In the summer rain

Behind me the water patters down on top of the aircon that cools this room. Stuck out the window, it is exposed to the weather. It is exposed to the water currently sluicing down the side of the building, from overhang to windowsill. Thus the stacato thump timp tump thump of heavy drips and intermittent splatters behind my head. In Hong Kong, at nine thirty PM on a Thursday, it’s raining. The same would have been true on Wednesday, or most of August. Or most of July. Or much of June. The summer is one of the wettest on record. July was the second wettest month of the name, behind only a typhoon in ’94. Our walls are decomposing, slowly, as the water seeps into the plaster. It’s nothing dramatic, just the gradual peel of paint, bubble and crumble of the base material. Mostly it is the knowledge of wear that can not be fixed until the weather changes. Once the rain ends we can sand, scrape, patch, and paint again, fixing a part of the wall that has been repaired dozens of times before.…