But to us it's just rain.

Cars were sweeping past the bus-stop as I waited. I've mentioned countless times before that bus-stops are the best place for contemplation. And so I sat there, tired and drained staring ahead, not thinking about anything, because contemplation requires stimulus. You have to contemplate about something, and I lacked the passion or general brainpower to simply contemplate life, the cosmos and the billions of people in it.

But yes. So I sat.

And suddenly a car swept past, cutting the water pooling on our roads, which aren't as even as they should be, sending it up in a huge trail behind. To my horror I saw an frantic flapping in the wake of it's tyres, a quick flash of brown. It disappeared quickly, underneath the tyres of another car and emerged again, desperately swooping up only to disappear beneath a third and a fourth.

But yes.

When the fourth car moved into the distance it finally fell to the floor and stopped moving. For it was a leaf, stirred up only by the very objects it seemed like it was trying to avoid.

Now as I was walking home, I watched the rain. Not the rain, but where the rain went. And I thought about the rain. The rain started out as rain. Raindrops.

When you think about a raindrop, what does it look in your head? I don't know about you, but I see a perfectly shaped raindrop, in a raindrop shape, like they always are. Looking closer in my mind, the raindrop transparent, and perhaps gives a distorted hint of my own reflection. But the raindrop is pure.

Sometimes the rainwater pools, but most of the time it flows. Our system is made such that the raindrops flow, off the path and places that we don't want them. And so the raindrops move, involuntarily, to the drains. And so they go into drains.

At the top of the hill, the rainwater is but a trickle in the drains. The flow of water is calm. Clear, cool and somehow, nearly tranquil. As you move down the hill, more flows of water move into the drain, turning the trickle into a miniature stream. It gushes and bubbles merrily, as natural and long lasting streams do. Thing is, unlike a stream bursting forth from a sweet gurgling spring of water, drainwater is murky. A hint of grey pervades the surface.

Still further down the water turns angry. Like the rapids of the wild. It hisses and gnashes, and it threatens. Rushing, crashing. The water is white now, churning uncontrollably, yet ever rolling downhill.

Finally the stormdrain gives way to the open canal, and the drain bursts forth spewing it's load, finding itself to be only one of the many sources that fed the canal.

The Canal is like a Malaysian river. It moves slowly, but yet it is unstoppable, it's volume and width yield and bow to no man. A complex creature, it swirls and turns in some places, but ever marching on, ever resolute. Yet it is unfathomable, one does not know what goes on beneath it's surface. The canal is strange and large, yet it is one. One in their brownness, almost as if it were a dump of brown paint, but it is it's identity.

Make of it what you will, for what I truly think about it, I do not know.