Taiphoon is coming

As anyone who's studied Chinese for more than a week knows, the traditional greeting isn't "Hi, how are you?"  It's, "Have you eaten yet?"

But today the greeting has changed to, "Taiphoon is coming!" (Tai-fong lai le)  Seriously, all day in service, at the meeting, that's what people would say when I first saw them.  At the grocery store, at the water machine, it's all the same.

It does look pretty serious.  I hadn't heard anything about a taiphoon when I heard them talking in Chinese about a Taiphoon Holiday on Monday.  They even unplugged all the stuff in the office.

Jasmine saw the news and told me Taichung will call a taiphoon day for Monday at 10 tonight if they'll call it. 

I went up to the roof of my building and took some pictures.  (Yes, smart allecks, that's exactly where experts suggest you go when there's a taiphoon coming- no, it wasn't even raining yet!)

The rainbow that made me run back to my apartment to get my camera:

That's looking east (maybe a little north-east?) towards the city of Fong Yuan, the mountains, and the East Coast where the taiphoon will make landfall. Sorry about so many pictures- between my digital camera and the point-and-drag picture thing....  My building is one of maybe 9 identical ones so lots of the same elevator towers blocking the shots.

This shows how cool the sky was- bright blue in parts with a fast-moving crazy clouds.  The brick-looking building in the foreground is supposedly the future sight of a Carrefour which they've been building since I moved here... Looking north- the wind was coming from the north at this point. Pretty colors, eh? Looking west- towards the Taiwan Strait...  You can see the dark stormclouds near the horizon.

I took all these near dusk- this is the last one, from street level.  You can see the layers of clouds lit up in the background.

And don't worry about me!  I'm on the 7th floor so if I get flooded, well... that would be the least of my worries.  I bought some tape for my windows so they don't blow in (fortunately for taiphoons and unfortunately for general air circulation, my windows face a courtyard to the winds are broken up) and I've got plenty of food and water.  I even realized that my uncooked noodles won't do me much good in the event of power outages/ gas outages so I pre-boiled some.  Although the power didn't go out with any of last year's taiphoons.  I even have flashlights- with batteries!  That work!