Krosa

Typhoons come often in Taiwan, and most of the time, they only cause havoc on the Eastern coast of the island (winds and flooding). While we will once in a while get a typhoon holiday, many people will just go to the movies or shopping because the weather on the day off usually ends up being not-so-bad. In short, typhoons are rarely anything spectacular - especially in Hsinchu.

Come Typhoon Krosa. Krosa hit Taiwan on Friday evening and most of Saturday. Finally a typhoon worth talking about. In my three years here, I have yet to see a typhoon this strong, and it was fun. AC and I already planned to see a movie, and despite the strong winds and rain, we decided it'd be fun to go out anyway. Just because I had never done it. We got soaked, yes. Me in particular. My umbrella got inverted a few times, but survived because of its sturdy and flexible design. I saw a lot of trashed broken umbrellas - you get what you pay for. Anyway, when we came out of the MRT (subway) nearest the movie theatres, we started out walking towards the theatres about 10 minutes away. But we turned around after 3 minutes because of the high winds and heavy rain - and we started to suspect the theatres wouldn't be open. Sure enough, a quick phone call confirmed that they were cancelling all their afternoon shows.

So, Krosa was a fun and scary experience. Countless trees uprooted, bikes and scooters toppled over, flipped umbrellas, and even wooden panels dropping from tall heights. It was something more comparable to the mayhem you see on TV when a hurricane hits the Southeastern US States, but without the palm trees. In fact, we were in a taxi, and one girl crazy enough to be out scootering was blown in front of our car forcing the driver to break rapidly. Fortunately no one got hurt.

However, unfortunately Krosa came with bad timing. We got no typhoon holiday out of it, and it ruined a perfectly good weekend. But at least I got to experience the wrath of nature.