September 16

I have been to Taipei twice. Both times, the island has been brushed by a typhoon. This one wasn't so bad because we weren't trying to go anywhere in particular. We already found an apartment and some furniture to go in it. Yesterday, before the rain hit, we took the train to the zoo. We didn't stay because of the impending weather so headed back after eating lunch.
We spent the rest of the afternoon watching sheets of wind driven rain obscure even the biggest landmarks. The Taipei 101 (world's tallest building) is no more than 2 miles from the hotel we are staying in. Just past the 101 are four mountains. We would watch the mountains disappear, then the 101 behind the rain and clouds. At one point we couldn't see the ground from our room on the 32nd story.
So we went down to ground level to continue watching the storm. I have decided that rain is far less gloomy at ground level. The rain seems like it is on a human scale on the ground. I cannot see those landmarks from ground level anyway so had no sense that they had been obscured. Plants, trees and things at ground level just seemed green and rinsed off.