What Can You See

An English penpal of mine asked me in her first letter to tell her how the Sun was. This because she told me that England hardly sees any sun, and it would be nice to know that there's a place where you can actually see it. I looked around me, in the Glass Tower I work in, and I didn't see the Sun. I walked to the window with my phone and clicked a few frames for my friend.

It is a general mistaken idea in the minds of the North, that in here, close to the waist of the planet exists the land of the Eternal Sunshine, with white-sand beaches and aquamarine waters bursting of colorful fish. Well, no. Have you heard of "rainforests"? Well, why do you think the "rain" word is part of it? Because it needs rain, requires rain, rain is vital for it's existence. Thus these rainforests must grow on rain-rich lands, which brings us to conclude that these are, indeed, rain-rich lands. Ergo, you can't look out of the window and capture a picture of the Sun at any minute, except, maybe during the dry season, when the rain is much less often. However, well, right now we are deep in the rainy season, with sights like the one you can see in the picture to the left.

Out of Hyne knows what impulse, I started taking pictures from different angles, taking advantage of one of the perks of being forced to spend 9,6 hours of my day in this Glass Tower. These are some of the pictures I kept taking.

Then, yesterday as I was talking to a coworker of mine, a HUGE, BLACK column of smoke rose in the horizon, freigteningly thick. In seconds, like any morbid, metiche Latin, I ran to the window with my phone, and was closely followed by the closeby colleagues. Not even an earthquake moves that many people that fast. Quite scared, we, and people from other departments, gathered at the window trying to guess what was burning.

People from all over the floor suddenly gathered both in fear and morbid fascination, staring at the thick tube of smoke reaching high, thickening before our eyes rising like some sort of skyscrapper distorting the view. Then, out of the blue, in the silent view, an explotion of hisses from the gathered viewers anounced a new addition to the black smoke. As the column fattened visibly, from time to time huge flames sneaked between the crevices of the bubbly black. Higher than the buildings around, dark orange and red snakes that strangely had none of their natural glow. Flat, matte coloured fast fingers flared up vomiting thick gobs of more black smoke.

I clicked a few frames and soon tens of phones pulled out for the amateur reporter-on-the-road. Calls were placed to make sure loved ones were not in the vicinity, that they were sound and safe, and once that was stated, with morbid pleasure the spectacle was shared. Something is burning, and is burning BIG!

In the end it turned out to be the warehouse of a paint making company, whose warehouse - the same warehouse - burned out the same way in 2003. One would have thought they had learned their lesson.

I do intend to catch for her a few happy gimpses of Sun, so that maybe she can place her fingers on the image and get a bit of the heat it radiates down to the people, but those will be saved for a further post.