... or maybe it's already here. It rained persistently today, causing me to cancel plans to go to the FC Seoul game tonight. I love soccer, of course, but going to a game is supposed to be fun, which in my opinion sitting for two hours in the rain isn't.
장 마 Jangma is the Korean name for the East Asian monsoon which delivers the Korean peninsula about 50% of its average annual rainfall in about a one month period. Miss Lee assured me on Friday that I need not worry about it--thanks to global warming, jangma is no more! Which is certainly big news to the meteorologically inclined.
Be that as it may, Jangma, if it arrives, typically arrives with the first days of summer, which equinox-wise isn't actually until tomorrow, so perhaps I am being premature. OTOH, I don't think so, as the monsoon is precipitated by the broad temperature differences between the large Asian landmass and the Pacific Ocean. As the land warms up in the summer, southwesterly winds drop water over the continental margins, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and the coastal lands. There's no cut-off date.
In the winter, things reverse, with the line moving east and carrying dry aeolian dust from the Loess Plateau of China in what Koreans call Yellow Wind.
Anyway, I didn't go to the soccer game, but I watched it on TV. This was the first K-League game in two weeks, as the season went on hiatus for the last of the national team's WC qualifying. The visitor to Sangam was Jeju, who went ahead in the first six minutes. Strangely reminiscent of the game I attended two weeks ago. Just like in that game, Seoul stayed on the attack, drawing even late in the second half and scoring the go ahead goal on a very sweet header with about two minutes to go. The win moves them into first place in the league standings--with the bulk of the season still to come.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
missed u at Seoul Pub after the AB v France game mate, The Allblacks won thank Christ. If they had lost the world would have ended. The ABs seem to be lacking in skills this year and next month they play the damn Aussies, who now have a Kiwi coach.
Bumped into two kids in the elevator at home fully decked out in Seoul FC gear with their dad. They were shocked when the random forigner asked if their team won, but they did convey a positive response with which their dad was impressed. What more can I ask but to be at least understood.
I also have heard from people that the monsoon will no longer happen because of global warming...they have told me this over the past several years while I got rained on in late June/early July. So yeah, I don't believe it.
Actually, to add another facet, I confronted someone who said it to me, and got this response: "It isn't that there is no more monsoon, it is that global warming causes it to rain more during the rest of the year, making the monsoon stand out less than in the past."
Of course that makes me wonder...why not just say that global warming makes it rain all the time, rather than saying global warming stopped the monsoon? Besides...ah, to hell with it, I'm drunk.
Post a Comment