Rainy season here

The other day, when I walked home in the rain, I saw people using the skate park outside of Ba Futuru for the first time. The skate park was built in 2008, when youth gangs were a problem. Teenaged boys had nothing to do, and martial arts clubs sprung up. They practiced their moves in class, then took their skills to the streets.  Soon martial arts clubs were banned, and Ba Futuru built a skate park to provide an alternative activity.

It’s rather far away from the bulk of the population, so it doesn’t get a lot of use.

Until it rained.  Then a bunch of tweens had fun sliding down the ramps and across the cement bed.  Their pants would come down in the slide, but who cared. It looked like great fun.

Today, it started to rain around 4 pm (it’s been getting earlier each time). In the 400 meters from Ba Futuru to Nicolau Lobato’s roundabout & statue, I managed to get soaked through. I’d pretty much decided to take a microlet home anyway.

At the roundabout happy tweens splashed in the water. It was about six inches deep on the sides of the road, and often six feet across. My gortex shoes were soaked through in no time.  My shorts were dripping; so was my hair around my face.  Kids -- tweens and teens -- were running to the roundabout. Clearly it’s the place to be in a deluge.

I got off the microlet at the corner of main road and my spur -- roads don’t have names here -- and couldn’t figure out how I was going to cross without further damage to my shoes.  Bite the bullet Juliette, and go.

I managed one road fine.  Getting onto the spur required fortitude.  Getting on to my lane required acceptance. The water was ankle deep, no matter which way I went.

Much of the water will have evaporated by the morning.  

Now, for my tale of owe. Yesterday, I couldn’t get my devices to recharge. Today, I bought a new adapter and a new cord.  And got the phone up to 78% and the ipad up to 40.

Then I came home, plugged in the adapter, and watched flames shoot out of the power bar.  I moved to a different outlet, and got a bad shock.

Argh.

I’ve been grumpy the past few days -- I’ve hit the three and a half week mark and am out of sorts.  I remember hitting this point in Kenya, and I although I was only in Cambodia and Laos for 3.5 weeks, I felt it there.  

So I’m going to Singapore for the weekend. I leave tomorrow afternoon and come back Tuesday morning. I kinda feel like the cast of MASH, when they’d go to Tokyo.  If I find power and wifi in the Bali airport, I’ll write something there.  Otherwise, I’ll post something again on Saturday.