Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
Lesssons Learned from Bagyong Ondoy
Ondoy is considered the worst storm that hit Metro Manila in 40 years and that it was equivalent of one month’s worth of rain falling within 6 hours. The result, landslides and raging flood reminiscent to the great biblical flood during the time of Noah. During which, not a few died, lost loved ones, their own homes and valuable properties.The factors to consider and blame are:
1. An extraordinary weather incident
2. Climate change via global warming
3. Lack of civil defense planning and vigilance; inadequate weather bulletins and alerts from PAG-ASA
4. Poor waste management. If the creeks and rivers had not been clogged, they would have allowed for released waters from the dams and floodwaters to have somehow drain faster.
5. Environment degradation
6. Wild and unregulated property development
Metro Manila settlers themselves contributed to the disaster. That is, from the plastic bags they throw into the sewers to the trash in the streets everyday. The sewers and drain systems are like veins in our body. If you feed it with junk, it will give you a heart attack.
The garbage was the doing of the common people. These were thrown into the waterways because that was the easiest and quickest way to get rid of them. The result, because the trash clogged waterways, the latter is made shallow and narrow. Eventually with the storm “Ondoy”, nature took revenge. Waterways overflowed the banks and entered the homes, yards and streets and to the very people where the garbage came from. As the trite adage says, “the trash you throw into the streams will come back to haunt you”.
While the flood was heavily accompanied by mud washed down by rain, landslide continue to occur even after the storm Ondoy. This is because there are no more roots of trees to hold the soil together. Those people responsible in cutting down the forest must have been the first to be buried alive by landslide but they are accordingly merely watching high and dry from their mansions and condos. These people who got rich by illegal logging assuage their feelings of guilt by donating some of their ill-gotten wealth to the relief organizations helping flood victims.
“We benefit more from our failures than from our successes; that crises teach us more important lessons than we can possibly learn from books and classrooms. As someone puts it, one of the things that hits you most forcibly and offers ideas of value is failure and suffering. Success and happiness give out great feelings but it is affliction that enlightens and prepare us best for the future.” -- Ramon J. Farolan, Phil. Daily Inquirer Columnist
1. An extraordinary weather incident
2. Climate change via global warming
3. Lack of civil defense planning and vigilance; inadequate weather bulletins and alerts from PAG-ASA
4. Poor waste management. If the creeks and rivers had not been clogged, they would have allowed for released waters from the dams and floodwaters to have somehow drain faster.
5. Environment degradation
6. Wild and unregulated property development
Metro Manila settlers themselves contributed to the disaster. That is, from the plastic bags they throw into the sewers to the trash in the streets everyday. The sewers and drain systems are like veins in our body. If you feed it with junk, it will give you a heart attack.
The garbage was the doing of the common people. These were thrown into the waterways because that was the easiest and quickest way to get rid of them. The result, because the trash clogged waterways, the latter is made shallow and narrow. Eventually with the storm “Ondoy”, nature took revenge. Waterways overflowed the banks and entered the homes, yards and streets and to the very people where the garbage came from. As the trite adage says, “the trash you throw into the streams will come back to haunt you”.
While the flood was heavily accompanied by mud washed down by rain, landslide continue to occur even after the storm Ondoy. This is because there are no more roots of trees to hold the soil together. Those people responsible in cutting down the forest must have been the first to be buried alive by landslide but they are accordingly merely watching high and dry from their mansions and condos. These people who got rich by illegal logging assuage their feelings of guilt by donating some of their ill-gotten wealth to the relief organizations helping flood victims.
“We benefit more from our failures than from our successes; that crises teach us more important lessons than we can possibly learn from books and classrooms. As someone puts it, one of the things that hits you most forcibly and offers ideas of value is failure and suffering. Success and happiness give out great feelings but it is affliction that enlightens and prepare us best for the future.” -- Ramon J. Farolan, Phil. Daily Inquirer Columnist
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Your Thought and Mine
Your Thought and Mine
by Kahlil Gibran
Your thought is a tree rooted deep in the soil of tradition and whose branches grow in the power of continuity. My thought is a cloud moving in the space. It turns into drops which, as they fall, form a brook that sings its way into the sea. Then it rises as vapour into the sky. Your thought is a fortress that neither gale nor the lightning can shake. My thought is a tender leaf that sways in every direction and finds pleasure in its swaying. Your thought is an ancient dogma that cannot change you nor can you change it. My thought is new, and it tests me and I test it morn and eve.
You have your thought and I have mine.
You have your thought and I have mine.
Your thought allows you to believe in the unequal contest of the strong against the weak, and in the tricking of the simple by the subtle ones. My thought creates in me the desire to till the earth with my hoe, and harvest the crops with my sickle, and build my home with stones and mortar, and weave my raiment with woollen and linen threads. Your thought urges you to marry wealth and notability. Mine commends self-reliance. Your thought advocates fame and show. Mine counsels me and implores me to cast aside notoriety and treat it like a grain of sand cast upon the shore of eternity. Your thought instils in your heart arrogance and superiority. Mine plants within me love for peace and the desire for independence. Your thought begets dreams of palaces with furniture of sandalwood studded with jewels, and beds made of twisted silk threads. My thought speaks softly in my ears, “Be clean in body and spirit even if you have nowhere to lay your head.” Your thought makes you aspire to titles and offices. Mine exhorts me to humble service.
You have your thought and I have mine.
Your thought is social science, a religious and political dictionary. Mine is simple axiom. Your thought speaks of the beautiful woman, the ugly, the virtuous, the prostitute, the intelligent, and the stupid. Mine sees in every woman a mother, a sister, or a daughter of every man. The subjects of your thought are thieves, criminals, and assassins. Mine declares that thieves are the creatures of monopoly, criminals are the offspring of tyrants, and assassins are akin to the slain. Your thought describes laws, courts, judges, punishments. Mine explains that when man makes a law, he either violates it or obeys it. If there is a basic law, we are all one before it. He who disdains the mean is himself mean. He who vaunts his scorn of the sinful vaunts his disdain of all humanity. Your thought concerns the skilled, the artist, the intellectual, the philosopher, the priest. Mine speaks of the loving and the affectionate, the sincere, the honest, the forthright, the kindly, and the martyr. Your thought advocates Judaism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. In my thought there is only one universal religion, whose varied paths are but the fingers of the loving hand of the Supreme Being. In your thought there are the rich, the poor, and the beggared. My thought holds that there are no riches but life; that we are all beggars, and no benefactor exists save life herself.
You have your thought and I have mine.
According to your thought, the greatness of nations lies in their politics, their parties, their conferences, their alliances and treaties. But mine proclaims that the importance of nations lies in work – work in the field, work in the vineyards, work with the loom, work in the tannery, work in the quarry, work in the timberyard, work in the office and in the press. Your thought holds that the glory of the nations is in their heroes. It sings the praises of Rameses, Alexander, Caesar, Hannibal, and Napoleon. But mine claims that the real heroes are Confucius, Lao-Tse, Socrates, Plato, Abi Taleb, El Gazali, Jalal Ed-din-el Roumy, Copernicus, and Pasteur. Your thought sees power in armies, cannons, battleships, submarines, aeroplanes, and poison gas. But mine asserts that power lies in reason, resolution, and truth. No matter how long the tyrant endures, he will be the loser at the end. Your thought differentiates between pragmatist and idealist, between the part and the whole, between the mystic and materialist. Mine realizes that life is one and its weights, measures and tables do not coincide with your weights, measures and tables. He whom you suppose an idealist may be a practical man.
You have your thought and I have mine.
Your thought is interested in ruins and museums, mummies and petrified objects. But mine hovers in the ever-renewed haze and clouds. Your thought is enthroned on skulls. Since you take pride in it, you glorify it too. My thought wanders in the obscure and distant valleys. Your thought trumpets while you dance. Mine prefers the anguish of death to your music and dancing. Your thought is the thought of gossip and false pleasure. Mine is the thought of him who is lost in his own country, of the alien in his own nation, of the solitary among his kinfolk and friends.
You have your thought and I have mine.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Friday, September 4, 2009
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Sand and Stone
A story tells that two friends were walking through the desert. During some point of the journey they had an argument, and one friend slapped the other one in the face. The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything, wrote in the sand: "TODAY MY BEST FRIEND SLAPPED ME IN THE FACE."
They kept on walking until they found an oasis, where they decided to take a bath. The one, who had been slapped, got stuck in the mire and started drowning, but the friend saved him. After the friend recovered from the near drowning, he wrote on a stone: "TODAY MY BEST FRIEND SAVED MY LIFE."
The friend who had slapped and saved his best friend asked him, "After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand and now, you write on a stone, why?"
The other friend replied: "When someone hurts us, we should write it down in sand where winds of forgiveness can erase it away. But, when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it in stone where no wind can ever erase it."
LEARN TO WRITE YOUR HURTS IN THE SAND, AND TO CARVE YOUR BENEFITS IN STONE
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