Netnet Camomot .
NO thanks to climate change, we’re now familiar with Philippine Area of Responsibility (PAR), Low Pressure Area, leptospirosis, the weather bureau’s rainfall advisories, and how Villarin Street in Carmen, Cagayan de Oro looks like when it’s flooded.
Today happens to be Carmen’s fiesta, so, happy fiesta!
Anyway, after the raining of cows and carabaos on Tuesday last week, we decided to let Super Typhoon Maria leave PAR before venturing to CDO’s downtown area again. So, the day after, on Wednesday, we stayed home and planned to go out on Thursday morning instead to avoid the rain that usually arrives in the afternoon.
Guess what—it didn’t rain on Wednesday morning and afternoon but only in the evening, which made me look at that day as a lost opportunity to window-shop. Haha.
We woke up early on Thursday to make sure we could reach the downtown area by 10 am. But that’s when it rained—cats and dogs category. We had to postpone the window-shopping to the next sunny day, whenever that would be.
Once upon a time, the Cagayanon believed CDO would be typhoon-free forevermore.
And then came Sendong.
The Cagayanon began to move uptown or adding second and third floors to his flood-prone house, he learned to store clothes and valuables in huge plastic containers in preparation for the next evacuation alert, and would take anti-leptospirosis meds after a swim in murky waters.
While waiting for Maria, we asked the house help if our food supply could last for at least a week. Pre-Sendong, we didn’t check out the fridge if there’s food in there. We always presumed that the rain won’t disturb our daily sked.
The world now needs a Noah’s Ark and there’s one in the US, a tourist attraction in Ark Encounter, Williamstown, Kentucky.
A Cagayanon may wish for smaller watercraft—a raft, boat or jetski—instead of a car that will be stuck in flood and traffic, anyway.
So, what to do on a rainy Thursday morning? Well, have some hot choco with breakfast.
The Pinoy who lives in a flood-prone area will also have hot choco with breakfast while waiting for the next advisory from the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration which, by the way, has a Tagalog translation: Pangasiwaan ng Pilipinas sa Serbisyong Atmospero, Heopisiko at Astronomiya. Whew! Pag-asa na lang gud oi. To provide hope a.k.a. pag-asa for the flood-weary.
After having been there, done that with typhoons, the Pinoy can now relate with the phrase, “survival of the fittest,” which always makes me ask, The fittest for what? There are people who are physically strong but may easily crumble emotionally or vice versa, so, what then is the basis for the fittest?
Most stories of resilience that sprouted out of Sendong, Yolanda, the Mount Pinatubo eruption, Baguio earthquake, and all other Pinas disasters may still have to be published by the media or posted on social media. Learning about their stories is one way to find out what it takes to be the fittest.
Meanwhile, the rescue of the Wild Boars—the 12 young football players and their coach—from the Tham Luang cave in Thailand had a 24/7 coverage. The rescue was treated as the exact opposite of how the US is detaining illegal immigrants’ children in what looks like huge cages.
While elephants, lions and tigers are now freed from circuses and brought to sanctuaries, here’s the US putting humans in cages. The US has a ready excuse—they’re illegal aliens, like as if their humanness ended when the US judged them as illegal.
Asa na ang hustisya ani? Well, former Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno and her team are probably working on her name’s inclusion in the next Pulse Asia survey for senatoriables. For sure they were shocked with the June 2018 results. She’s not there! How is that possible!
Shocked is an understatement. She has extensive media exposure, was on the front page above-the-fold of national broadsheets, and was interviewed by Stephen Sackur of BBC’s “Hardtalk.” Yet these were not enough to make her name appear in the survey results. Tsk tsk. Mindboggling.
Nemo’s friend Dory is lucky—she has short-term memory loss. If there’s a survey that excludes her, she’ll forget about it a minute later.
But Dory has the best unsolicited advice: “Just keep swimming.” Which the flood-weary Pinoy should adopt as his mantra.
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