Here comes the rain!

We've had a few sharp downpours over the last few days: usually mid-morning, then it clears up. Yesterday (Thursday) was pretty grey all day, but didn't get Interesting until about 8pm. Then I noticed some rumblings (my curtains were closed) and only realised after a few minutes that they were practically continuous. Opened the curtains and looked out on a fantastic thunderstorm. There was sheet lightning every few seconds, brightening the whole sky. There was torrential rain (it doesn't hit the windows because of the construction of the balconies) and the wind was whipping the palm trees around like crazy. Fun!

So I sat and watched that for a while, until I realised that the exciting storm had had a rather tedjus consequence that the internet connection had died. The IT spock (that's the term they use at the office: not exactly sure of the derivation but I hope it's something to do with Star Trek and having a guy around who knows everything) came and looked, denied all involvement ("it can't be our server because you can ping that OK") and went away to get his laptop to check it. And didn't come back. When I called to ask where he was I was told that he was dealing with a big problem with the server. So I had dinner (with a great view of the storm lighting up the pool area) and watched the West Wing (season 6 DVDs) and had a relaxing bath (it's huge - I didn't feel quite as guilty about using all that water given that nature was refilling the reservoirs a bit as I lay there) and eventually got back on the internet near 11pm. They are very nice about wiping charges from the room bill though, so it has the positive result of an extra day's internet use.

Today is my last day here: at 2 am tomorrow I'll be on a flight back to London, then a short dash through Heathrow to make the connecting flight to Edinburgh.