Typhooned out in Taipei

Typhoon Karosa is here for the weekend. A view from the entrance to my aunt's apartment block. As you can see, the letterboxes to about 180 apartment units are on the right, and the yellow taped "X"s on the windows are put on there yesterday in prep for the onslaught today. Usually the security guard sits on the left of the window (he has his own gossip column) - but its everydbody's day off today. Therefore it was also my job to put a fish back into the pond in the shared atrium/garden as well, sheesh. I had a much more impressive vid from the belcony but it was too big to be loaded up.

Typhoon is part and parcel of Taiwanese life, but because I've been living overseas since 1990, I haven't been in a typhoon since I was about 9, so this is kinda exciting. I remember how much I loved watching the chaos unfold outside, and the stacks of board games and candles that would come out of the woodworks, and most of all, No school! But to be completely serious, its not all that fun at all, apparently it costs the entire economy about 2 billion Taiwan Dollars to have a Typhoon day off work, plus the horrendous cost in agriculture, and occasionally the unfortuate loss of lives, often these would be from slipping rocks falling onto roads etc due to massive land clearing & bad/corrupt civil defence service. Read more about it here http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2007/10/06/2003381904