Stuck indoors again - typhoon no. 4

Typhoon Jangmi approaches -4th typhoon to hit us this year and also the strongest storm. It made landfall in Yilan, where the Central Mountain Range buffet the biggest impact.

We've had typhoons hit us every weekend in succession. The land's still pretty waterlogged in the mountainous areas and low lying areas. Lots of landslides plus shaky bridges are still unfixed - a bridge in Taichung collapsed during last week's typhoon, rescue workers are still trawling for the bodies of the 4 missing people. May God have mercy on their souls and their bodies be recovered quickly so that loved ones have closure. This time around, the authorities are more conservative and took better preparations. Thus far, things are better.

Jangmi typhoon kicked up winds up to 250km hit northern Taiwan, Hurricane Ike which caused so much devastation in Texas was only up to 233km/h. In Hualien, a tour bus flipped over on its side - just shows how bad the wind was - fortunately no deaths.

Before the typhoon hit, yesterday, I was in Fulong 福隆 yesterday (Sat) with Rae, Alex and Pingfan for some cycling off the North-East coast of Taiwan. A newly restored old train tunnel - the Caoling Tunnel is also the basis of an old Taiwanese folk song. In fact Rae sang almost the entire song as we cycled through it. It's about 4.6km and then we went back to Fulong for the famed Fulong biantang 便當.

Then we cycled in the opposite direction intending to cross a nice drawbridge. But we missed a turn and gave up after the scenary turned industrial. Plus it got dangerous when the traffic around us were mostly semi-trailers.

I was a little wobbly initially - having not cycled in a while. Rae cycled behind me, yelling warnings at me every so often - 小心！Disclaimer - I was preoccupied with the scenary and wasn't watching the front too often. In fact at 1 stage, I got too close to Pingfan and our tires met briefly. All she yelled was, 请不要碰我！The Taiwanese sense of humour is really subtle. Kills me everytime.