Page 8
6/12/2024
Serendipity…
Sometimes it's a challenge to come up with a topic to write about. Other times I'm inspired by something I see or hear, maybe a conversation I have, or a photo I take. Every now and then, something falls into my lap.
Fun fact #1. North Vietnam has two monsoon seasons: winter monsoon and summer monsoon. The winter monsoon is from November to March and it brings strong winds, cold temperatures, moderate to high levels of humidity, and cloudy, foggy, drizzly days and nights. The summer monsoon runs from May to September and it brings hot, extremely humid sunny days interspersed with hot extremely humid, rainy days that range from light rain to heavy thunderstorms.
Last Wednesday's weather forecast called for “heavy” rain, which meant I left my apartment wearing a short sleeve dress shirt, dress pants, and a pair of rubber slip-on sandals without socks. A look that elicits the comment “Anh Paul, you look very Vietnamese today” from my colleagues at the university. I also carried an umbrella in my computer bag.
At 07:30, when I climbed into the Grab car that was to take me to the university, it was cloudy and muggy, but not raining. According to my weather app, it was already a miserable 87 F with 86% humidity, “feels like 107 F”. About four minutes into the normally 10-minute commute to my university, the clouds reached their saturation point and that was “all she wrote”.
An agonizingly long 20 minutes later I arrived at my destination in the pouring rain.
Hanoi is a concrete jungle. Whenever it rains, the water has nowhere soak in, so it just runs along the streets and sidewalks following gravity and Newton’s third law of motion (when tires displace the water and the waves slam into curbs and buildings). Every time there is a heavy rain, the sewer system is completely overwhelmed and every main street, side street, alleyway, and nook or cranny floods.
This picture below was taken on my campus. I have to wade through water in order to get to my office whenever there is a heavy rain during the summer monsoon. Water is about mid calf so I just roll up my pants and slog along (hence the rubber slip-on sandals). I like this picture because it is so deceptive. The lush green trees and the overcast sky makes it look like the temperature is nice and cool; in reality it’s muggy and hot.
Second fun fact: When you walk in heavy rain, the umbrella only keeps you dry from the head to mid-thigh and the rest is soaked to the bone.
The following pictures were taken in front of my university. The an dressed in yellow standing in the water is from the “sewer and drainage department”. If you look closely under the warning sign to his left, you will see he has raised the manhole cover. He is directing the traffic to the left of the picture. Buses are at the top of the feeding chain and drive wherever they chooses to drive.
Notice the water in the buses wake is slamming into the building to the right of the red street sign.
Here is a view looking the other direction on the street. This picture was taken as the flood waters were rising. They will eventually cover the whole street. Notice how people are automatically moving to the “high side of the street” (i.e., to the right side of the picture) to avoid the growing floodwaters (on the left side of the picture). Also notice how the traffic is backing up, but the buses are moving to the flooded side where there is no traffic.
NOVEMBER p.2, p.3, p.4, p.5, p.6, p.7
DECEMBER p.2, p.3, p.4, p.5 p.6, p.7, p.8
MARCH p.2, p.3, p.4 p.5, p.6, p.7
APRIL p.2, p.3, p.4, p.5, p.6, p.7, p.8, p.9, p.10, p11