Life has been more than ordinarily crazy the past few days, so I haven’t managed to get online too much. Specifically, Irene came by (luckily for us, downgraded from a hurricane to a “tropical storm” by the time she got here) and threw us for a loop. (My mother has also come for a visit, but, at least so far, her visit has been far less destructive.) While we have gotten off easy compared to many, as far as the storm that is, our town is not yet back to normal. We are among the lucky 50% in our town to have had our electricity restored. (We had over two days without power and, since our town has no public water and we all have wells, running water.) Our phone and internet may be out for a while, but this seems pretty trivial compared to the damage and flooding that so many are dealing with. (And even compared to the many thousands of people still without electricity in the region.) We are safe, sheltered, and have ready access to food and clean water, not to mention plenty of other conveniences and even luxuries. We have been very, very lucky.

If I have a chance in the next few days, I’ll try to get my laptop out to some place with an internet connection, so I can say more, and even share some photos (both of my neighborhood and of Hong Kong). In the meantime, though, I am rapidly chewing through my 3G data plan for my iPad, so I probably won’t manage to post much, respond much, or visit other blogs. (I also am really slow and clumsy at typing on my iPad, and fear what autocorrect may bring. I very nearly just emailed someone I met at the conference that I looked forward to reading his recently published paprika.)