Friday Five 14-Sept

[elusivek]

1. Have you ever experienced a hurricane firsthand?
Over here we know them as typhoons, we had a really bad one last year, typhoon Hato. As we speak, typhoon Mungkat (spelling?) is attacking my home as I write this, but I’m in Portugal right now, so I can’t do anything about it except wait for news.

2. Have you ever experienced outside heat over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celcius)?
I think there was a couple times we had like 40C in the summer, but I hid in either homes or public spaces with air-conditioning so it was never too bad for me.

3. When and where was the coldest temperature you have ever experienced?
A couple years back I went on a tour to Harbin, in winter. -29C. Freezing! Then the bus driver even said the Russian girls in Moscow wore mini skirts in -60C. That’s crazy!

4. Is your household prepared for a possible power outage of two to seven days?
Yes I think we can hold fort for 7 days, but only necessities (food & water). Stuff like phones will die eventually by the second day as even the power banks will be depleted.

5. Do you have a go bag?
As I live up-hill, there was never a “need” to evacuate for things like flood and rainstorm. I actually think a go bag is a very good idea but have no idea how to make it practical. (I can’t just let a bottle of water sit there in a corner forever, or could I?)

Comments

[milhent.livejournal.com]

Watching news about hurricanes makes me really happy they never can happen around here.

That bus driver have lied. Absolute coldest in Moscow was -40, but that was back in 1940th, when nobody wore miniskirts. But I can quite believe in miniskirts in -30. There is a couple of runners in my city who I saw at -30 running in shorts and sneakers.

I am pretty sure you can leave an unopened store-bought bottle of water sitting around for a year at least. And as for power banks running out, there are portable solar-powered chargers.

[notte0.livejournal.com]

We do have regular typhoons in Macau but last year’s 8.23 (23-Aug) typhoon Hato got really bad. The typhoon itself wasn’t that bad but the city as a whole had started to slack off with preparations and so it seemed really bad. Then they put the blame in the meteorological services guy. Stupid.

I mean, ok, even the meterorological services were slacking off but:

- Macau gets Hong Kong transmission coverage and most people watch Hong Kong news rather than macau news. The hong Kong news warned about the typhoon. The people of macau simply went “yay typhoon! Day off!” (Past typhoons were more of an inconvenience than anything)

Then because the whole infrastructure sucks, so it started flooding early (more so because of the tide rising and a storm surge, like a mini tsunami) and only then people started scurrying to “save their property” and it was thus there were casualties. They went down to their cellars to recover stuff, or went to underground parking lots to get their cars.

Now this past typhoon mangkhut, it was stronger than Hato, but as everyone had their “lesson” last year, they were better prepared. No casualties in Macau this time.