Maybe No Flood for Us

.

Columbus Day 2012:  Our rains have slowed a bit – less intense and for less duration – so we may not be flooded at our home up here on the northern rim of greater Bangkok, unless a very wicked storm comes our way.  The problem is not an over-flowing river but slow drainage after hard downpours. 

.

Today I did a boat run into the city to get some meds I needed, and I only carried my small umbrella tucked away in my rucksack (no huge golf umbrella as was needed last week, and certainly no rain poncho). 

.

I saw the movie Argo (2012) while in town, a movie I highly recommend.  This fine film deals with a true event in the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-80 and is very well done.  Seeing it on Columbus Day made me feel extra patriotic today. 

.

This evening as I was feeding our cats, I heard a bird-song outside that caught my attention because I hadn’t heard this particular bird for a long, long time.  This means that birds are migrating here from northern Asia before winter hits up there.  Here it is their winter vacation/ breeding ground, and they will go back north in February/ March. 

.

These first-heard notes of newly arrived birds here are like March back in the northern temperate zone, when the first robins announce that they are back and that fair weather will eventually come.  In North America it means warmer weather after the big freeze; here it means a bit of cooling relief after the big sweat. 

.

-Zenwind.

.