Weather, Or Not - Dropping A Skink's Tail

Rain, clouds, roiling seas, sporadic gusts of high winds and only brief glimpses of sunshine has been our daily weather for over a week – perhaps two. (Weekly histories hardly exist in the timeless state of mind tempted by this environment.) I think I overheard someone say that our wind and rain – some gusts fierce enough to topple large trees on the west side of the island – are being caused by a typhoon somewhere off the southern coast of China. Maybe I heard that. Maybe I imagined it. It's as much of a weather report as I'm aware of (or daydreamed) in the last four months. So many concerns, so many appendages that gave balance to my life back in the US seem to have been lopped off. I feel like a skink that has dropped his tail and left it wriggling in the jaws of a cat.

Newspapers, TV stations, radio and human interactions all depend on our obsession with weather – the worse, the better, it seems – loss of life because of weather is especially titillating. It is the stand-in topic for dull conversational moments and it's a useful tool for replacing sincere conversations. So what happens when you plunk yourself into an environment where the weather is generally the same every day of the year? You drop your weather tail and it leaves you somewhat off-balance.

One of the first things I did after getting my DSL connection in Thailand was to put a local weather forecaster bar for Phuket on the bottom of my browser. Well... it's important, isn't it? Like... I need to know if ... wait a minute... Is it going to give me more information than I can get by looking out my window? Hardly. I checked it frequently the first week. High, 32C, low, 25C, every single day – what a bloody bore. I no longer look at it. Let the cat play with it and pretend it made a great kill.

In truth there is a great difference between seasons here, but the differences aren't found in the highs and lows of the temperature. Comfort levels depend more on air currents, breezes, winds and sunlit, still days. Ironically, I find the summer months, during the low tourist season, to be the most comfortable. They are the months that bring the rain and wind. The temperatures are pretty much the same as during the high season, but the comfort level is far better. I don't sweat as much.

It's winter in Australia, so we see more Australian tourists. I think they get the best of what the island has to offer – cooling breezes and far less congestion than during the months European and Japanese tourists are escaping their winters.

So it's a bit unsettling to live in a place where catastrophic weather is unlikely and the weather report is redundant. Tsunami warning systems are now in place, so it's unlikely there will be a repeat of the loss of life we saw during the last tsunami and, of course, a weather report will never predict its coming.

Weather reports are only a fraction of the things I've left behind for the cat to chew on.