the squall

Currently watching The Rock on Blu-ray

One night in the summer of 1997, Cornia and I had just finished an appointment in a small village near Sai Kung. It was dark, and because there were often dogs walking around in the village, we carried our umbrellas in hand as a precautionary measure. As we walked toward the bus stop, we heard a loud rustling in the bushes, so we got our umbrellas ready. We soon learned that it was not dogs coming toward us, but rather a wall of heavy rain. This was the heaviest rain I'd ever seen, and despite having umbrellas, we were soaked by the time we got to the nearby bus stop.

A double-decker bus soon arrived at the bus stop, and we went to the second floor when we got on, as missionaries typically did. We found all the windows open when we got to the second floor, so being the doers of good deeds that we were, we set about closing all the windows. When I got to the last open window, I was unable to close it. I tapped the latch with the palm of my hand, and when I did that, the window shattered. Cornia thought I had fallen out the window of the moving bus and screamed in horror. I was, however, quite alright, with the exception of the small cuts I had on my arms from the shards of broken glass. Aside from Cornia, there was but one other person on the bus, an old man sitting in the second row on the top deck. He looked at me, shrugged his shoulders and said "It's not your problem."

I later learned that during squalls, hurricanes and other heavy storms, it was standard procedure for bus drivers to open all the windows on the buses in order to keep them from being blown over by the wind. So much for our good deed...