Philippines Today

I wonder why certain things happen just without any reason. Should we live it as it is or do something to help it, since it happens without reason I think the most practical answer would be to leave it as it is. Though some still effort to make a change even though things are difficult, believe it or not some things just take too much time and wasted a lot of a concerned citizen's effort just to change even just a bit-take note, just a bit!

Let me show to you how my country has diversified its history in just small span of time, way back forty years ago the Philippines was the leader worldwide in economic and social advancement. I know it sounds ubiquitous that it is actually before and now it is different, believe it or not how it advanced before has no reason at all too. The political system is the same, the people before even have smaller perspective than now, and technology before is even very very very backward.

A lot of foreigners are investing our lands, utilizing the advance technology of that time found in here. Many Malaysians, Singaporeans, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese, Koreans, and even whites from America went to our country to study and try to copy as far as possible the entire make-up of whatever they are observing in here. They learned something and when they come back to their motherlands they enjoy as geniuses working in a research firm for development.

I still remembered my classmate before, she was descended from her Korean grandfather and Filipina grandmother who immigrated in here in search for better life. It was evident in how "Lee" is engraved in her birth certificate, showing how good before was.

Fast forward to present, I don't know what actually happened, but we passed through several unstable conditions starting from military dictatorship of a not so cool leader to the second major protest against a president accused for plunder. Instead of maintaining a growth fast enough to cope up with fast overtaking tigers of the region. We were overtaken unnoticed and left behind just like a dog tied in a post, if only it can run freely it could have overtaken the slow tortoises.

I was very alarmed about how our country literally asked for help to developed countries as aid because of heavy flooding in the capital. Manila is far from where I live now and I think its none of our business as southerners to care of what is happening in the north when we're actually not affected by it. However, because of the very alarming news of the media right back to the capital, I think it is already 'cool' to join in.

It can be called as the series of unfortunate events. The first one brought heavy rainfall in the capital submerging almost eighty percent of the city, equal to the wrath bought by Katrina when it pass through the city of New Orleans in the United States. Some of the levees are actually so weak that even on the first hour of the rain some parts of the metropolis are already submerged in waist deep level. When the rains intensified nobody was prepared enough, there were no water, electricity, and even food by some. Since it happened in the afternoon, some are still even in school unable to go home because the streets actually turned into rivers of mud.

Heavy flooding has caused this supposed to be busy Tagalog metropolitan area useless. I can just imagine how much money is lost just in that single day. Some cities which are actually in border or may be passed by major rivers received the most damage. The cities of Marikina, Pasig, Mandaluyong, Manila, and even the business oriented Makati didn't survive. Marikina was entirely submerged, meaning the whole city itself in no longer passable due to heavy waters in its streets tracing its origin from the Marikina River.

The poorest of the poor and devastated maybe the Makati itself. For the purpose of multinationals reading this post who doesn't know what Makati is, it is the CBD of the entire Philippines. Owing its skyscraper filled skyline as a pride of its global competitiveness, Makati is considered to be 'too big to fail'. The actual area of the CBD was flooded, business stopped, and even executives can't go home and are worried.


At that single day its like the entire Philippines stopped in motion. Unfortunately it was followed by another strong storm which stayed in the Philippines for almost one week. It caused heavier flooding in the rural areas and even landslides which made a city isolated. The famous city of pines or Baguio City is entirely isolated as three roads to exit the city became impassable.

All in all, only 770 died ONLY.

I don't know what is happening right now or maybe we're cursed by god but only one thing is for sure. In a country that never changes like the Philippines, I wonder if I'll still call it as home.