In fact, I do know why - Typhoon Kalmaegi has come to town, and most things are closed today, including my workplaces. Except that I wasn't sure of that last fact, and so I left home as usual this morning, and rode out into the wind and rain. I arrived at work, only to find everything closed up (Doh!), and naturally got soaked to the skin in the process. Before that, I parked my scooter, and walked to a nearby 7-Eleven to buy a newspaper. The small lane that leads to the store was flooded, as you can see below from the short video I made. I ended up wading through it to the other side, with the water going up to my knees (I'm 6'3", or 189.5 centimeters tall, which should give you a good idea of how much water there was), and spilling into the front rooms of some houses.
Just after filming this, a kid came riding by on his bicycle. He made it about halfway across, before having to turn around and find another route.
If I were a salaried worker, I would enjoy the opportunity of having the day off. Unfortunately, I'm paid by the hour, and Fridays are my busiest days. Typhoon days thus bite into my income. Actually, typhoon days bite, period.
UPDATE: I went out this afternoon with Pamela and Amber, in order to rent some DVDs from Blockbuster, and do some grocery shopping at a Sinon supermarket. The rain was still coming down pretty hard. On the way home, we came across this car. There are several underpasses in Fengyuan (Fongyuan) 豊原 that become flooded very quickly during heavy rainstorms, and a sight like this unfortunate Mercedes isn't uncommon.
Later, after the rain had stopped, I took Amber up to the roof of our apartment building. Thanks to Bryan from A Walk in Hachioji's comment about the view from up there, I've come to have a better appreciation of it, and have gone up several times in the past week to have a look. One good thing about typhoons is that they blow away all the dirty air, and thus leave clear views (for a while, anyway) in their wake. Maybe this is why I noticed for the first time that the Taiwan High Speed Rail 台湾高速鉄道 tracks are visible from our rooftop. Using binoculars, I was able to catch sight of two Shinkansen trains going by (the first one heading south, the other going north), but the trains could also be made out fairly well unassisted. I'm glad I don't live in a built-up urban area where the view would be one of ugly concrete apartment blocks.
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