Noul rolled through Sunday, T9 up by evening, T8 still flying at dawn Monday, and the whole city did what it always does under a black rainstorm sign: checked the signal like it's a lottery number, hoping for the day off. A motorcyclist died in a crash near Chek Lap Kok on the Saturday night when T3 was up, before the real signal even came. Down in Guangdong they moved 340,000 people out of the way. Here, the biggest drama for most of us was whether the 9pm change meant we'd still get to sleep in.

That's the bit nobody says out loud: Hong Kong has turned typhoon-watching into a national sport, and the signal number matters more than the actual weather most of the time. T8 means no work, T9 means "getting worse but who's counting," and by the time it's T3 again everyone's already back at their desks complaining the storm was a letdown. Somewhere south of us people had to leave their homes. Here we refreshed the Observatory app and argued about whether the 6pm downgrade was a government conspiracy to get us back in the office by Monday. Different storm, very different Monday.