Wow, even the Western media is actually covering the mess Typhoon made of Taiwan (well, their leads are on China with asides about Taiwan).  While we were relatively unscathed, much of the island was hit hard.  Tainan's going to have problems with dirty resovoir water for a while and the rail service will be disrupted for at least six months as they rebuild bridges . . . lots of bridges.  Saw on the news that they were still helicopter evacuating people from many areas.  The New York Times under reported the current dead and missing total . . . http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/world/asia/11china.html . . . Lorraine saw on the local news that something like 1000 people are missing from one village alone, although they are not certain how many of those folks fled and are unaccounted for and how many were swept away in the flooding.  I still remember our vacation in Kenting a few years back where we ended up being trapped in the house with kids playing PS2 (always bring your console on vacation) as the typhoon back then dumped as much rain in three days as normally comes to the island in a year . . . Morokot decided to break the records and dumped as much rain in twenty-four hours as we usually have in one year.