We began to feel the outer rain bands of my first typhoon, Typhoon Sinlaku, on Friday September 12th, 2008 in Taipei. Sunny and blue skies (let me tell you, the winds really help clear up the pollution), and strong, warm winds. I’ve always LOVED storms, this was exciting.

My typhoon survival kit consisted of what was left in the Welcome store next to my loft at 3hAM on Saturday morning, the same moment I began to feel fear as the winds began to wail and the rain limited visibility to just a couple of blocks. I realized that all I had at home was a bag of chips and some candles, and with all the melodrama I can create out of any situation, I could picture myself days later, huddled in a corner of a typhoon torn apartment, hungry and without water. So I cleaned out the already bare shelves at Welcome of one box of Corn Flakes, two 350 mL cartons of homogenized milk, a bottle of red wine, and a flashlight. Party time!

Saturday came and I soon understood that typhoon or no typhoon, Taipei lives on. Really, all a typhoon means in Taiwan is a big party. Bars are open for typhoon themed events, people throw typhoon watching house parties, there are typhoon prices, typhoon drink specials, food specials; people make it a point to go OUT during a typhoon. Typhoons to Taiwan are like long weekends are to Canada. Party even harder. I typhoon partied at my friend Shawn’s; his place overlooks the Songshan airport, 7 floors high. There are these 4 or 6 sliding doors, like you‘d have going out to the backyard of your suburban home in Canada, that look out over the runway. It’s 1hAM and we’re watching the battle between the doors and the winds and rain the typhoon was whipping at them. There is no place in a typhoon for thunder and lightening, I didn’t know this, but they are instead replaced by ferocious winds perhaps spawning tornadoes. People said that they’d never seen anything like this before. There were definitely moments that the doors were lashed so violently, they’d shake and groan and I’d jump back as if they were going burst in spraying jagged shards of glass directly at us. They didn’t.

Growing up in the middle of Canada, all that this wild and wonderful planet has thrown at us was an ice storm and a freak, usually gone unnoticed, earthquake. Blessed are we to only experience this planets natural disasters in the news, on the internet, perhaps in a national geographic. Maybe we catch a video of a CNN news reporter broadcasting live from the streets and see their hat lost to the winds of a hurricane, or see photos of once booming communities left with nothing but rubble to rifle through. But never do we actually really FEEL the erratic fury that mother nature can unfortunately sometimes exhibit. This storm was intense. The wind, the rain, all of which I’d never experienced with such force, but what really captivated me, was that it was as if the sky, the clouds, the air, the entire atmosphere were all possessed with this infuriating energy. Surrounding you with the worlds most powerful emotions. Deep, right? There aren’t words nor pictures to describe what one really sees, hears, and feels when up against mother nature’s mighty vigor. It wasn’t just a storm.

By the time the sun came up, the heavy winds and rain of the typhoon had passed, and the tail that dragged behind it was a sky made so sinister with dark, dense, and miserable clouds. Clouds you thought that at any moment could morph into giant cloudy beasts from the forbidden depths of the universe, and cry depressed tears of sympathy onto the world below. When a typhoon is first formed, it begins as what is called a tropical depression. I fully understand this now. The atmosphere was suffering from the same sensations that are felt by a human being suffering from depression, the very same confusion and sadness. You could feel the misery thick in the air. It was so sad. It wasn’t raining anymore, but drops of water were falling to ground. Not rain, rain doesn’t fall like that. Nor was it a drizzle. It was like a leaking faucet, slowly water accumulates and once the drop becomes too heavy, it falls to the surface below. Little faucets hidden within the clouds, acting as tear ducts for the gloomy clouds and miserable sky above us. The clouds were moving fast chasing the typhoon north, and I amused myself with hundreds of dragonflies frolicking in the air around me, playing or fighting, I couldn’t tell. It was magical.

This was an experience of sorts for me, can you tell?

I promise a lighter entry filled with sunshine and lollipops soon.

Kbye.