After The Storm Has Gone

For a while, to write was all I could do...
Then Milenyo came, and I'm glad we're alive
Deep inside I knew my fear was true...

Hehehe, forgive me! I just can't help it! After I typed the title in this blog, those lyrics just popped in my head. :-)

Well, let's start... hopefully, this will be start of a much faithful writing in my blog. True, the Milenyo super-typhoon affected most of us here in the South. We lost our DSL connection (reconnected after 2 months!), our office ceiling was ruined (including our brand new 5-in-1 colored printer, scanner, photo printer, fax & copier!)... but, hey, I'm glad we're alive and that nothing really bad happened to us. Unfortunately, our neighboring town of Sto. Tomas got the fury of Mt. Makiling when landslides from the denuded part of the mountain went down and with Milenyo's continuous pouring of large quantities of "super-typhoon-water", flooded the townproper and nearby barangays. Houses were flooded from as low as waist-high (adult-waist-high!) to as high as probably 7ft, glass walls of a popular highway restaurant were broken, and a large portion of the concrete fence of a new cold storage facility was downed as if it were made of wood, showing the path where the water & mud & debris from the mountain went. There were casualties and large losses from damaged properties, but we don't know why there were no reports on TV... perhaps, because of the debates on the billboard nightmares in Manila... or perhaps, there was a cover-up. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

What happened in Sto. Tomas is a warning to all of us, just like what the floods and landslides in Leyte and Quezon have told us years before. I just hope that our people living in the towns surrounding the mountain have learned a valuable lesson since the tragedy was closer to home. The Los Baños side probably didn't experience landslides and floods (I hope!) that Sto. Tomas did... perhaps due to the numerous people and organizations that are concerned about the preservation of the mountain that has been the home of our state university (in short, activists?). Hehehe, take no offense, I lived there for four (4) years and I've been branded an activist even if I'm just hard-headed or stubborn. I guess all UP students have to live with that label.

I hope my children get to read these thoughts and aspirations so that they'll get to know me much better and perhaps influence their thinking into taking much more responsibility in caring for the environment (oops, better stop using these plastic cups... plastic!).

Ka-chow! - Lightning McQueen