wet

I normally think of Korea's jangma, its monsoon season, as starting around mid-July, but this year, things got rainy within July's first week, and my cell phone has been piling up with flood warnings—often several times a day, and often the same damn message or a close variant, usually about the need to stay away from local creeks. Very annoying. Effectively, this means that, even if I were able to go out and about, I'd end up drenched, so I may as well self-isolate safely in my 14th-floor apartment, far above the fray.

While July and August are infamously the worst summer months in Korea, thanks to the heat and humidity, the jangma, which usually runs through part of August, offers temporary relief, cooling the temperatures down and scouring the sky for a few blissful hours, improving the air quality until the next bout of pollution rolls in. Of course, once the rain stops, all that groundwater evaporates and causes even more humidity. It's always a tradeoff.

It'll still be monsoon-ing when I get back to the office on Monday. Once I feel better, I'll be back to walking, even if it means walking in the rain while wearing my nearly useless poncho. I did just Coupang-order a new, wide-brim rain hat for use on future walks, and I look forward to seeing whether it offers any real protection. We'll soon find out.