Typhoon Nuri

I found out on Wednesday that a typhoon was heading towards Hong Kong. I was just a little skeptical , I mean, it was calm though hot. No winds, no currents. However, my patients on Thursday told me that this was the "calm before the storm" (this saying exist in Chinese too! Chicken and egg?). The air was heavier, the winds non-existent, the birds and the crickets fleeing, and the old women with arthritic joints complaining of pain and 'wind' in their bones. That was how they predicted a typhoon in the old days. Nowadays, they have fancy smancy devices at the Hong Kong Observatory that would give you detailed weather reports.

The signal was One until Thursday evening. As I have described previously, you get signal one, three, then eight is when you don't go to work and it works up to nine with a maximum of ten. The finals for the equeastrian events were on Thursday night and thus I suspected they were reluctant to reschedule the event for another day therefore the late raise in signal until later in the evening.

This morning I woke up to calm skies and sunshine. I was thinking how ironic if the typhoon didn't happen and Cantoland would be in an uproar to discover they had to go to work today. =)

It was typhoon signal Eight. I called them bluff and figured they just wanted to keep people happy or face a backlash of unhappy skivers. So I went back to sleep until later in the morning. By the time I decided to wake up it had started raining. So being the ever curious trill-seeker that I am, I brought my student podiatrist out to Causeway Bay for Dim Sum and shopping. The shops were all shut but there were still loads of people wandering about. Your average tourist was looking all lost and wondering what all the fuss was about. It was, afterall, no worse than the average Scottish day or so my student podiatrist put it. They upped the Signal to Nine which was exciting though looked like an overkill. The overhead speakers were going into overdrive telling people not to go outside as Typhoon Nuri was going directly for Hong Kong. The winds started howling a little louder and we started looking up to check if things were going to fall on our heads. So after wandering about aimlessly at Causeway Bay, Shatin and City One we decided to rent DVDs and head back to hide out. By this time it was getting pretty dangerous to stay outside. The non-essential services had been closed and airports, the stock exchange, shops, buses and ferries were all shut down. The MTR was running at 15 minute intervals instead of their usual 2 minute intervals.

As I looked out my bedroom window, it is kinda unnerving to see the cranes swaying in the gale force winds. The fire truck and ambulances lights flashing intermittently and the trees bent in all directions with howling winds billowing. I just hope that it will subside tomorrow as I have a ballet to go to and a pretty dress to wear. One can always live in hope. Typhoons are only fun when it's a weekday.