A furious blast roared through the trees, making everything sing as it went. One blinding flash after another came, and peal on peal of deafening thunder. And now a drenching rain poured down and the rising hurricane drove it in sheets along the ground.
The Adventure of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
Rain has been a very good student lately and boasted a perfect record of attendance in Surabaya.
Last Monday's rain was a particularly blasted one. The rain came storming into the city in all its majesty. The trees and billboard signs were like the chess pawns who were easily defeated by the rain. Not long after, the human invented electricity, the queen of our town, was humbled by the force of nature and shamefully retreated from the battleground. The citizens of Surabaya were left in deep abyss of desperation during the several hours it took for the queen to nurse her inflicted wounds. All I could think of during this trial time was whether my dearest ice cream can survive this horrid turmoil.
We were definitely unprepared for the blackout. Very much so that we sadly had to use a birthday candle for the emergency light. I couldn't believe that we have a birthday candle in the office, but not a regular candle. How old was the candle? It must have been very old, since I reckoned that the last time my younger sister celebrated her 8th birthday, it was about 12 years ago.
Maybe it's not very obvious from the picture, but the candle was supposed to have a shape of 8. Alas, it was obviously not meant for a long duration of use. Only a few minutes after it was lightened and Mr. Osake was in danger of being melted in the sea of hot paraffin. The 4 candle was thankfully holding strong and dutifully illuminated any area within the 15 cm distance from where it was planted.
Armed with my mother's compact camera, I went out with the intention to capture the moment of this great thunderstorm. Unfortunately, my mind easily wandered, and I took dozens of pictures of reflected leaves instead.
An odd thing happened when we were about to leave the office. My mom strangely volunteered to drive. I was dumbfounded by her generosity. To be honest, I was a bit worried that my mom couldn't handle the traffic as well as I could, considering that I'm a very good driver and have only a slight long list of traffic accidents. But, oh well, we're family. I decided that I should trust her just as much as she trust me.
I was actually relieved that I didn't have to drive. Traffic was moving as fast as a snail and I had all the time I needed and more to take pictures.
Don't you think that Miss Kimono looks cute in this picture? I may have to take more pictures of her.
The Siomay seller didn't look happy. Think happy thoughts Miss! At least the flood in Surabaya is laughably meager compared to the ones in Jakarta :)
An hour and few minutes later, we finally arrived home. I could happily report that my ice cream survived the blasted blackout, all thanks to my quick emergency aid of transporting the ice cream to a pool of ice cubes. Disaster averted, I was planning to spend the quiet time reading Lolita.
Unfortunately, my shifty mind couldn't help to see how beautiful the candle was and ended up taking pictures of the candle until the electricity returned from her hiding place. I looked how far I was with my reading and found out that I had successfully completed a paragraph from the book.
And that is it. I have nothing else interesting to report, so I guess this will be the right moment to end this photo log.
So, ... the end.
Note: All but the last 2 pictures were taken using the Pentax compact. Not too shabby methink.
