Shelter from the storm

While I was busy entertaining the Chittagongian city-folk during Cyclone Aila, the coastal areas and islands in Bangladesh were (and still are) having a tougher time of it. In terms of cyclone severity, it didn't rate very high on the danger scale, however so much damage has been caused because the cyclone hit at high tide, which meant already high waters just went higher, and higher, and higher...

Here's a pretty accurate account of what the situation is from the BBC:

A little rain - little water song - city rain/city streets

My monsoon look

Confession: I am enjoying a natural disaster. I know this means I'm playing with karma, and earning some of the negative kind, but I can't help it. My paltry excuse is that I am from a country where the Google keyword search results for "drought" would number in the quadbillions (if there is such a thing) so I have a reason to get all excited over rain.

But I know it's wrong and I feel awful for all the areas being completely devastated by this weather depression/tropical storm/cyclone (depending on which disaster warning you read) currently taking over the Bay of Bengal. I also suspect that since this is just the beginning of the monsoon season I'm about to get very unexcited by rain, so expect my fascination to dissipate rapidly.



Off come the thongs

In the meantime though, I had fun tonight entertaining the locals who found the dripping wet white girl absolutely hilarious. I think I made more people smile and laugh in one half hour tonight than ever before. Especially when I took out the camera - thongs in hand - and waded through the water* to get home.



*I know, I know, there was a lot more than 'water' being waded through, and yes Mum - and all the other medicos/water nerds in the fam - the minute I walked through the front door I went straight to the shower and scrubbed scrubbed scrubbed scrubbed scrubbed

[Irrelevant bit - there are many, many, many song titles containing water, rain, and floods and I couldn't settle on one so have gone for three. The excess fairly reflects what's happening outside my window right now anyway]