Wow. That typhoon was awesome! I can't believe how strong the winds were and how heavy the rain fell, and at the same time. Usually in typhoons we get bursts of wind followed by torrential downpours, and it cycles like that for the duration. Not this time. There was quite a lot of destruction through the streets today. Many trees had snapped from the force of the wind, and those that remained standing had been stripped of quite a lot of their leaves and weaker branches. In all of the alleys and lanes and streets, people had taken it upon themselves to cleanup the aftermath. There were these little piles of rubbish every thirty meters or so, with leaves, branches, and miscellaneous pieces of life that had been destroyed by the storm. It was umbrellas, mostly. I was dumbstruck by how many people I saw with umbrellas during the storm. I kept thinking, Are they aware that their little piece of nylon on a stick isn't gonna do much good with 225 km/h winds?

Enjoy these videos we took during some of the heavier times in the storm. The eensy little camera we have just doesn't do the storm justice. The wind gusts were so strong that it would turn the downpour of quarter-sized raindrops into mist (that part wasn't at all captured: I just don't have a Hollywood CGI facility to work with). The storm tore trees from their roots and tiles off of buildings. At one point I heard a family of cats screaming, and I have little doubt they were flying past my third-floor windows, paying homage to Dorothy and Kansas, I suppose. 

For a quick visual of what we're going through right now, click this link here.  Then click on the animate button. Oh, so strong wind!

We decided to go for a walk in the typhoon this morning, which was bloody brilliant! 100kmh winds, shearing rain... with the wind at our back the rain was pelting our necks like rice in a wind tunnel. It hurt, and reminded me of an exfoliation treatment gone horribly wrong. There were a few scary moments, mostly when we were walking by trees, because we saw that about a dozen very large trees had broken at their trunks. Some had landed on cars, and there was debris everywhere. We are actually quite lucky, thinking of it now, that we weren't harmed or seriously maimed by flying debris.

We're now safe and sound in our apartment, and I definitely won't go back outside until this monster storm passes over, which should be Sunday night-ish. I think we're going to take advantage of being house bound and catch up on some movie watching and napping and pancake eating. Yum!

Just a quick note: there's another typhoon coming...Jesus, it feels like that's the only exciting thing that happens around here. Well, it looks like it's right on track to ruin a perfectly good weekend. Oh, well, looks like I get to catch up on some reading and painting that I've not had time for recently.