In Where the Rain Wins

For the past two days it has been raining in Hong Kong.  I don't mean regular rain like the kind you get and need an umbrella for - I mean the slashing down sheets of rain that seems to be available only in hot countries that have a monsoon or typhoon season.

Yesterday I had my usual Monday art class in the afternoon.  I looked outside and while it looked hazy and cloudy I figured that was just Hong Kong pollution and really there was no need to bring an umbrella as it is towards the end of the rainy season - what dumb luck I have.  It started absolutely shattering the streets with waves of rain.  I got to the art class fine but by the time I left all the gutters in the streets I passed were just giving up trying to take any more water and were sadly just spitting everything (including some garbage) back into the streets I passed.

This is not my photo, but it is similar to my Monday

I got home and was told by my dry husband (who managed some how to miss the rain even though he had also forgotten an umbrella :-/ ) that yesterday was a typhoon level 3.  I am still not completely sure what that means - but basically its a whole of a lot of rain.  I was drenched from the mid thigh down, and from the mid thigh up.  I felt closer to Garfield and his hatred for Mondays after yesterday.

I did however see a couple of entertaining falls and one person I felt really bad for.  This one old lady was coming up a set of tile stairs (most stairs in Hong Kong are tile) and she fell down nearly a whole flight before she knocked into someone more stable who stopped both of them - poor lady.  Then this youngish girl in a short pink skirt and crappy gold flip flips was trying to protect her hair as she ran down some stairs to get out of the rain and landed flat on her ass - as I walked past asking if she was okay I did have to snicker.  What was she thinking - there was a waterfall of rain going down the same stairs - some people are idiots.  Lastly I saw this guy to a partial split off a sidewalk and into the street - cuz he has lost his footing - that one was entertaining because he had an posh umbrella and was in a blue pinstripe suit was obviously trying not to get wet...haha.

After spending the night through a thunder storm with the rain beating our window to a pulp and the building shaking ever so slightly whenever thunder or lightening was near - the skys were clear in the morning today.  My Yippee! sound may have been premature.

I headed out for my Riding for Disabled (RDA) volunteer work at some ungodly hour - because even though I am unemployed I have signed myself up for volunteer work that begins at the butt crack of dawn (okay not really but early when you wake up every other day at 9, 8 am is early). I arrived to Pok Fu Lam Public Riding school as the rain started pelting me as if in an attempt to punish me for being so foolish and thinking it might be over.

I was smarter this time and had an umbrella which I hastily withdrew and blocked that spiteful water from beating me this time. It didn't work.  RDA was cancelled - because there was still a Typhoon level 3 warning and some children's schools are cancelled if thats in effect - figures right!

So instead I took this picture - which doesn't show nearly as much rain as was actually there - but maybe it will work for today's photo.

Basically in the last two days it has rained more than half the Annual rainfall of England.