Jim has a conference of some sort in Kuala Lumpur this week. He left on Sunday afternoon. Why is it when Jim is not here that the weather goes downhill? Really downhill! And the power goes off for 3 hours.... in the evening. Is this a test? It started raining about 7 PM on Sunday, and the skies just kind of opened up..... completely! Wow! In all my days in Louisiana, I have never seen it rain so hard and fast. We got about a foot of rain in 24 hours. I guess that has something do to with the street flooding. Hmmm.... We lost power about 6 PM and I could tell that it was not just my house! I went on FaceBook, and many people were posting about how they were out of power. As a matter of fact, the entire town of Kuala Belait was very dark. After about two hours a friend sent me a text that we would probably get power soon. She lives around the corner from me. I spent most of the time knitting by candlelight. It's not like I could go anywhere. The gate is electric and it doesn't work when the power is out. We do have a walk out gate, but where am I going to want to walk to? Things that happen in places like this, you just can't make up. Here is an example of one of those. This happened to my friend, Beth. This is what she posted on her FaceBook page.... "New life experience # I've lost count: having to climb your fence, in the rain, in a skirt, while the men at the staff house next door watch you b/c your electricity is out and your gate won't open. I broke the plastic trash can I was using as a step & it thanked me by holding my flip flop hostage." Another thing to know about Beth is that she always wears dresses or skirts. There is a reason for this. She says that when she is out, she never know when you will get one of those stoop only toilets. They can be kind of tricky when you have shorts on. And who wants to have their shorts all wet from the bathroom floor! Here is some photos of our flooded street:

Jim wants me to start making his favorite foods and freezing them into individual serving sizes for use while I am away in the States. So on Tuesday, I made some Louisiana gumbo. Fortunately, I had bought all the vegetable that go in it at the market on Saturday.I invited my friend Antje and her husband, Benny for dinner. That was the eve of my birthday. It was delicious food and good company. Antje is from Germany and Benny is from Switzerland and both are pretty adventurous with food. I pretty much knew that the weather this week was going to suck. There were reports that the monsoon was headed our way from the Philippines. The weather forecaster here says this is the wettest rainy season Brunei has had since 1966. Lovely! Does it really need to do this the first year we move here. It has definitely made life here interesting. The mozzies are horrific! On Wednesday, my birthday, the street was flooded when I got up in the morning and pretty much stayed that way all day. I cancelled my Physio appointment and later the lunch plans. It was a very quiet day, but I did get quite a bit of knitting done. I did reschedule my birthday lunch with Antje to today. We went to my favorite restaurant Kaizen Sushi. As usual, it was very delicious!

It was interesting driving around today. I was driving on a main road between the two expat towns of Kuala Belait and Seria. There is still a lot of water standing on the roadway, and some roads are still under water. I sure am glad that we do not live in the Brunei Shell camp. They can't flush their toilets and some of them have sewer that is backing up in their sinks. In some of the areas of the camp there is still water standing almost to the threshold. They have had a real problem with mozzies, and now they are just breeding by the millions in all that standing water. Now it is Thursday evening, and the rain is starting again. I'm glad our house is on high ground....