Typhoon Sinlaku and the barbecue

This weekend was fun, considering there was a typhoon. Most people who haven't experienced a typhoon associate them with massive destruction and/or death, but those are only the ones that make the international headlines. Actually it's more like crappy weather which lasts for three or four days. It alternates between just drizzling, to wind with rainshowers, to heavy rainshowers, to heavy rainshowers with strong wind, to...well, you get the point. Whenever you go outside it's a gamble. You could be strolling around with your umbrella like it was just another rainy day and then bam! the wind suddenly turns into a high-powered mega vaccuum and your umbrella has just become a piece of interestingly-shaped garbage.
Anyway, I awoke Sunday morning to the sounds of wind gusts and rain drops on my window. I went to check the weather forecast because a) a friend had invited me to a barbecue and b) the typhoon could potentially stay another day, in which case I wouldn't have to go to school on Monday. Old Mr. Zhang was cooking in the kitchen, his son Li was watching the news on TV. After being perplexed at all the maps and characters I didn't understand, I asked Li what in the hell was going on outside.
"Well the typhoon is still gonna be here for a day or two. They say it might go and come back. We have a lot of typhoons here"
Talk about strange typhoons. I had experienced my share in Japan, but never one that lasted so long, let alone went away, only to come back.
This afternoon Mr. Hao, a friend of a friend, was having his annual Zhong Qiu Jie (Mid-Autumn festival. Don't ask.) barbecue at his house. I wondered if a typhoon might alter the plan. I called Xiao Yu, the girl who was supposed to pick me up on her scooter, to make sure it was still on.
"Yeah, but I don't pick you up."
Phew, I didn't exactly want to be on the back of a scooter going on a highway during rainfall and gale-force winds. "So what do I do?" I asked, trying to use the most simple, but clear, English possible. "Take MRT to Shilin, and meet Joey there. I give you his...her...phone number."
That was a thing many Taiwanese mixed up. Him and her. You never knew if you were going to meet a guy or a girl, and the name didn't usually help. Fortunately, there weren't too many waiguoren (foreigners) walking around, so more likely they found you before you found them.
So at 4 o'clock, I ended up meeting someone, (a girl btw, whose name was Kenny, not Joe) at the MRT station. Kenny was a short girl dressed up like a punk, with a black baseball cap and a certain amount of piercings, and she was with two other girls. We got in a cab amidst the pouring rain. Apparently Mr. Hao was intent on having his barbecue and a stupid little typhoon wasn't going to stop him. When we got there people were setting up the barbecue on a covered terrace.
Mr. Hao is the boss of Danceworks, a dance production company. He has an athletic build and actively helps out in setting up the barbecue, so he could be mistaken for a worker and not the boss.
Not many people spoke English, which was good for my Chinese, but it did add an extra hurdle to me meeting people (the first one being that I didn't know many people there). In the end though I met some really cool people, and the food was good too. They put whole squids on a stick here and barbecue them, along with slabs of beef, chicken legs, sausages, and shrimp. The one thing that was missing, in my opinion, was beer. I've said this before: the Taiwanese don't seem to drink much alcohol. There were three large bottles, which I shared with two or three other guys, but it wasn't enought to get me hammered or anything (which in retrospect is probably a good thing because I had a test the next morning).