if someone named you 'Ondoy' you'd probably get mad too

September 26, 2009.
Ondoy came to town. Furious.

Like someone on the receiving end of a bad haircut. Like the boy named Sue. Like a man whom someone just named Ondoy. (The international code name is Ketsana but there is a group in the Philippines whose job is to come up with another name for it. These people obviously have a lot of time on their hands.)

Rolled everything in it's path. Opened the skies wide and poured drums of water. A month's worth of torrential rain came rushing down in six hours. Flashfloods, the likes of which the area has never seen before, literally flushed the shi* out of metro Manila and beyond.

It extinguished lives and devastated many more. It exposed the government's mechanism for immediate response and rescue in such a calamity - basically none.

(Later, the government group responsible for such actions came up with the song and dance that their responsibility, and capability I assume, lies in the wake of the storm- the distribution of relief goods, primarily noodles. NDCC stands for Noodles Distribution Committee following a Catastrophe.)

We have to remember this: With all the things we do to it, with all the abuse and affronts we keep throwing at it with impunity, and all the warnings that go unheeded, once in a while comes nature's turn.