01648: Everyone Flip-Flops

The various weather apps that I have installed on my phone are all telling me that there remains a 50% chance of rain today - and that does seem like a fair assessment. And while today is the first day that many of us had been able to see the sun at all in Metro Manila, that quickly shifts to pouring rain that likes to tease us for a few minutes. This goes on and on throughout the day - a moment of sun, then a spot of rain, then the clouds part and then they come crashing back together again.

It's rather infuriating, but what can you do? It's the weather after all. The weather is pretty much the end-all personification of what it means to be quite mercurial and fickle. And with the increasing reality of climate change (and yes, I think you're an idiot if you think this is a myth), the weather seems to be getting more and more predictable than ever before.

The only constant when it comes to the weather is that someone is going to find a reason to complain about the current weather conditions. Just watch social media and you'll find that friend who will complain about the heat one day and then moan about the rain the next. The weather is one thing that ties us all together since there's no escaping it and thus there's always going to be reason to hate it. We are more prone to complain about things that praise things for one reason or another - I guess a lot of people are just built to be rather negative in that regard.

But this negative attitude extends to the media - and at times it feels like it's something that the major news outlets tend to capitalize on. A good example is the news coverage related to PNoy and his visibility during the rains over the past few days. Some news articles raised the question of why the president hasn't been out there making his presence felt among the people displaced by the floods. But as soon as he was out there, people started to complain that he was just being media hungry and was just posing for cameras. Seriously - do you want him out there like a figurehead or do you want him behind closed doors directing the overall rescue efforts from a central command center location?

You have people who are angry at Congress for the recent abuses related to the pork barrel funds. And on the other side you have people who want Congress to launch an investigation into their own activities. So wait, do we trust Congress or not? We think it's unfair what has been done with our taxes but we trust them to spearhead an independent investigation?

A lot of times, people just don't make sense to me and social media just rubs this fact into all of our faces each and every day.