Rain, Rain and MORE Rain

We have been living in SE Asia for almost two years now and we are still trying to find a "pattern" to the weather. Back in Texas you can see clear lines between the four seasons and know which ones usually bring more rain, which are dryer, hotter, etc. Over here it seems that it is hot and humid all the time with a good chance of rain SOMETIME during the day!
There do seem to be weeks that it rains mostly during the night while we are sleeping, or mostly during the morning hours. Right now the closest "pattern" we can find is hot and clear in the morning, cloud up with storms in the afternoon, early evening. One thing we DIDN'T know about Malaysia was that you get some LOUD thunderstorms with the rain. Now growing up in the part of the U.S. we did, we are used to thunder and lightening, especially in the volatile Spring.
The weird thing in Malaysia is how loud they are! For instance, today (Saturday) we were taking a nap about 2pm and the rumbling started. By the time it was in full force, you definitely could not sleep through it. It sounds like the thunder is RIGHT on top of our house and it goes on for over an hour most of the time. Our windows aren't sealed well over here and when we are in the living room you can feel (and hear) the windows shake in their frames. Our electricity is pretty fragile in this house, so when we get lightening involved also we often lose the electricity to the house. Not a huge problem because we can just go to the breaker box and turn it on again, but earlier in the week it did this three times within about 20 minutes. Fun times!
Because we are located at the very southern tip of Malaysia we are surrounded by water on three sides. I'm not sure if this is the reason, but about half the time we get one of these thunder sessions, it never even rains at our house! Jeff's office is about 10 minutes from here and he frequently asks if it is raining here (it will be dry) when it is raining there. Jeff was playing golf recently and he said you could see that it was raining on the tee box, but it was still dry where he was hitting. Just kind of weird. I don't think we will EVER figure out weather patterns here, even though locals will say "this is the rainy season" or "this is the dry season". It really just seems all the same to me...sunny, humid, with a good chance of showers--and sometimes thunder thrown in for good measure.