Lawin, Go Fly

You know that feeling of being helpless because you can’t stop the typhoon from reaching your shores.  I am tuned in to the radio for the hourly updates and at the same time following PAGASA’s updates online. Typhoon Lawin has intensified into a super typhoon as it  moves closer to Cagayan and Isabela which are now under typhoon signal #5.

Strength:  Maximum sustained winds of up to 225 kph near the center and gustiness of up to 315 kph.
Forecast Movement: Forecast to move West Northwest at 24 kph.

Metro Manila is under signal  #1. I am praying that it would weaken somehow during landfall. Our friends and family  in the Northern part of the country have suffered enough. I am so worried how they will cope once the typhoon lands in their place. Every time there is a typhoon coming (even if it will not directly affect our place), I am  reminded  of typhoon Ondoy back in September 2009.  It always gives me the jitters. Imagine your house submerged up to your neck  and you have to renovate and replace almost all of the furnitures  and appliances which were destroyed by the flood. Imagine your books  ( a collection that started during your college years) submerged in water and much as you want to save them, the pages have glued together.  Three yearbooks  (mine, Josef’s and Nissa’s) completely destroyed. I cried seeing those because they were our only reminders of our university days in UST.  Imagine your worry that your scheduled visit to your oncologist and chemo treatment won’t push through because your car was also submerged in flood waters.  I can still remember it all vividly.

You learn your lesson and you learn it well but when natural calamities are your enemies, you can only cling to God and pray hard. I am praying hard that super typhoon Lawin would not be that strong when it hits land. Oh please, move a little faster and get out of our way.

Do you know that Lawin is a Tagalog term for the bird hawk?

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Bye, Bye Glenda

And good riddance to you.

I know, I know it is not  such a problem if we would compare it to typhoon Yolanda a year ago. The typhoon survivors in those areas affected by it still have no homes to come back to. They have lost their livelihood to the devastating typhoon that was Yolanda. Typhoon Glenda wreaked havoc to power lines causing massive brownouts all over our country until now. I think I am guilty of this, finding discomfort without power for two straight days and just  relying on a transistor radio to get news. I have to get rid of some veggies stored in our ref, cook what was left in our freezer all at the same time so they won’t spoil, can’t check my e-mails because there was no internet. These are just minor problems compared to those who have just lost their homes to typhoon Glenda. Such a nice name for a typhoon but so deadly. I think of the devastation it caused us and  I just shake my head.  There is another tropical storm coming and anytime within the next few days, it will enter the Philippine area of responsibility. I am praying it would not make a landfall and won’t bring so much rain. You can never know with typhoons these days, one morning they are just ordinary low pressure areas and before you know it, they have evolved into strong typhoons. We are visited by more than twenty weather disturbances in a year and although it is inevitable, I still feel so much afraid and insecure every time there is a typhoon coming. Lost lives can never be replaced and destroyed properties are hard to replace.

My garden is a mess.

My poor Gardenia shrub. It was partly uprooted during the typhoon and my flowering orchids got the brunt of  Glenda. It is a wonder though that my Hoya orchids are again showing off lovely buds of pink almost in all tips of the hanging plants. Right after the winds and the rains stopped, Josef and I cleaned the yard of debris – fallen leaves from a neighbor’s mango tree, upturned flower pots, small branches of trees that I cannot identify, and some plastic wrappers blown by the strong winds. Our small pond still needs cleaning. What a mess! I remember the time when we still had our avocado tree and around the months of July and August, some fruits are ready for harvesting. Just imagine gathering a sackful of avocados right after a storm.

I am saddened by what happened to the Malaysian Airline flight MH-17 and the deaths of all 298 aboard the aircraft.  Where is this world coming to? I was talking to my brother earlier today  on Viber and I told him, “we are not safe on land but it is even more dangerous when you’re out there because you have no way of defending yourself to such disasters”. “So true”, he said. When you’re on land, you can run or hide or do something to save your life. And I remember what I read on the news about VP Joe Biden saying, It was “not an accident, it was blown out of the sky.”  Who is responsible for this? Let us all pray for the  innocent victims and the families they left behind, that they find justice amidst this terrible tragedy.

Can life just be reduced to something like this?

 

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