It’s been weeks since my last post and my conscience knows I have had a lot of time in my hands I chose to misuse, and a wealth of topics to write on besides. I have had a lot of thoughts on all the so many issues- personal to international- that hijacked my mind over the past few weeks.
For starters, the sem – my last in college, I hope – opened two weeks ago and that means I could have written about my enrolment blues, thesis troubles or for some good news- my back-to-the-dorm life after my brief stint as a boarder off-campus. I’ve also wanted to rant and rant about the pork barrel scam. For a few days, my newsfeed was like a receipt from a meatshop. Practically everyone posted a status about the pork barrel queen and her absolutely repetitive and useless answers during the senate hearing earlier this month.
The media hardly extracted any news out of the senate session when a news, terrible,terrible news wreaked havoc in the country. Supertyphoon Yolanda (International name: Haiyan) monopolized the headlines for more than a week after it left the Philippines broken and grieving. I couldn’t watch the news without tearing up. While my country has had more than her fair share of natural disasters, with typhoons striking us for more than half the year, and an earthquake destroying a beautiful city and taking the lives of my fellows just recently, it has certainly not been exempted from clouts given by the government. Corruption is so common inside the government that it’s almost expected. Many people have become so cynical that their netizen versions are practically trolls. I am greeted with bad, really bad news whenever I turn on the tv, and so are my 100 million brothers and sisters. It’s a very regrettable fact that we are no strangers to typhoons taking the lives of our people. Every time such a disaster happens, we join relief efforts, donate clothes we haven’t worn in the past year, repack goods, and try to ignore all the bashing and blaming and BVs floating around in twitter. We watch our televisions and mourn the lives lost forever and pray for the survivors. Every year, there are victims to be mourned, survivors to be comforted, tears to be cried, and yet, nothing could have prepared us for the strongest typhoon to ever make a landfall. Even now, I am still at a loss for words over what happened. (I actually rewrote that single sentence four times.) I can’t even begin to understand the enormity of the effects of that supertyphoon. I don’t even personally know a victim, and still, I cry whenever I read a survivor’s account. I just really feel a lot for my country, for my friends who have lost their homes, for my Visayan fellowmen who have lost so much.
Yesterday, for the first time since Yolanda left the country broken and bleeding, a different news flooded my newsfeed, that of Pacman’s victory. (For a while there, netizens bullied public personalities who dared to make tweets not related to Yolanda. A VJ who got married a week after Yolanda broke out was called selfish and callous and lambasted in social networking sites.) There were play by play tweets, “Good luck, Pacquiao” posts, #Pacman’s. The country rejoiced together. Many thanked Manny for uplifting the morale of the country after a national disaster. No one forgets, but for us who are still here, life goes on.
Homebound Laine 