Typhoon Fun Wang

Last year was Typhoon Long Wang, this year Fun Wang. Next year Typhoon Wang Dang Sweet PoonTang. This is s dream for anyone whose sense of humor is stuck in 7th grade.

The storm hasn't hit yet, but the winds outside my apartment are beginning to pick up. Yesterday the man on the teevee said that the storm wasn't going to be that big at all. This morning I think someone said it was going to be a super typhoon. And by "someone" I might as well just say it was my wife reporting what she heard on her favorite partisan news station (and you know how those bastards lie).

It's looking like we're going to have our second typhoon day in three weeks--kind of cool in that we get long weekends, but I kind of prefer having my typhoons on Friday so the length of the weekend is apparent from the onset. Still, a surprise day off is a surprise day off.

Update: Here's the storm's projected path. The dotted line goes right through Taichung. Fortunately there's a couple heaps of mountains between where it is now and where I am now, so it's likely that the storm will get a lot weaker by the time it get here.

Taichung City schools and businesses are closed tomorrow anyway, just in case.

July 28, 0930--The Yahoo says the storm made landfall shortly after daybreak. In Taichung now, there is a mist of rain, if any. No one has to work today (except for the college kids manning the 7-11's) so there is no traffic on the street. It's quiet.

Not so quiet on the East Coast, where fire trucks are driving through villages urging residents to evacuate ahead of floodwaters. There are already crews with rubber rafts in some places floating around ostensibly rescuing people.

The rain is audible now, but nothing worth staying home for. I'm sure there's more to come.