Typhoon

This weekend a typhoon passed just south of Shanghai. I planned to go
swimming in a rooftop outdoor pool on Saturday, but that was
impossible. You probably would have been blown away by sudden gushes of
wind. So I was confined to my apartment. Not too bad actually, got lots
of work and wedding preparations done and watched two movies. Also I
spent quite some time in the gym: Saturday 45 minutes of intensive
spinning plus some weights exercises, and today a 16.5 km run on the
treadmill.

The typhoon itself was a nuisance, but for me not much more than that.
Lots of wind of course, but I am used to that from when I was still
living in Holland, but especially huge amounts of rain. I think it has
rained for almost 48 hours straight now, except for a short dry period
this morning. Friday night we went to get a foot massage at Dragon Fly.
When we went there at 9 PM it was windy, but still dry. We came out
around 10 PM, and I was surprised to see that the street (Donghu Lu)
had changed into a river! Within one hour! We walked over the sidewalk
to Huaihai Lu, and there it was not much better. It was impossible to
get into a taxi without getting soaked, so we decided to hop on the
subway to Hengshan Lu and get a taxi from there. That worked fine. Once
we were home it really started raining. At night I woke up a few times
because I thought our windows would be blown out (we live at the 28th
floor, and not many building around us are higher than that, sot he
wind hit us directly), but luckily that did not happen.

Saturday night we had pizza with several friends at La Gondola (Yan’an
Lu – Henan Lu, close to the Westin hotel) with some friends. We were
lucky to find a taxi, but although there was not much traffic the trip
still took longer than usual. The driver was driving extremely
carefully. After dinner we went to Jim’s apartment to watch a movie.
Jim is an INSEAD classmate of Qi, and he has a super sound and video
system in his apartment. It was only a 300 meter walk, but our
high-quality umbrella was blown to pieces during the walk and we got
soaking wet… Luckily Jim had some spare clothes for us to borrow.
After the movie he managed to order us a taxi back. Even the high roads
were full of water, so I was glad the driver did not drive too fast
either. I was glad to be home again.

Today the weather seemed to be better. This morning it was dry for a
while, but around 1 PM it started to rain again, and it has not stopped
anymore. Hopefully tomorrow will be better: the combination of Shanghai
Monday morning traffic with heavy rain and wind is not something I look
forward to.