The weather really gone crazy

Still sitting in Kaohsiung and waiting. Since we are playing sailors you might thing that following winds, favorable currents, a good weather window is why we are still rotting here (that’s a bit of exaggeration, but it is a fact that during the North-East Monsoon Kaohsiung is showered by dust from inland and sooth from the factories nearby, so rotting we are not, it’s more like being buried by the earth at sea). So weather etc is not the main reason for our delayed departure. We had plenty of chances to cast off. The North-East Monsoon is at full strength now, but periodically it eases up and opens a two to three day windows, which would let us slip in the shadow of Luzon without too much fuss. With a little bit of imagination you could say that we could do it without getting our feet wet.

We wanted to leave Taiwan before Christmas. Now we don’t even remember how we then imagined doing that. Do you know what the main obstacle that’s been keeping us here really is? Work. Naturally. Since the beginning of our “two year vacation” we haven’t paused for a bit.

So far we have followed the famous saying “study, study and study”, which has recently been transformed into “translate, proof-read, revise”. The fruit of our efforts seems to be quite consumable.

Naturally, we could enjoy our literary translation days in places other than along a promenade full of Mainland Chinese tourists in the middle of a smelly harbour. We are still here, because we have been asked to help out with a translation in a nearby factory. We admit that we have succumbed to the sweet jingle of money (actually it was more of a rustle).

However, even the weather tells us that we have little to complain about. Last month two smaller typhoons streamed right across the Philippines and last week has seen a tropical storm cutting it across southern Palawan and went totally bananas, turned back and smashed against Borneo. The world is changing, no doubt about that. Today the outlook in our beloved South-East Asia looks like this: Three lows are rubbing against each other, sucking down the monsoon, now cut loose, and it’s blowing hard and sooth is coming down from the sky. Is that necessary? I think not.

Not to mention that the Australian meteorologists had to add more colour codes to their temperature scale so that they can map temperatures surging up to 54°C.

In the words of a famous Czech playwright/writer/actor Jan Werich (I made no attempt to rhyme)

Oh yeah, we know all about it

And we say that

Let’s keep our heads buried in the sand like ostriches

It will burn our coat-tails at the most.

Only it could cost the people not only their coat-tails,

But lives and considerable amounts too…

Since we have to sit here for few more weeks, we started to work on project that we planned to leave till the Philippines, like a dodger a la Jean-du-Sud, i.e. instead of using stainless-steel pipes for the frame, we have used an inflated a fire hose. Seems to work just fine. Now we have to get down to sewing the actual dodger.

Also we brought a new mainsail from Hong Kong yesterday. Will try it out tomorrow if the weather is fine…