Typhoon

29/05/11 

Sunday brought a typhoon. It also brought an unwelcome event in the form of a tree falling on our Nissan Serena van when it was parked on the driveway. It was a big old dead tree on the neighbouring plot. Luckily no one was near it when it did its thing and it barely clipped the house so minimal damage there. This tree  broke into 4 big pieces when it fell. The big heavy part landed on the driveway beside mine. The next biggest part landed on the van and punched right through the windscreen. There are 2 main issues with this. One is that there is a big hole in the front screen which makes the van useless in this weather. Secondly, this isn’t our van. It belongs to our agent’s wife and is not covered under her insurance. This is a big problem. We could fix it reasonably cheaply with used parts but he is insisting on new parts and the repairs to be done by Nissan. This will cost more than the car is worth. We are not really in a position to argue this as he did loan it to us. Not wanting to take a bath on fixing this van, we decided to buy it from him. This way we can repair it cheaply and resell it there. It’s a loss minimizing exercise but we all have some experience in this aspect of the car business.

The other pieces of the tree fell on to the road. One of them hit the stone pillar at the gate and knocked the flat capstone off. This stone is about 20 kgs and it must have flipped right over and landed flat on the road as it was entirely undamaged. All we had to do was lift it back into place. We scrambled to clear all the bits of tree off the road and lift the big piece off the van. It was pouring rain at the time so nobody got any photos. I don't know the laws here about liability for such things but I'm picking that, as usual, nobody is responsible for anything and that I will have to pay for it all. So the rest of Sunday was spent at home having a typhoon party. We ventured out around lunchtime and checked out the local creek. Normally quiet, it’s a raging torrent today. On the way back we saw tiny crabs scuttling about in the drains on the roadside. Crabs on a mountain? So for tomorrow we have arranged a rental car for the few days we have left here. One upside to this incident is that the neighbour across the road has been very sympathetic and I feel I have made good progress there.