Saturday, August 08, 2015

雖有颱風要來,可是七日晚上八點回家,路面是乾的。回家後沒多久開始下雨,再過一段時間颳風。好吧,颱風夜就睡吧,沒甚麼。半夜醒,下雨刮風,颱風嘛,不以為意,繼續睡。老婆說清晨五點左右剛好醒,看到窗外亮亮一片,繼續睡。停電了,這也沒甚麼,颱風嘛,再睡。颱風到十點大體上已經過了,雖然還有幾陣風。看外面,幾棵樹斷了,地上水多,沒甚麼。唯一不尋常的是,風雨把紗窗洗乾淨了。
可是到中午還沒復電,就奇怪。午餐後,聽到前面溪水聲音大,出去看,到馬路才知道嚴重。柏油很多處被水沖壞、很多地方崩。問鄰居有沒有電?說,水淹到發電廠,發電廠爆了,沒電,外面路都斷了,沒電沒電話沒網路。也沒水:烏來的自來水,是自己找來的水,要自己找水源、排管子到自家的水塔;我們水塔很大,暫時沒問題,可是這要注意。(原來超看到的亮光,是發電廠爆炸的光。)
這個颱風從頭到尾才十二小時左右,下了一千多毫釐雨。山崩、路斷,八十歲的耆老沒看過這麼嚴重的災害。這也是托消費者的福,很喜歡來烏來泡溫泉,所以外面資金流進來,亂開發,破壞水流、擋住水流;反正烏來只是他們投資的點而已,生意不好就拍拍屁股到別地方去吧,管它烏來怎麼樣。
可是我們居民不是這麼認為的。
We were expecting a typhoon. The news on the internet said it would be about as strong as Katrina, so I didn’t pay much attention to it. We get several larger than Katrina in an average year. Everything that can blow away, blew away long ago. We came home around eight on the evening of the seventh. The roads were dry.
It started to rain soon after we got home, and the wind came up to blow not much later. Ho hum, what better to do during a typhoon than sleep? I woke up during the night, the wind was blowing and the rain was raining, typical typhoon, back to sleep. Chao woke around first light and saw a bright flash in the sky, like lightning. The power was out, but that’s nothing unusual for a typhoon.
By ten in the morning, the typhoon had pretty well passed, except for some gusts. Some trees had broken, there was water everywhere, pretty much your typical typhoon. So far the only thing atypical was that it washed our window screens. I didn’t even bother to pay attention to the name of the typhoon, which was Soudelor.
After lunch, the power hadn’t come back on, which was unusual. The phone was dead, the cellphones didn’t have any signal, and we couldn’t go online. The stream out front seemed to be roaring especially loud, so we decided to go ask the neighbors if they had electricity.
When we got down to the road, we realized things were pretty bad. The road was all ripped up by the water. Neighbors told us that the stream overflowed into the power plant, which blew up: thus the flash Chao saw. There was no electricity, and the roads were all cut. Everybody’s water was cut (we lay our own pipes from spring to home). There were big and small slides everywhere. Wulai was out of touch with the outside world, even the neighboring tribal villages.
The typhoon was not particularly big, but it came all at once. Within about twelve hours, we got about four feet of rain. Roads were cut, landslides were everywhere, the oldest tribal elders had never seen such a mess in Wulai. For that, we have consumers to thank, people who flock to Wulai for the hotsprings, drawing investors, who care only about profits and nothing about local life. They built in places that cut off the flow of water. That proved disastrous.
I will be posting photos on Flickr. 

Friday, August 07, 2015

Contemporary Russian countour flying. In 1971, I was riding north on a winding road through the forests in the hills near Xuân Lộc, South Viet Nam, when suddenly a US Army LOH (pronounced Loach: Light Observation Helicopter) surprised us by appearing close overhead. He had flown up from behind us, about four meters off the road, and we had no idea he was coming. The pilot kept his LOH perfectly above the center of the road, the same height above the road up and down as it went through the hills, with forest hugging either side of the road. We were very impressed. Everybody knew all helicopter pilots were nuts, but that guy was good!!
This is what a LOH looks like.
You could knock one out of the air with a flyswatter.


Wednesday, August 05, 2015

Come unto me, my brethren and sistren, and I shall tell unto you the story of Joseph and the Goat of Many Colors.
In days of yore*, there lived a man named Jacob and he didn’t believe in planned parenthood, so he had boy child after boy child after boy child until finally he got one he liked. He liked this child so much that he named him Joseph, which in the language of the Israelites means Joseph. One day he found a goat with many colors, and as a sign of his special preference, gave said goat unto Joseph, which caused Joseph to put on airs. His brethren, sorely vexed, sold Joseph to a caravan for twenty shekels, killed the goat, cooked it, and told their father that alas, Joseph and the goat were murdered by some crazy Baptists from Westboro for eating figs, that they had buried Joseph and retrieved the remains of the goat. Jacob asked for a second serving.
Time passed. Many years later, Joseph, having been sold into servitude in Egypt, worked his way up to the ladder until he was CEO of Egypt. Whereupon there was a great famine in the land of Israel, whereupon the brothers decided to try their luck begging in Egypt, whereupon they were arrested for loitering and taken before the CEO, whereupon they recognized him not but he recognized them, whereupon he forgave them and fed them and everybody was happy again.
This story teaches us that selling your little brother into servitude is a shrewd investment, because you can not only earn twenty shekels, but many years later, in time of need, he will show his magnanimity by feeding your starving carcass. Smart move, big brothers. 
עֵז פַּסִּים
 * In days of yore mama’s mama’s mama’s to the Nth power mama.


Saturday, August 01, 2015

A very unfortunate juxtaposition on the Google News page:
“Kesha is a singer and songwriter. It's time to end this perverted excuse for entertainment.
Actually, I believe that was not a criticism of Kesha’s musical abilities, but rather a call from Kesha for an end to big game hunting for "sport".