Home sweet home

After 5 long hard months, I finally will have my one week off!! Tonight we will fly home to Jakarta and spend the National holiday (a golden week in China) in there doing absolutely nothing but sleeping and chatting with old friends and enjoying all the delicious street food of Jakarta! Total relaxation!!! Yay!!!

Wipha update

The typhoon didn't hit Shanghai until about 1 pm today.

In the morning when I woke up, I could see cloudy sky, dry land and almost no wind. I wasn't very sure if I have missed the typhoon when I slept or whether it has't actually arrived in Shanghai yet. But as I live only a block away from the main Huang Pu river, I could see that there is still no activities there, means that all ships were still docked in the port and we were still under typhoon alert.

I also heard in CNN that it is a very normal weather condition before typhoon hits. Weather will actually improving, rain will stop and there will be almost no wind in the air. But it will change as soon as typhoon hits.

At around 1 pm today, when I was in hot and difficult teleconference meeting with Germany, the weather outside of the office window just changed 180 degree. Heavy rainfall, dark sky and from time to time you can actually hear the strong wind blows through the windows. It lasted probably for 2 hours (I can't really tell as a lot of time I have to concentrate giving arguments with the German on the phone) but as I left the office today around 8 pm, there was only light rain outside.

And they all told me that we will have sunny day tomorrow. We will see about that!

Typhoon Wipha alert in Shanghai!

Orange alert is distributed by the local government today to prepare for the arrival of typhoon Wipha tonight. Everyone in the office and apartment complexes are warned to close the windows securely and not to leave anything outside in balcony. Schools have announced a day off tomorrow. Offices have asked their employees to bring their laptops home just in case we can't work tomorrow.

Typhoon Wipha, with a windspeed of 198km/hr at its center is believed to be the most destructive typhoon that ever hit Shanghai in a decade. The last updated news from China Daily is that the typhoon is only about 400 km away from shore and building up its speed as it approaches Shanghai.

We have been having heavy rainfall the whole day today, traffic jam everywhere in the city when I had to commute from one of the Shanghai's local distric back to the city and took me almost 2 hours to get back to the city. When I looked out from my office window at 4 pm today, it was totally dark outside.

Never in my life have I experienced any typhoon. I am not quite sure what to prepare, I am not even quite sure if I can sleep tonight. I have teleconference meetings scheduled with Germany tomorrow which I have pre-warned them that we might have to reschedule just in case the electricity or phone line is broken down.

I have even prewarned my family about the typhoon, just in case I can't contact them this weekend. I do hope it will turn out ok.