The Rainmaker

Call me the rainmaker.

With the Japanese love to put people into categories, one is related to the weather. They say that people are either "sunny" or "rainy". If you are a "rainy person" then on important days of your life and when you travel, it will rain. Obviously, it works the other way around if you're a "sunny person". If a sunny and a rainy person travel together, it may be cloudy or if it rains, that means that the rainy person has more "power".

Always when I would travel with my friend Natsuki, it would rain. She is a self-confessed rainy person, so I would just blame her for our bad luck in weather, telling her that she had a lot of power. She repeatedly denied that it was all her fault and said that just like her, I would bring on the rain.

This argument continued for years until my wedding day. A couple of months out of cyclone season, I not only got rain, but a mini-cyclone especially ordered for the day. There was no longer any doubt about which way I swung.

Last week, I went back to Brisbane for a brief holiday. Brisbane has been in a bad drought for a while now, no rain, no moisture, everything is bone dry. On her way to pick me up from the airport, Christine who has heard the "rainy person/sunny person" argument for years looked up at the clouds forming in the sky and said, "Maybe she is a rainy person after all". A couple of days into my trip, the skies opened up and down came the rain, not a small drizzle, not a light shower, but heavy downpours. Call me the rainmaker! I've decided that I could use my powers for good and will travel for good food and good accomodation to areas in need for a little of that wet stuff.

I left Brisbane on Thursday and wonder what happened to the weather.....