Living through the winter monsoon

Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain ... That pretty much describes the weather conditions in the last, say, 3 weeks or so. If you're closely following our blog, you might have already seen that the photos of previous postings were all taken in rainy conditions.
The trouble is not the rain itself but the circumstances that a) the outside temperature is usually between 9 and 14°C and b) temperatures inside our apartment and offices are only slightly higher. That is due to the poor insulation of the buildings here. As a result, we congregate around our newly bought small electrical heater the moment we get home after work:

Another way to get warm is to turn on the gas cooker:


There is more bad news for us here: the weatherforecast for the coming week promises still more precipitation! I recommend you to have a look at the website of the Taiwanese Central Weather Bureau:
http://www.cwb.gov.tw/V5e/
The Central Weather Bureau (CWB) website is really excellent - except for the forecast it provides for the Taipei region ... Jokes aside, it is really full of useful informations. The CWB is also responsible for monitoring the seismic activity in Taiwan. On the website's menu bar on the left, you find an entry for "seismicity". There, one can find the seismic activity organised in monthly maps and spreadsheets. It is noteworthy that there have been dozens of earthquakes around ML 4 and above in the last weeks. However, nobody (except the CWB) reports much about them. I recall what a public turmoil a few earthquakes around ML 3 in Basel have caused in December 2006. In Taiwan, nobody seems to bother about earthquakes below ML 6 or so.