028FF: Quiet Aftermath

Roasted Pork Chops

Metro Manila Community Quarantine - Day 243

It's pretty quiet in BGC tonight, which is a welcome relief versus yesterday. Typhoon Ulysses gave us howling winds last night even before it actually made landfall in the country. As far as typhoons go, it was relatively faster than others and only stayed in the country for a day. But that still meant a fair amount of destruction including flooding places like Marikina and leaving many parts of Luzon without power or running water. 

You could say that Philippine infrastructure does not know the meaning of "resilience" based on its fickleness.

This also meant that not much work could get done and most of our team was without power for most of the day. We also woke up to a powerless Sietch and things only started to get back to normal for us before lunch. And this was already considering that we live in a place like BGC - other parts of Metro Manila weren't so fortunate. On that note, I'm thankful that we decided to move here despite the higher cost of living and other nuances of living here.

I'm frustrated that it feels that this typhoon caught many of us by surprise. And I'm the sort of person who invests time into actually reading the news on a regular basis. How did I miss the discussions related to the weather? Was I that busy this week that it didn't blip on my radar? As much as I also feel the government didn't quite put as much effort into preparation (as usual?), all the more I feel the greater onus rests on the individual's shoulders. Until the government can consistently demonstrate good disaster preparedness for crises like these, then we need to be sure to help protect ourselves and those we love.

In the end, this is just me trying to assert order over what I can control versus just getting mad about everything else that's beyond me. Fingers crossed at this point.

Stay safe, limited readers. 

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