I wish you shelter from the storm*
Rainy conditions expected tonight
Dear friends,
At the tender age of seven, I understood, for the first time, the importance of weather forecasting.
It was after dinner on a scorching summer night. A family – parents and a boy around my age – just moved to the neighborhood. They rented a house next door, once a ruined eatery.
All the kids in the block were there before me. We swung by to say hello with the family and to investigate whether we could vibe with the new kid, enough to admit him into our little “gang”.
The mother asked us to be silent for a while when the weather forecast session after the 7pm news program started.
She paid due attention for every single location the VJ pointed to on the map.
“Heavy rains are forecasted in provinces from Thanh Hoá to Thừa Thiên Huế from tomorrow morning.”
As the VJ said, the mother sighed loudly in disappointment.
She sold refreshments at a makeshift marketplace nearby. People just don’t get thirsty easily on a rainy day, obviously.
More than two decades later, I still remember her reaction of indescribable morosity and acceptance.
Last month, my grandfather proudly showed me the mezzanine he just built in the newly renovated part of their house where he stored a box of instant noodles, a flashlight, a dumbphone and a hammer to remove roof tiles in case flood water rises too fast.
An expressway is under construction, spearing through my grandparents’ paddy field and turning their neighborhood into a valley.
From now on, under the impacts of heavy rains and storms, their house will stand a high chance of being engulfed. The mezzanine he built in the old compartment of their house after the 20th-century cataclysm can no longer keep up with future dreadful disasters.
And he has a reason to worry.
My hometown is one of the most disaster-prone in Vietnam and my grandfather is always in the last batch of those who are forced to evacuate by the Vietnam People’s Army. It’s an old people’s instinct, I guess, as a Vietnamese proverb reads “đồng tiền đi liền khúc ruột” (one’s assets and gut are detached) although his monthly earnings can only cover light snacks and some cups of rice wine.
In the morning before super typhoon Yagi hit Hanoi, a close friend of mine accompanied her father to a hospital for his periodic appointment when fierce wind howled and trees along the city’s main streets started being uprooted. She prepared for them to stay overnight in the hospital, anyway, despite the fact that the father was an outpatient.
I was worried about their situation but still wondered why there was not much help from local armed forces.
“In my hometown, anytime the storm is about to hit, we make sure soldiers at the nearby post know where we want to go,” I texted her, sounding like a guru who grew up in a locality where several storms hit annually.
“Never heard of such service,” she replied humorously.
They were home safe and sound that very afternoon, an hour before the typhoon devastated Hanoi but many others were not that lucky.
People who returned to Vietnam after years of living abroad usually praise the country’s convenience as their main motivation.
Gig workers are present in every corner of their lives, serving food from late night to early morning, driving them everywhere, offering services for minor inconveniences.
From the perspectives of several gig workers I had chances to have conversations with, they consider their jobs as “lấy công làm lãi” or “taking labor as profits”.
In this sense, public services, starting from weather forecasts that work, might share a bit of convenience for those whose livelihoods are dependent on weather, too.
In the meantime, more than half million of Vietnamese people seek disaster and extreme weather condition warnings on the Facebook page of an individual: Huy Nguyen – a well-known scientist – whenever a new storm forms in the East Sea/South China Sea.
Till next time,
T.
I was stuck in Đà Nẵng due to super typhoon Yagi. Here is a sculpture of a garuda excavated in Quảng Trị and displaced at Đà Nẵng Museum of Cham Sculpture.
P/S: Thank you for waiting. I’m back for the second year of this Substack after a month of roaming around.
(*) I wish you love – Laufey
This week’s top picks
A podcast host by my dear friend
On the Philippines’ brutalist architecture
Let’s read together: on Bell labs