Friday, November 7, 2014

Life in a tropical rainforest climate

My phone actually adds more detail than one can see with the naked eye.
This is just a short post to show (as best as I can) what a true tropical rainforest rain is like. If you're from the northeast U.S., like me, the clearest comparison is this: The difference between rain in my experience anywhere else and rain in Singapore is the difference between a light flurry of snow compared with white-out conditions. 

When it really rains in Singapore, it's, as the more countrified folks of my grandfather's generation would say, "a real humdinger of a storm." The thunder is explosively loud, and the rain runs down the window like a hose was left on pointing toward the
Thar she blows!

Living in Fusionopolis in a tower facing the southern most point of the island means that I can watch a storm coming in. Then, slowly and gradually, the storm cloud eats the harbor and consumes the buildings and trees closest to me, until finally, I can see very little out my window at all. 

It's rather peaceful when this happens; much like one would imagine it to be like if one were living in an aquarium. The insulated stillness (and the fact that all construction work grinds to a standstill) lends to a pleasant environment awash in white noise. 

The times I've been caught outside in it have been far less peaceful. An umbrella or a raincoat won't help you. I've gotten soaked standing under covered walkways - I've even gotten rained on standing ten yards from an open-air window. 

It is rain like I've never known.

Here is a poem I wrote in homage to the thunder one day as I waited out a particularly window-rattling storm between classes. A visit from a thunder-god was the only explanation for the noise that came that day in addition to the torrential rain:

When Thor arrived in Singapore,
He threw his hammer on the floor
And shook the heavens door to door
And brought about the rain.

He rattled windows, shook the trees
He made the folks go wobble-kneed
For from the heavens he had freed 
His power to the land.

When Thor took leave from Singapore 
He took his hammer up once more.
Despite the rain, we still adore
That wild Asgardian.

~ A between-classes poem ~ (c) 2014 Amanda Lohiser


Post a Comment

How many visits?