Just a bit ago, the winds at Ngong Ping (just over the mountain from my home) were blowing at 158 kilometers per hour.  For the easy reference of other Americans, that is 98 miles per hour.  Wind.  98 miles per hour.  That blows.

So now I’m sitting here with nothing to do because everything is packed or at least disconnected.  The movers aren’t coming because Hong Kong shuts down completely during a Signal 8 and I have no food in the house or a way to cook it if I did.  The milk is spoiled too.  This is turning out to be a most excellent experience.

The training of my replacement is going well but his arrival delays have introduced even more stress to the situation.  I feel like I’m talking non-stop and gushing information but I’m worried how much he’s absorbing.  So far, he’s still not getting the names in the office right.  I hope he’s only bad with remembering names.  Otherwise it could be a long couple of years.

Regardless, I’m still plugging along.  I’m trying to get a buffer of comics done for A Little Scary so I can stay on schedule during the move.  The Monday comic is up and Thursday’s is ready to roll but I need to create at least one more to make it through the move.

I realized I was going to late for another meeting back at my office and ran out in a hurry in the afternoon.  I was ten minutes late for that.  The universe does not like me to be early.  I was ten minutes early in the morning so I was made to be ten minutes late in the afternoon.  Considering I usually just average in at ‘late’, I can deal with that kind of balance.

I took four taxis throughout the day yesterday which is very unusual for me to take any taxis at all.  Luckily they are pretty cheap here and much cheaper than back in the States.  Then again Hong Kong is a really small place so it may just be relative to that.

I had dinner and drinks with the people from the even after work and then went back and helped re-arrange, re-cable, re-organize and test (and re-test) presentations and videos for today.  By the time I finally made it home I called Muse and then crashed.

Here’s a link to the official government weather site for Hong Kong: Hong Kong Observatory.  It’s a nice site that is quite thorough with moving pictures of clouds in the area and it’s updated quite often.  However I really think they could save a lot of time and money if the just changed all that to the following static text:

Hong Kong Weather
Currently: Hot as hell and humid enough to sweat stain your shorts
Forcast for tomorrow: See above
5-Day forcast: Between 28-30 degrees Celcius and 75-100% humidity.  Rain can and will happen when you least expect it.  If you see dark clouds or have lost sight of land that you could see only moments ago, head for shelter or buy an umbrella.  Buy two, one will break.

And really that about sums it up during these summer months.

I saw a guy I know from St. Louis complaining on Twitter about how it was a miserable 50% humidity in my hometown.  I about fell out of my chair laughing.  I quickly checked the link above for the current weather and saw that the humidity was at 98% at the time.  After living here for two years I really hope to be able to better handle the St. Louis summers.  However…

The winters are going to fucking blow.

When Muse and I were back home for the Christmas holidays this past year, we literally froze our asses off.  I left mine somewhere between Fenton and High Ridge.  One thing the heat here has taken away from me is my extreme tolerance to cold weather.  I don’t think I’ll be out and about in my shorts when the St. Louis ice storms come rolling through.  Not for a while I think.  Not if I want to have any more children.

I must have it.  Now where the hell is Yuen Long???

Holy Crap!  It’s almost all the way to the China border in the middle of freaking nowhere.  Ugh…. I may have to wait till I get back to St. Louis…..

So that means that I was up every 30 minutes or so after my alarm went off to check the Hong Kong Observatory website to see what alerts were raised.  As long as the Signal 8 was in effect, the ferries to leave our island wouldn’t run, the busses to leave our apartment wouldn’t run and as far as I know, even if I were to make it out of Discovery Bay alive, the MTR trains don’t run either.  So, as I said, Hong Kong shuts down.

If the signal persists to 2:00pm then we can forget about work and do whatever.  But if the signal lowers before then we have to come to work within 2 hours.  That kind of sucks.  So when I saw that the signal had changed back to a 3 at around 11:30am I reluctantly took my smelly self to the shower and got cleaned up.  I had to go to work.

It’s not a bad thing.  I have a lot to do today.

This morning I stayed home to help Muse get all four of the fuzzy kids to the vet for their final health inspection and certification.  Because of her flaky friend we had to wait for a hire car to get us to and from the plaza where the vet office is located.  Her friend was supposed to help her take the pets to the vet in her golf cart.  Knowing how flaky she is, I knew she would cancel so I let work know that I would need to stay and help.  Sure enough, two days ago her friend calls and says that she can’t go but we can borrow the golf cart.  OK we planned for that so no problem.

Yesterday she called Muse all pissy and gave her this lame-ass excuse about how she had to give up her golf cart for four days starting on the day we needed it.  Yeah… right.  Like this woman could possibly stand using the standard buses for four days.  That would be beneath her.  So we had to get a local hire car to come get us and take us to the vet.  It’s way to far to walk with them all.

Of course her “friends” golf cart has been sitting in front of her building across from ours all day.  It hasn’t moved and it was available the entire time we would have needed it.  But oh well.  That’s one good thing about consistently flaky people is that you can safely ignore them and plan alternatives in advance.

Whatever.  At least its done now.  One more thing crossed off the lists.

So you would think I’d be all work out at this point of anything with a fedora and a whip.  But I really want to play the new Lego Indiana Jones game.  Muse and I played the Lego Star Wars II game on Playstation 2 for a bit but we never really got very far.  I thought it was a lot of fun though and I can see how the Indiana Jones franchise could really take advantage of the Lego game formula.

I just need to add it to the ever growing list of games I want to buy before I leave Hong Kong.  XBox360 and PS3 games are quite a bit cheaper here since the market won’t support the ridiculous $60 USD per title price that is charged in the United States.  Most games releasing in Hong Kong start at or around $39 USD per title when they come out and you can always find some older/cheaper ones too.  I will definitely miss that when I’m gone.

It seems that I never got around to making a post yesterday.  Which is pretty damn lame if you ask me.  Which you didn’t but if you had that would have been what I would have said.  I have a stash of jokes and pictures that can be used in cases of post emergencies just like that but it does no good if I just plain forget.

Yesterday at work was insanely busy.  I had a big implementation of a Cisco ASA 5510 firewall/Intrusion protection/VPN system for an affiliate company and it took much longer than anticipated to complete.  I didn’t even really get to sit in my own office till about 3:00pm when I finally kicked the installers out so I could get some lunch.

Today has been busy catching up on all the things that didn’t get attended to yesterday as well as some things that needed to get done today.  I spent some time talking to the guy who will be replacing me out here in Hong Kong once I leave to go back to St. Louis.  He’ll be another ex-pat from St. Louis just like me and he has tons of questions just like I did when I was planning on coming here.  I think he’ll do OK out here.  He’s got some size 10 shoes to fill.  Seriously, I’m going to leave him a pair of my shoes.  No, not really.  I’m all hopped up on sugar right now so anything I say can and will be held against me tightly and I won’t let go.  What?  Don’t mind me. My teeth hurt.

We bought our first baby toy today and it was actually for a baby.  Our baby.  And not for me.  I will never grow up. :-p