightning last night! The most glorious display I've seen since that tornado that wreaked havoc in Edmonton and then passed over where I lived in Regina (sans tornado). When that storm struck, there was constant lightning, turning the world into an eerie, strobe-lit scene. I even witnessed it striking a radar tower at the airport (which then spewed sparks far and wide and proceeded to catch fire).
That's what it was like last night, although as far as I could see nothing actually hit the ground; it was all an aerial display that put the best of fireworks to shame for sheer glory. (Oddly there was very little thunder, and what there was was very muted rumblings long-delayed after the lightning that triggered it. I think the closest the lightning ever came was about 5km from timing it -- and that was the stuff that was directly overhead!)

And the power loss. Did I mention that yet? I didn't? Well, suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, all the power in my building cut out. And in the neighbourhood buildings. And in the surrounding neighbourhoods. Indeed as far as the eye could see there was no light at all (aside from the flickering stuff overhead). Now there's an inconveniently placed mountain between me and the bulk of the city, but given what I saw, I suspect the whole city had been plunged into darkness. Obviously the lightning did touch down somewhere, and where it touched it wreaked havoc. For a good 20 minutes nobody had any light other than the occasional flashlight or candle visible in the windows. Then, after I briefly looked up from my Nintendo DS, I noticed that the business district kitty-corner across the lake from us had light. Shortly afterwards the neighbours around us all had light. We were an island of darkness in the neighbourhood, matching the university behind us. Our compound is owned by the university, you see, and, apparently, gets its power feed from the university, not the neighbourhood grid.

At this point I got tired of sitting in the dark while everybody around us had light. The rain had long ago stopped. I was curious to see what the rain did in the neighbourhood, and it was time for my evening exercise walk anyway. So, over Joan's objections (who was convinced I was going to get struck by lightning which had, by that point, receded to over 20km away) I went out for my walk. This is where I saw the aftermath and concluded that the rain had turned all the roads into raging rivers.

Everywhere I looked I saw signs of things being swept into the streets and down the hill -- including things like piles of bricks. The street vendors were all out in force by this point, but it was apparent from watching them that they were tense and unhappy. One DVD vendor was carefully inspecting his stock, for example, while one vendor of fried potatoes had a pile of raw potato chunks piled on the dirt next to a half-empty bucket of the things. Obviously it had been knocked over by a miniature flash flood.

We got our lights back, eventually. In fact the timing scared about ten years from my life. When I went out for my walk I, naturally, walked down the stairs. (Elevators use electricity, recall.) When I reached the last step, I stretched my arm out to open the door and at exactly the same moment that I touched the door, all of the university district lights came on. The hallway lit up. The building's exterior lights lit up. The bank of electrical metres lit up and beeped in unison. I jumped out of my skin and clung to the ceiling.

All in all quite a fun day.

"Summer... turns me upside down."

Free cookies (nice salty ones with chives in them -- I'm in China, remember!) to anybody who can figure out where the title comes from.

So summer is officially approaching. Technically I'm still in spring here, but I find it difficult to refer to 33°C@80%+ as "spring". Still, this is approaching the end of my sixth year in China, so I'm getting used to the heat. I'm not even using the air conditioner yet. I've partially adapted, it seems.

Maybe the massive weight loss has something to do with it?

Anyway, with summer comes all sorts of other fun things besides heat and humidity. As usual these things come in two forms: the good and the bad. Maybe that should be "the good, the bad and the ugly". Only I'm in China. Let's modify this to "the good, the bad and the positively weird".

Let's look first at the good:

• As the temperatures rise, the clothing gets skimpier and skimpier. Yes, I'm married, but this doesn't mean I'm dead! Watching the cute local girls wander around in clothing that would make a By Ward Market streetwalker gasp in shame (without the cynical, self-consciousness you'd find in said streetwalkers) is a good way to take my mind off of the searing heat.
• The city explodes with greenery and flowers. A city that in the winter is the epitome of dingy industrial cities, grey and lifeless, suddenly sprouts green everywhere. The underlying acrid scent of pollution that permeates everything is masked very effectively by a bewildering variety of sweetly-scented flowers. They're even nice on the eyes—almost, but not quite, matching the scantily-clad girls.
• A lot of my favourite foods here are summertime foods: especially the cold noodle(-like) dishes. These are coming to the table more and more often.

OK. That's pretty much it for the good. Now let's talk about the bad:

• There is, of course, the searing heat. Today it was "only" 33°C. It's been warmer already—today was actually a bit of a relief—and it's going to get worse and worse. I've seen as high as 42°C with humidity well in excess of 70%.
• The growth of all this greenery includes some plants (which I have yet to identify) which drive my nose nuts. This starts in early spring, goes away for a while, restarts around this time of year, disappears in early summer, then comes back at the tail end of summer. Every year for the past six I've lived through this and I hate it. I was allergic to nothing in Canada. It was a bit of a shock to find out how the allergy-plagued people live, let me tell you!
• One word: mosquitoes. This place is a positive paradise for those little blood-sucking vermin. They invade everything. They'll even fly to the 20th story of skyscrapers and plague people. They're merciless and they're beyond counting. If you spend an evening killing them and managed to destroy 20, you can rest assured that there's dozens more hiding where you can't find them ready to come out at you when you're no longer looking for them.

Now it's time for the positively weird:

• First on the weird list is the sheets I sleep on. If you click on the image to the right you'll notice something odd on the side of the bed farthest from the camera. It looks like the bed is covered with little pieces of wood, right? Well, it's not wood. It's bamboo. And it's hundreds of little pieces (slightly smaller in area than a Mah-jong tile) threaded together with fishing line and edged with stretchy rubber stuff. It keeps you cool in the heat. It sounds ridiculous and uncomfortable, but it is neither. It really works and it is actually quite comfortable. (The more hirsute among us have to wear light underclothes to bed, however, to avoid some truly painful moments.)
• The second weird thing is probably leaping out at you in that picture while I babbled on about the sheets. Notice that funny dome over the bed? It's a tent. There is a tent over my bed. It is mesh on all sides, including the bottom. It zips up tight allowing nothing to get in. Since Joan is pregnant now she doesn't want us to light mosquito coils at night (what we used to do to keep mosquitoes from eating us alive). So instead we bought a tent to put on the bed. I was a bit sceptical at first, but it does work well. I even (mostly) fit!
• The final weird thing is the bedding again. Ignore the covered half of the bed. For Joan the weather is still too cool for the bamboo sheets, you see, so we've folded a quilt for her side of the bed. Back over on the bamboo side, look at the odd pillow. It's made of woven grass on the side you can see. The other side is thin strips of bamboo. The filling is buckwheat husks. (It was once scented with chrysanthemum blooms, but those have long since faded away.) This is the pillow you use to keep your head cool at night. The side I have up now is suited to moderate heat. The other side is stiffer (and takes a lot of getting used to!) but is very suitable for the blazing heat later in the summer. Of course by that time I'll be firing up the air conditioner, so that side of the pillow will rarely see action. But it's there for the inevitable days where the power company decides to just shut down the electricity without warning. (Let's hope they at least pick a windy day for that!)

So, that was my little taste of China for this post. Hope you enjoyed it.

Hello From Downtown Baghdad

Did I mention that today was Lantern Festival? That this means it's the last day of Spring Festival? And that this is the last day that fireworks are legally allowed to be sold or lit? That as a result I'm living in a damned close approximation of downtown Baghdad? You know why I haven't mentioned it?

Because there's no damned way you'd be able to hear me over the racket!

All in good fun, though.

OK, This Is Seriously Cool!

What can I say? Interested in where I live and what it looks like? Just follow the link and all will be shown! (Flash will be needed.) You can see where I work as well if you like. Joan works up here. Here's where we buy groceries most of the time. I spend most of my meagre allowance here. Joan spends all my money here. (I'm going to die for that crack!) And here is where the best thing happened in my life. (Mom, Andy, Marion, Misha and Jeff will remember that place well, I think.)