Blown Away

Image courtesy of internet surfing on flickr. Not intended to reproduce for commercial use. This was the underpass at ayala avenue (the underpass was about 15 feet deep at the bottom, including the stairs probably at least 20 feet, all underwater)

Blown away not by TNT, but typhoons...

For those of you who know me, I've been working on and off in the Philippines since Chinese New Year this year, two engagements and a load of opportunity chasing. This blog is purely personal, and about how I missed the typhoons.

I was not blown away, but nearly. The first typhoon, Ondoy in Philippines, but Ketsana globally (whoever said Filipinos do not have nicknames for everything!), hit on Sept 26, with menacing disaster. The first instance of it was the weekend when my brother's filipino maid told us her family was ok, and she was glad I was not in Manila. Then the photos started coming on in CNN on the floods in Manila, how it hit with 1 mth of rain water in one day. Sept 26th was a Saturday and my mum's birthday. Mum has blessed me that I missed the typhoon, not that I stayed a lot of weekends in Manila anyway.

The disaster which wrecked through Manila was quite real, but I was surprised by the resilience of the people. They basically shrugged it off and those who were well to do or able to volunteered and helped. When we visited our client (a telco), they shared incidences of how they mobilised on the Sunday itself. And how innovative telcos were that they helped in the best way they could by offering free load (people unable to topup in a prepaid dominant country) to the phones of those trapped. How they were able to setup mobile charging units and relief centers and call centers almost within a day. Something the government could not even do. These were brave souls who just shrugged off and told me that their family was ok, but the houses were underwater. About personal items lost in the floods. And then there were also many lives.

The second round was Typhoon Parma, labelled a supertyphoon for its wind speeds, and it started spinning to shore on Oct 2, when my big boss came down to philippines for a talk to the client. He was from Chicago, and basically I was heading off to Chicago as well on the next day on Oct 3rd, Saturday morning. He left in a haste, taking a Singapore-London-Chicago flight, which apparently left much faster. The afternoon, people were let off at 3pm, as the residents had their share of disasters and everyone left early to take their family home. The residents of fancy CBD of Makati were scurrying around buying rations!!! I wondered out of the apartment to take dinner at the shopping center given it was one of my early nights, and found most of the shops closed, light rain and many people scurrying to rush rations from the supermarket. My colleagues told me that I would likely miss the flight. I told them "have faith". I believe I could avert disaster as I have always been lucky.

Lucky I was. The typhoon slowed in the ocean and when it hit the shores it was Saturday afternoon, almost 6 hrs after my plane departed. The typhoon was also much more north, and it did wreck havoc to the northern states, and stayed for a week(!!) as a tropical depression (which I assumed brought depressing rain).

During this second typhoon, our malaysian SMS system texted the warnings. Only two of my friends sms me, concerned I was going to be trapped. Even my parents did not sms me. And of the two who sms'ed me, you know who you are - one was a colleague, and another a new friend. Thank you. I would have been blown away and nobody knows better.

I wonder, at what point does someone think about these situations, and reflect upon themselves? Is it only when they are trapped on the roof for two days or when they are two seconds to drowning. At what point do I realise, that it does not matter who or what I do, why I am in philippines, but the fact that I have many friends, family, colleagues, hold a respectable job, at what point is it that only two people bother to ask me how I am, blown away or still standing?

I am once again, caught, blown away by the simple fact that there is indeed, not much to be said about who I am, who I matter to, and that makes me, incredibly sad.