Rain

Always quite the experience to get stuck in the rain here in Bali, and not that difficult to accomplish, either. The thing is, it can look like rain for hours on end, even days on end, such that one gets lolled into this sense of the storm being forever deferred, forever impending. The clouds raise great purple fists but seem only to play at sluggish shadow boxing, buffeting one another, but leaving we small creatures below free of harm. The humidity builds and builds, until the air seems pressed to the point of boiling - and then, at last, the clenched fists connect and the tense veneer between earth and sky dissolves in a sudden flood of waters. This is usually arranged by the gods to occur during the time period which will find me on my motorbike between dry point A and dry point B. Every motorbike driver here carries a quite useless rain proof smock in the seat compartment - useless because by the time you pull over, dismount, and open the seat, you have already taken the equivalent of several showers. One may as well bring along a bar of soap rather than the smock, being of more reasonable use for bathing, or for laundering ones clothing. Of course, as soon as you get to your destination, the rain abruptly ceases, again by order of the gods.