I had crawled out of bed, noticed the sound of rain outside and been mildly dismayed, but thought
nothing much of it beyond "Eh, yuck," and staggered into the shower. By the time I emerged, a
handwritten note had been slipped under my door. It read:
Signal 8 has been posted so people don't go to work. :)
By word of Rachel.
7:30 a.m.
The MTR was still relatively deserted, and even when I got to City University at around 11:00, after
not quite an hour on buses and subways (I had the second-longest commute of all the interns, after
Cynthia) there weren't a lot of people around. I strained to remember the way through the
torturous hallways of the main building up to my little office in the Computer Studies Division,
feeling a bit like the typical lab rat in a maze.
City U is a bit unusual as universities go, architechturally speaking, in that much of it is
crammed into one large building, and due to the previous proximity
of Kai Tak Airport, it wasn't even a high-rise. This, plus the location in Kowloon, put space at
a premium -- making it, I guess, a true Hong Kong style space. Knowing all this, I'd been
surprised and excited about being given my own office, no matter how small it might be.
[And it was small.] But it had a door and a key, and it made me feel that a little bit of the place
was really my own.
Monday, June 7, was supposed to be our first day of work. That was before the weather intervened.
TYPHOON DAY!!!
Amazed, I went to actually open the drapes and look outside. It was indeed
raining, but I was
darned if I could distinguish this rain from any other rain I'd seen in Iowa, Boston, or
anywhere else. No tidal waves, no flying debris, or anything else to indicate typhoonness as my
mind construed it. I put on the news hoping for greater
enlightenment, and as it turned out, it had only been minor brush with the storm, not a serious
confrontation. After the signal was lowered, I gathered up my things and headed off for my
first real solo commute.
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