99% of the time, I love living in the lush green villages of Mui Wo. But when it’s been raining for ten days straight, and I mean without stopping, I want to stab myself in the face repeatedly with blunt chopsticks from the kitchen.

How can one achieve anything when it’s raining? Because there’s no car access to the villages, you live your life on your bicycle, or you walk. Wonderful when the weather is great, but a major pain in the ass during ten straight days of non-stop rain.

Getting groceries was a major challenge — I had to get all kitted out in rain gear and go on my bike in the pouring rain to the supermarket, then walk through the freezing supermarket in my wet clothes, and then cycle back home with my bags of groceries in my bicycle basket getting soaked.

Doing laundry has similarly become an endless battle against wetness. A typical Hong Kong home doesn’t have room for a dryer (in fact our laundry machine is out on the balcony, which is also normal). On days of normal weather, we just hang everything up outside and it’s dry by day-end. But due to the rain, our little flat has become a laundromat. Thankfully we have a dehumidifier which has a ‘dry laundry’ function.

But you know what? I can handle biking in the rain… I can handle hanging up clothes inside… but the worst part of this crap weather is that you can’t do anything with The Kid. You can’t go outside, you can’t go hiking, you can’t go to the park or the beach. You can’t do anything, really. Because we can’t just go into our garage and get into our nice dry car and drive somewhere. No. If we want to go out, we have to go by bicycle or stroller. Neither of which is good protection against the rain.

I never thought I’d blog about something as banal as rain. But when you live deep in the bush, it becomes a major, major issue!

I love my bike. But I’m looking forward to one day having a car. And a garage. And a dryer.