MANILA, Philippines – The times and places may be different but essentially, what happens is still the same, parang replay lang: It rains hard, classes are suspended, work gets disrupted, the already heavily silted drainage systems become even more clogged with trash, the streets become flooded, roads are turned into virtual water worlds, and the traffic becomes more infernal.
Living along the Pacific’s typhoon belt and plagued by an average of 20 typhoons yearly, Filipinos are used to enduring inconvenience and stress caused by nature’s wrath that now, the new normal is living a life that used to be abnormal generations ago.
And while elections are regularly held to change leaders and administrations tasked to address the country’s problems and help improve people’s lives, it appears that this sorry state of the nation would persist as there remains no effective solution to once and for all resolve nature force-triggered woes made worse by man-made disasters.
On Thursday, Gorio (Nesat) did it again or more aptly, the Filipinos – both the rulers and the governed – did it again by putting themselves into trouble as the tropical storm intensified and enhanced the rains brought by habagat (southwest monsoon).
Once more, the media churned news about the storm and its effects and captured distressful but already familiar images that seem to no longer anger many Filipinos to the point of protesting on the streets just like what they recently did during President Rodrigo Duterte’s SONA.
Below are some of the images. How will these photos make you feel? Mapapa-wow? Magagalit? Maaawa? O deadma lang?
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