I was luckly enough to witness yesterday’s solar eclipse at work and brought my camera to help document it. The sun was approximately 85% covered at its peak here in Suncheon and it did dim things a little which was cool. The skies were slightly overcast which normally isn’t a good thing for eclipses but good for me as I was dumb and didn’t prepare looking devices, so the slightly overcast conditions assisted in my not going blind, which is greatly appreciated.
My camera’s been a bit dodgy lately as it got too much moisture over the past month with the viewfinder sometimes working, sometimes not. Yesterday, of course, it wasn’t working so I somewhat aimlessly pointed it at that slightly dimmed disc in the sky all the while trying not to look at said disc. Unsurprisingly, the photos didn’t come out as stellar as a professional like myself would hope! So, I decided to do something with the three passable pictures that I normally don’t do - except on my jagged teeth if I’m feeling self-conscious - I heavily photoshopped them to make them look somewhat decent. You see the whole time I was actually inadvertently taking photos of a bird’s nest in a tree, but thanks to modern technology it comes out looking somewhat like a solar eclipse! Enjoy~!
The solar eclipse as seen from Suncheon
The solar eclipse amongst overcast skies in Suncheon
Solar eclipse (and photoshop)-induced darkness in the middle of the day
Below are pics and a video of one of the two big wets that hit Suncheon over the past two and a half weeks. I took these scenes with my friend’s camera as mine was buggered up due to the excess moisture and humidity hanging around Suncheon the past month – the viewfinder still isn’t fully responsive.
Several hours after the storm little 'ole Okcheon creek is still trying to cope with what it's been through
Newly formed rapids on Okcheon creek leading towards the footbridge and Dongcheon river
Trees, grass, park benches - everything's submerged!
This muraled walkway is usually three metres above river level - not on this fateful day
In the past nine days – in the peak of the local monsoon season – Suncheon has received a whooping 667mm of rain! That’s over three times as much precipitation as Suncheon received for the whole of July last year when it recorded just 200.2mm.
The total rainfall over the last nine-day period is over half of Sydney’s annual rainfall and well over London’s drizzly annual total of 611mm. (- which leads me to an aside for another time – why it is that Sydney receives twice the rainfall in year as London, yet in London it seemingly always rains whilst in Sydney there’s water restrictions!?)
The bulk of the rainfall has fallen on the 7th (last Tuesday) with a daily total of 216.5mm, yesterday with a total of 108.5mm and today with a whooping 179.5mm and the day’s not over yet! Okcheon, the creek outside my apartment well and truly burst its banks and overflowed onto the surrounding footpaths both last Tuesday and today. Dongcheon – the river which Okcheon flows into and which eventually flows into Suncheon Bay has seen a huge influx of water, bursting its banks, rising a good 5 metres in depth and nearly coming up to bridges over the water at its peak. Thankfully, the rivers and creeks are well embanked and well drained to cope with this monsoonal weather and there hasn’t seemed to have been significant damage to residential or industrial areas with the water levels dissipating quite rapidly from their peak.
My adult students say that this monsoon season has been the wettest in at least 20 years and there still seems life in it yet – the forecast for the next week consists of mostly rainy and overcast days. We may well hit a 800mm before this monsoon season is out.
* If you’re Korean literate, you’ll able to view the charts provided by the Korean Meteorological Association (KMA) on past weather details, where I found the figures for this post.
Coming to this blog one of the first things you’re most probably likely to encounter is the title ‘Jeonnam Life’. When I started this blog 9-odd months ago I chose this as my title since I live in Jeollanam-do (South Jeolla province), South Korea – or ‘Jeonnam’ for short, and this blog was supposed to largely chronicle my life and all the ups and downs of living in a regional city in this part of South Korea. That was my intention at first, and when I did blog several years back when I first came to Korea, I was largely successful in writing just about my daily (or fortnightly, as it normally turned out) trials and tribulations as a non-Korean English teacher in regional South Korea.
But, nowadays I guess after six years since I first stepped onto this peninsula, what used to fascinate me has become mundane, what used to excite leaves me feeling numb, what used to piss me off … well still does piss me off but I don’t what to burden y’all with the details, and what used to arouse me .. well that still does!
I guess in essence, Korea has bcome the ‘real world’ for me, it’s no longer eye-opening, it’s no longer special, it’s no longer worth writing home about. Sure, there still plenty of funny situations and unusual and quirky daily occurences, but I’ve been here so long that they are just a part of life here. Sometimes I envy my friends and people I meet who’ve just come here, wide-eyed and filled with curiosity … only for it to dampen by grumpy long-timers such as myself.
Korea’s still a wonderful, fascinating, interesting country and a great place to live. But, I guess it’s now home, and no one wants to write about home.
I’ll try to write more about Korean life, in particular Jeonnam life, for folks interested overseas, but the longer I’m here the more difficult it is to see ‘home’ through a ‘newbies’ eyes.
Below’s a few pics of my adventures over the past few weeks to the ballpark to see Gwangju’s Kia Tigers play Samsung Lions and at the soccer stadium in Gwangyang to see Chunnam Dragons take on FC Daegu.
Kia Tigers baseball match
Pre-match entertainment as the crowd readies itself for the match
Full house at Mudeung baseball stadium watching the action
Chunnam Dragons soccer match
The action's on the field, the Dragons are playing in the fluorescent parking attendant yellow strip
Chunnam Dragons' cheer squad, as you can see not many people go to mid-week matches in Korea!
Posted by elcanguro76 
