Tai feng lai le!

Translation: "A typhoon's coming!"

The first I heard about this typhoon was about four days ago, when the landlord's sister came over to check on a bill that came to the apartment. She said something about a typhoon coming and I was like, "Wait wait, say again please?" Later, I looked on this handy-dandy website that tells you all the active storm systems in the world, and lo and behold, there it was, Tropical Storm Sinlaku.

Over the past few days, I then watched said storm menace its way slowly but surely towards our little island, growing all the time until reaching its current size, a Category 4 typhoon. At the moment, the storm could completely miss us and veer off to go bang on Japan's doorstep instead, but if it keeps on its present course, it's projected to give Taipei a good soaking on Saturday. It doesn't look like we're going to get the full brunt of the storm, just part of it, but with this big of a storm, I would assume there'll be a lot of rain and a lot of wind. Tomorrow I'm going to go by the grocery store and buy some water and food, just on the off chance that things get really sticky. I don't think they will, but just in case.

And Lauren is supposed to fly in Saturday. Unless things really change drastically, I think she may have to wait a couple of days. We'll see though. And for all my friends in southern Japan, you guys are going to catch the tail end of this storm, but it's going to be a smaller storm by then, so hopefully nothing to worry about.