Weather warning!

No snow for Christmas for us this year and I feel quite jealous looking at photos from Finland and - surprisingly - from the UK. We are just living in the midst of the rainy season, which means rain every day for about a month. We are lucky not to have typhoons sweeping through Brunei, and there were no tsunami victims on the island 10 years ago. But it does rain, and I mean rain. I still remember the first evening in our house - we were watching TV and all if a sudden this bizarre rattling noise started. For few minutes I couldn't understand where the noise came from. All sorts of weird animals came to mind, until we realised that the noise came from the raindrops hammering onto our tin roof. We had to go outside to witness it. The sound of the rain was deafening. Like massive waterfall pouring down from the sky. We soon realised the function of the half a meter deep storm drains circling our house: in few minutes deep rivers were flowing through.

Every year snow surprises drivers all around the northern hemisphere, even in Finland despite of their marketed snowhow. Driving in heavy weather conditions can be pretty tricky also here as the tropical rainpour comes from out of nowhere and floods the roads within minutes. In Finland there are different speed limits for winter and summer months, and here we have quite a considerable speed difference for dry and wet conditions, and for a reason.

The storms are something else, too. The lightnings crack the whole sky open whitening the sky and everything around. When the storm hovers just over, the thunder really makes the the house shake with all mighty cracks. We're lucky with Sofia who sleeps through all this. However, we've been less lucky with our electronical equipment... Twice the house has been hit by a lightning. And on Christmas Eve we lost our Apple and our landline phones - despite of surge protectors! (A piece of equipment I never knew I needed before moving to Brunei.) Our neighbours have all lost tellies, and one of them had to duck for cover as their modem exploded into small pieces in front of their eyes!

The temperature difference between this Christmas and year before last has been 60 degrees. Talking about climate change ;) Let's see what next Christmas brings.

Talking about the weather - this can be a strange British past time as in the UK you can live through four seasons in one day. Here, the only comment really is about the heat. It's a hot one! is a very common exclamation. Occasionally people wonder about the rains as the black clouds roll in with an impressive speed but you can't ever be sure if it really is going to rain where you are standing. Occasionally I have witnessed a pronounced wall of water that you drive in and out of, just like at a car wash. The appreciation of weather has changed our attitudes completely, too. We feel rejoiced on a cloudy day when kids can go to run around in a playground, or when the wind picks up enough to go onto the beach without being ravaged by sandflies. When sun comes out, no one goes out. Unless it is to transit from the nicely air conditioned house, to a pre-started and thus air conditioned car, to a nicely air conditioned shop. When I first moved here I tried to keep up my Finnish habits of walking everywhere but even the 15 minutes walk to the play group proved too much: it demanded an hours standing around under the air con unit and a shower after coming home. I decided it's not worth it.

Don't get me wrong - I am not complaining about our Christmas Day dip in the pool, or generally sunny conditions. It doesn't bother me that for 360 days it is sunny and 32 degrees. I am not upset that I haven't worn socks for 18 months. But at Christmas time it would be nice to see some snow!