It was pretty much 2 years ago when Milenyo swept over the office, drowning my car and seeing me crawl up the office's trusses like a rat. Wading through floodwaters gushing through makeshift rivers and evading the occasional tree branch and squealing pig, I could definitely feel for those in Manila right now more or less in the same predicament. Of course as fate would have it, this wasn't going to happen to me again this time... karma doing me a favor?
This year, during the storm that drowned a great portion of the metropolis, I found myself in the hinterlands of Bukidnon, then to the southern city of Davao. I could watch the familiar brown murky floodwaters on the television literally a hundred miles away from where I lay comfortably in an airconditioned hotel room, fed, resting and best of all dry.
*****
How's this for irony, just an hour ago while meeting with a client at the mall, the familiar drone of a heavy downpour filled the air. As I walked out, I found the street under a couple of inches of floodwater. I glanced at my hotel's entrance across said street and decided it wasn't worth getting my shoes wet and I'd best wait till the "puddle" subsided. Wow, after watching people drenched in the rain atop their roofs fearing for their lives, I was careful to mind my leather shoes getting wet.
I lit my cigarette, smiling at the irony that I've created and wondered if it would be awfully insensitive to write about this disturbing scene. Obviously I thought not... after all, I've (and my car) paid our dues to the storm gods.
It took maybe a couple more cigarettes before I finally braved the now half-inch film of water. Taking careful steps so as not to spray some drops on the cuff (is that the right term?) of my pants, I crossed the street as the hotel guard who was apparently watching me the whole time chuckled as he readied his now open umbrella, lest I get slightly rained on. I got to my hotel room just in time to watch the news again, still about the great flood.
Sincerely, I would rather this tragedy not happen to anyone else. But this is the weather, and there's just no way to predict nor foresee the happenings of both yesterday and two years ago. Guess I just can't help feeling lucky and happy that I didn't get hit twice by flood.
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1 comment:
aahhh! davao. i just miss that southern sunshine. lucky you. again.
but you should have seen manila after the storm - freshly washed, with silver-metallic skies, all its filth flushed down manila bay, and its people looking sullen and oh so magnanimous. this city has its own brand of beauty too.
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