Thursday, April 14, 2011 (Singapore)

OUR TRAVELERS WERE CAUGHT IN RANDOM POSES IN PLACES THAT WERE FAMOUS, MORE OR LESS, AND IN ATTITUDES THAT WERE FLATTERING, MORE OR LESS, COURTESY OF THE "YOU'RE SO VAIN" DEPARTMENT: Without comment or further ado, here are some places we can prove that we visited together in Vietnam and China. (These also provide further proof that I actually did change my shirt.):














NOW, THAT WAS A DOWNPOUR: We returned very early Thursday morning, and, that day brought with it the biggest rainstorm we had seen since our arrival in Singapore in early February. It struck in the late afternoon. Lightning was persistent. Rain was straight down.
The burst was described in chart form (right). Inside the circle, you can see how the visibility dropped suddenly from about 10 km to half a kilometer. That's why there is no picture.
It turns out that we are now in the "inter-monsoon" season. Friday's Straits Times explained that such a storm is "typical" of this season, which stretches from late March to May and revisits in October and November. This type of daily rain comes between the south-west monsoon season (June to September) and the northeast monsoon season (November to March). Monsoons, from what I am told, are more about wind than rain.
In a nutshell, according to the ST:

The winds come from an area with higher atmospheric pressure--the Tibetan Plateau during the north-east monsoon and Australian region during the south-west monsoon--to an area with lower atmospheric pressure, where Singapore is.

I must remember that umbrella!