Chewin in the Chung

Recent news-
Somehow Typhoon Mindulle skirted the Eastern edge of Taiwan, moved off towards Korea, and through some meteorological mechanism I do not understand, pulled massive amounts of precipitation into Taiwan as it was leaving. We had four days of typhoon style rain, but the Typhoon itself was supposedly long gone. Here are some of the effects:
**21 people dead in Taiwan, or maybe a few more by today
**Jim Edstein is stranded in his Alishan village. Roads washed away, and no electricity for 4 days (and that was when he called me on his cellphone 3 days ago)
**Brett Lovell coming home at 2 in the morning to find 6 inches of water throughout his house. And he was totally hammered. Reports have his wife as being less than pleased.
**In the canal next to my house, a 4-meter by 2-meter by 20cm slab of concrete was ripped up from the canal bed and carried away. That's about 3800 kg of concrete that seems to have just disappeared.
**Lost internet in the office for 3 days. Yeah that sucked.
**Water in Taichung is on and off. PJ decided last night that since he couldn't wash dishes, he wasn't going to serve food. So Salut sold about a million pizzas last night. Meanwhile, La Terrasse is soldiering on. Go watch Terry try to run a restaurant without any water. He's pulling it off with buckets and bottled water.