I realize now that I somehow failed to notice that Philadelphia was in Fahrenheit, while all the others showed Celsius, but the important thing is that Taipei and Munich are 17 °C and -17 °C, respectively. Isn’t that wild?

And for the record, I did not boot into OS X specifically to snap a screenshot of pretty weather widgets. I was actually there to fsck a troublesome HFS+ drive which for some reason refuses to respond to the fsck.hfsplus packages I currently have configured in Linux.

As you can see, it’s already a Category 5, although it’s supposed to be losing some strength along the way to Taiwan. We’re gonna get bulldozed by this thing.

CNN already reports:

The Central Weather Bureau urged residents in eastern and northern Taiwan on Saturday to beware of strong winds and heavy rains being whipped up by Typhoon Jangmi.

[...]

It says the typhoon is packing winds of 118 miles per hour (191 kilometers per hour) and moving northwest at 12 mph (20 kph).

Based on the stats in the Wunderground pic above, Jangmi has obviously gotten stronger since the CNN article was written. It can’t go above a Category 5, so in some sense that’s comforting.

I stepped on my umbrella the other day and snapped it in half. Great timing, eh? I’m thinking I should run out in the morning tomorrow and buy one, if there are any left in town. And stock up on soup and tea, as well—again, if there’re any left.

Sundays are great days to read.

Sinlaku managed to cause quite a ruckus (please ignore the stats in the top left corner of the above image). Here in Chungli it was mostly rain and a bit of wind, nothing serious, but a lot of places on the eastern coast got bashed pretty hard. (Taiwan has a large mountain range on the east side which I can only assume slows down bad weather before it hits places like Chungli.) Since I’ve been in Taiwan, though, it’s been all sunshine and happiness.

Cue Typhoon Hagupit. Initially forecast to become a Category 3 or 4 over the water and follow a path similar to Sinlaku’s, it’s since been predicted that it won’t rise above a Category 2, and will in fact be downgraded to a tropical storm by the time it hits land. That land will be in China, by the way, as the storm is now thought to be heading well south of Taiwan.

While we will probably see some rain here, it doesn’t like look this storm is going to do much damage to anyone (yes, I’m rapping my knuckles on my desk right now). It’s interesting to me, though, that the above image shows Hagupit missing Taiwan by a considerable margin. Of course, that’s really just the position of the storm center, so the arms of the beast will definitely say hello as far north as Chungli and Taipei.

This morning was one of the sunniest, most pleasant ones I’ve seen here yet—and that’s saying a lot!—but the winds are picking up already. There are large cumulus clouds moving quickly across the sky, though the sun is still shining brightly. The clouds are clearly coming out of the northeast, which is a strange pattern. Or would be strange, if not for the circumstances.

I think I’ll stay in after dinner tonight.

Finishing a book in the daylight is an odd experience. Much like how one is always surprised upon leaving a movie theater to see that the day hasn’t yet died (this is a phenomenon confined to summer, I think), I was puzzled that my day hadn’t ended along with that of the characters’. (My, how that double genitive marvel of English never ceases to amaze me.)

The book is gone, yet already envelops the rest of my evening. The shadows cast by the falling sun weren’t even dramatically long. This footprint, this echo, a puddle, an augury, adds flavor to the day that I cannot wash out of my senses, not even with the stale taste of a hotdog from a lunch truck as I make my way to my next class.

I think I’m starting to like this not-having-a-timepiece lifestyle.

There’s nothing I have to do today. Tons of things I should, of course, but screw them.

There’s even a medieval festival in Munich this week, and I might not even attend it tonight. I’m that interested in doing absolutely nothing.

So, we’ll see how the evening plays out. Good luck enjoying life as much as I am.

Update:

A friend uploaded this picture of me today. Life is good, no?

When I find a higher resolution version, I’ll replace it with that.

Videoblogging is supposed to be inane, right?

Back when I was painfully broke (after losing my internship), I remember my favorite thing about this pizza job is that inclement weather would not keep me from working, as was—and of course still is—the case with my tour guide job. Now that I’m back in good economic standing, I view working in the pouring rain less like a privilege.

Damn it, I made a video of myself, and that’s supposed to be the content of this post. Enjoy.

I just walked home in a cold spring rain with freshly baked bread warming my hands, crossed glistening cobblestone streets as the tram clattered by, the church bells splashing down the quiet corridors of shops, trying to remind me why people bake bread at all.

I don’t have any pictures of this, I didn’t record the smells. I failed to capture the warmth of that bakery, made real to me by a few locks of wet hair sticking to my face. My glasses fogged up when I entered. I mumbled something about the weather to the kind lady on the other side of the counter, and she handed me bread.

Everything is more than OK. I don’t mean in my life, I mean in the world. It’s all going to be fine.

Don’t try to save the world, because it doesn’t need it. Save the bakeries. Because once we lose them, all is darkness.

Today I awoke to birds chirping so loudly I could hear them through the shut balcony doors. I braced myself for a gust of cold wind, telling myself the chill would be worth it, to hear those birds better, and jerked open the door. The air outside was warmer than that in my room, and I’d left the heat on overnight.

It was quickly decided amongst those present in the building that a trip to the Englischer Garten was in order. So we gathered up the necessary supplies: a frisbee, an American football, empty soda bottles filled with tap water, and a few blankets. Then we were on our way.

After many hours of cavorting across the rather muddy fields, leaping and slipping and wheezing from a lazy winter, we took a break to see off the few people who had to head home and shower before going to work. The day winded down as the sun lolled about before setting, and we washed the mud off our bare feet in the river running through the Garden.

On the way home, I came across a painted rock and it captivated me.

I hope this rock imparted to you but a fragment of the joy it did to me. I was thoroughly mocked for bothering to stop to take this picture, but I’ve just founded a religion under whose tenets anyone who doesn’t appreciate this rock goes straight to hell. And by “hell” I mean they don’t get to see any cool painted rocks while they’re just walking around.

Other things later. Today was too much fun. Take a look at the full, albeit brief, album.

I still have a vivid memory of drinking in a beer garden with some friends, enjoying the glorious late July sunshine in the park, when hordes of patrons suddenly started scrambling for their bikes and heading home. Whole tables were freed up in a matter of minutes. (I think empty tables in a beer garden in July is a sign of the apocalypse.) My friends and I thought that maybe the beer garden was closing soon, but quickly realized the absurdity of such a notion.

Within minutes black clouds rolled in overhead and there was an epic downpour. We tried to join the masses huddling under the safety of the Chinese Tower in the beer garden, but the crowd was packed so tightly we had to press against people to avoid the sheets of water cascading off the upper levels, making a really cool waterfall inches from our chests.

Check out this picture, taken earlier this year, on an afternoon that couldn’t decide whether to be pleasant or apocalyptic.

This morning, Jesse comes knocks on my door and wakes me. I told whoever it was to come on in, and when Jesse sees me still in bed, he asks whether I missed the storm this morning. Upon hearing that yes, I did miss it, he asks again in disbelief, describing the intensity of the storm, and how there’s no way I could have slept through it. He caught his tongue on that last part, as everybody here knows I can sleep through just about anything.

Apparently there were powerful winds beating the building all day, following by pouring rain, then snow for about 10 minutes, and finally glorious sunshine. I got up and joined him on my balcony and sure enough, there was snow in the courtyard, which melted quickly in the golden daylight and vanished within the hour.

I thought this was an interesting occurrence. Later this afternoon, however, I learned that Germany had a freaking hurricane today. This makes sense. Last night, while watching a movie in my room with a bunch of friends, the wind started to pick up. It got so bad that the pair of jeans I had hanging on a nail out on my balcony were completely horizontal, hanging by a single beltloop. More pictures of the devastation here (article in German).

Fortunately, being all the way at the south of Germany, there’s no discernible damage here. But I watched the news with a friend today, and there’s bad flooding and destruction up north.

Oh, well. I’ll go back to enjoying this tranquil Bavarian evening, balcony doors open and my curtains stirring softly.

Unreal or what? After showering, I was able to stand on my balcony in just my boxers and let the sun warm me. For the past several weeks it’s been pleasant enough that I can try that, but since the floor of my balcony is smooth bricks, I usually freeze my bare feet pretty quickly and have to hop back inside in a hurry. This weekend, though, the bricks actually warmed my feet.

What the hell happened to that Bavarian winter I was promised?

That picture was taken in November, damn it!

And for those of you who are not friendly with Celsius (I’m finally getting it!), here it is in Fahrenheit:

Still cold as balls, no? Well, I guess I’ll pour another cup of tea and turn up the radiator! And my sister rocks for sending me über comfy Penn Veterinary Medicine sweatpants, which get me weird looks everytime I wear them. The chicks dig them, though.

UPDATE: It occurred to me that it would be funny to show the weather from Philadelphia, which in Celsius looks like Munich weather in Fahrenheit.

Celsius:

Fahrenheit: