The Lamma Commute

I'm still taking a ferry to a bus every day even though I moved. We get up even earlier and stumble down the hill to the ferry pier. It's lined with the bicycles of all the people who converge each morning and evening for the commute. One of these pictures is of the weather before the typhoon. The other is after the typhoon cleared the air - I like typhoons not just for days off school.

The main difference in the commute this year is that it's an ugly ferry. Instead of comfortable airline-type seats we ride on vinyl in a dark box that smells like goats. The commute should be just as beautiful except the ferry line never cleans its windows. So there are many fewer opportunities to take pictures out of the windows. I get a shot every now and again, though.
The typhoon came on Tuesday last week. During the night it passed by, rattling the metal awning on my roof and making me nervous enough that I was glad a child joined me in bed. But nothing was damaged at our place and we got a day off school, but barely. The Hong Kong Observatory predicted it would lower the T8 flag between 6 and 7 a.m. That's the signal that closes schools and businesses. The timing of it was such that the Education Board cancelled school for the day rather than letting kids start the morning trip to school in a T8. But if the typhoon had passed one hour quicker we would have had to go to school. I had to take a kid into the doctor's, so this last picture is the remnants of the storm we got to travel through on our way to Hong Kong Island. It's hard for a camera to see the darkness of menace contrasted with the luminosity of the water stirred by storm but lit by sunlight.