Weather is Happening

Typhoon Hagupit came and went yesterday and I am still here to tell the tale. In reality, it was not that brutal of a storm. However, at times, I did feel like I was on a rowboat in the middle of Victoria Harbour (which is not a good feeling to have when you are sitting at your desk, in your apartment, on the 26th floor of an anorexic building built into the side of a cliff.)

The Hong Kong Observatory issued a number eight tropical cyclone warning around 6:00 pm yesterday, effectively ending everyone's workday and shutting down most transportation into and out of the city. By this time, I had already made it home and decided to watch the festivities from my window. The sky went from a bleak, dismal gray to an ominous and menacing black in minutes. The wind kicked up. The rain raced past my window in horizontal patterns. And a large letter "F" (made of cardboard, aluminum, or some other mystery substance), made like a whirlpool in reverse and rose from ground level to over my eyes and out of sight in seconds.

After a few hours of rattling doors and windows and slight nausea, I decided to head outside and experience the typhoon more intimately. I got in touch with Jenny and Laura and the three of us took the elevator down to see what was transpiring below. We informed the security guard that we were going outside and he looked at us with a mixture of curiosity and irritation. Wondering why we would be foolish enough to wander outdoors during a typhoon, yet slightly annoyed that he would have to dislodge the umbrella, which was doubling as a lock on the building's entrance.

Our initial impression about the weather was favorable, for it was the first time since arriving that the humidity didn't envelop you as soon as you stepped outside. The gale-force winds were a welcome respite from the sweltering and clammy days that had marked my first month here. The lateral raindrops lightly smacked our faces. We stretched our arms skyward and beckoned the clouds to do as they wished. And after three minutes of this, we decided we had experienced enough. No point in standing around and waiting for a rogue tree limb to impale one of us, in the concrete courtyard of Shue Yan University, far away from home.

So we went back inside and rode out the remainder of the storm in the comfort of our swaying abodes. And by morning, despite the scattered branches, overturned plants, upended goalposts, and broken glass, things had returned to normal in Hong Kong.