I feel rainy

It rained today. It rained yesterday. It rained Sunday.

Apparently it rains enough here to make London feel likes Scotsdale.

Tonight I stood in the rain for almost 15 minutes trying to get a cab. When I finally snagged one, the driver didn't speak any English. I gave him the taxi card for my building, he squinted at it for awhile, held it up to the light, then squinted some more. Squinting, holding, squinting, holding, turning, squinting. Then he motioned at his eyes and said something (natch: unintelligible) in Chinese.

After much grunting, hand gesturing, smiling AND nodding, I realized that he was trying to communicate that he was too far-sighted (or pretending to be too far-sighted) to read the card. He did have a point. The characters on the card were in about 4 point type -- inky dots you'd need an electron microscope to read.

Unfortunately for the taxi driver, I wasn't about to give up his cab to stand another fifteen minutes in the monsoon. I pointed ahead and yelled "Nanjing Xi Lu" and "Ba! Ba!" (I think this means "Yes! "Yes!") He squinted and accelerated down the street, barely dodging a bus, bicycles, pedestrians.

I got home ...almost dry.