In Which Corinne Comes to Own Three Umbrellas

So it's like rainy here and stuff.

I managed to arrive in Taipei at something close to the height of the rainy season: the rain proves by turns torrential and light, cold and warm, plan-debilitating and simply annoying. It starts without warning and continues for hours, sometimes days. We've already had class cancelled once on a "typhoon day" warning, during which time we holed up in Linnea and Andi's place and drank plum wine out of bowls while howling with laughter at increasingly ridiculous YouTube videos.

In the midst of all this, a good umbrella remains a necessity. Well, I bought a good umbrella: its attached plastic cover extends like a kiddie lightsaber toy, covering the soaking plastic fabric so that I can take the thing on the MRT without making immediate enemies of all of my fellow passengers. I like it. It's pretty. I named it Torvald. Laugh if you will, but I defy you to attempt living in Taipei in June without forming some sort of emotional attachment to your umbrella.

Then, weather-based tragedy struck: I left my umbrella at the office at an inopportune time. After a disastrously wet journey home (during which the valiant Dave could do only so much to protect me from the cruelty of the elements), I went to bed with the assurance that it couldn't still be raining in ten hours when I had to go to work. Surely.

Well, dear reader, you are smarter than I was; you've doubtlessly already figured out that it was still raining. So I stopped, on my commute, at the local cheap-flipsy-crap store and bought a second umbrella. Two umbrellas isn't that strange, I told myself. One is for home and one is for the office. It's fine.

Then, weather-based tragedy struck again. I teach class at a third location, up in Tianmu. Ten minutes before class was to let out on a bright, sunny day that doubtlessly held the promise of Frisbees or mangoes or something else exciting, we heard an ominous roll of thunder. That's okay! I chirped merrily to myself. I have my--oh, damn. 


That's correct. My home umbrella was home. My office umbrella was at the office. So, halfway through a hybrid walk/swim to the bus stop on my way home, I picked up another umbrella. Imagine, if you will: few if any foreigners ever enter this dingy corner supermarket in a back alley of northern Taipei. The bored-looking twentysomething behind the counter jumps with unaccustomed surprise to hear the door ding open. So when that door-ding is accompanied by a large, pale, frizzy-haired water-demon-monster whose clothes are so wet they are in serious danger of slipping to the dirty floor, the clerk can't help but widen her eyes in near-alarm. The large, pale, frizzy-haired water-demon-monster wordlessly selects a pink umbrella. With a look of immense long-suffering, she lumbers wetly to the counter, slaps down a few dripping coins, and grunts a badly-pronounced xie xie (thank you) before trudging, Hulk-like, once more into the typhoon outside.

And then nobody sat next to me on the bus. How weird.

And that's how Corinne became the weirdo with three umbrellas hanging in her dorm-room window.

The end.