Typhoon Ondoy
A foreigner asked me some years back , days after a tsunami killed hundreds of thousands of people in Asia specifically in Thailand, Sri Lanka, India and Indonesia of which one is better to die : war or disaster. I replied disaster. It was a stupid choice.
I was in Manila on the 26th of September, the day typhoon Ondoy made a landfall. I was supposed to attend the last Sunday of the bar exam after a couple of years of almost ”animosity” in the field, primarily to take a grasp once more on the atmosphere. I was one of those trapped along Quezon Ave., Quezon City. I spent the night inside the bus with some people from my former school denied of the usual comfort for travellers. It was a sort of a road trip because we were not able to reach our destination, but not a road trip after all. The latest count of casulaties from the National Disaster Coordinating Council have risen to two hundred forty (240) and still counting, notwithstanding the many individuals, children and families starving in evacuation areas around Manila.
Fear, however did not engulfed me during the ordeal even when my cellphone ran out of battery and there’s no other way to get informed of what’s happening around than the radio powered by the bus gas, which made us hear the angst, pleas and sobs of the many families and individuals begging for rescue. Perhaps, this is because i grew up, like many Filipinos, with calamities and disasters. It has always been a way of life and the “spirit” that i could always surpass whatever the ordeal may bring. Though i was worried a bit when the building on the left side of the bus we were in, caught fire. To make the situation panicable, beside the building was a paint station and right behind our bus was a gas tanker while strong winds made the heavens look like dancing firecrackers as naked faces of barefoot and footless people keep passing back and forth the streets struggling to cross the rapid water breast high some neck high, all day and night long. I thought these people are, like me, just in a hurry to be home with their love ones and feel safe. Yet we just cannot move anywhere like other vehicles around us. It was seemingly a bad omen, whatever the word means.
Two men in wheelchair took shelter in a waiting shed near our space, battling the strong rain and wind with only plastics wrapped around their bodies while hundreds of children were sleeping in the floor covered with cartoons and newspapers along the corregidors of Sto. Domingo church. We would share the adhacent spots for many hours. Pasalubongs intended for barristers like cornics and bibingkas were shared to them.
“We were only at the right place at the right time” said one friend. Our driver was smart enough to locate the proper position of the bus where we would stick for the rest of the night until roads to lead us outside Manila were partially passable.
Climate change or war against another idiology.
Stupidity kills people.
Thank you President Cory.
I am grateful I was born a Filipino. I am more grateful I am living in a generation that lived a great woman named Corazon C. Aquino. I take pride to have recollection of live footages about a bloodless revolution in my country, in my lifetime. A story rooted from an eleven year old girl’s first encounter with political issues (though vague to a young mind) from her brother’s rush and fearful words during lunchtime of August 21, 1983… “tatang, tatang pinatay dan ni Ninoy” (father, father Ninoy has been assasinated) which resonates in my growing up years and the passionate conversations about national crucial issues in the family especially with my father in the coming years after that fateful day which I share now with my nephews and nieces who show awesome eagerness to learn and understand the history of their heritage.
My country’s contribution to all the peace loving people
across the globe is gone.
Thank you dear president for the assurance of the freedom we all yearn.
May you have a good journey. Rest in Peace.
Cairo address of President Barack Obama
how could i let it pass. regardless of how different minds viewed his messages, i subscribe to his soothing ideas and will always believe in his dreams. what else is there to dream anyway.
here comes a level headed leader from an apparent mighty who tries to touch the hems of the east…
on a personal level, subscription to sharp and rational minds is only my way of fleeting away from insanity. am afraid am halfway there…
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/
“Into the Wild”
i thought when i was reassigned in the mountains to work once more for the government three months ago, it would just be one of the many unfair practices this social order operates that i’ve been trying so hard to get accustomed to in my almost fifteen years of government service. No use of crying over spilled milk, am out to prove a work to be done just not to compromise the direction that i thought i should be and to get off this crazy and cruel system. This is how things work, i’l just admit. I know i’l be diverted from the usual course again and be in the brink of isolation and sadness though i’ve been there in the many times of my life. though mine could never be a unique experience, i always have thoughts about where am i really going just so because this universe does not conspire to those that i really work hard with. i like to live there, no doubt about it but i have my plans, that to immense once more into the wild is no longer the one i needed at this stage of my life.
A friend of mine, my junior in law school, which i suppose could have been one of the most sensible woman i ever talked with, once told me while waiting for the 2008 bar result ( she did not make it. she’s the most expected to pass the bar in their batch. how difficult could have been…. how could i not know? ) that she does not intend to live beyond forty years old. she said there’s nothing more to live for in this world. (as to what direction else that have not been traversed by history.) i do not know what’s in her mind. she could easily get anything she wish for without lifting a finger.she got it all i suppose. she’s driving a brand new car from her parents. I told her, maybe just of dreaming that one day we could both visit machu picchu is a good reason to live just to extend the period she established. She sticks with her idea.
I could just be tracing for one more person to view the world on a different angle in a gallant strive to be immaculate. Or maybe am looking for an answer to my endless question if there’s one really in charge in drawing my path or is there anybody who holds the sketch of my life (or should i thought there’s one alive?) I found however a soul who wished to divert from the usual to find solace and ultimately, happiness, bravely embraced life that he long in the most unusual way. i wish i could relate to such and well define my purpose as i seek my space whatever and wherever that maybe.
One of this person’s most interesting quotes comes from a letter he had written to a friend he had made while hitchhiking:
‘So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun’.(italics mine)
“Alexander Supertrump”
(1968-1992)
Life of
Christopher Johnson Mccandless
Source: www.buzzle.com
she rules
“how could i not loved you”
Georgia (Jane Fonda) replied
when her daughter asked if she ever loved her.
Georgia Rule (2007)
Today is March 8.
Happy International Women’s Day!
