We beg to differ.
Metro Manila is, by its very nature, a city vulnerable to flooding. Yet it has grown and developed into a monstrous megalopolis that, today, teeters on the brink of catastrophic failure. Manila is bisected by the Pasig River into which connect a system of natural waterways that both feed into it and absorb excess water…
When former President Gloria Arroyo (GMA) was in power, people were quick to blame her government for what happened during the flooding brought about by typhoon Ondoy in September 2009. Yes, her government could have done more to prevent the flooding but the deluge brought forth by the rains induced by the storm that caused…
Read More “Is PNoy to blame for the recent flooding in Luzon?” »
The virtue of ‘resilience’ has become a dirty word now in the Philippines as third-time unlucky Manila is again hit by another one of those “one-in-one-hundred” calamities that were once the key statistical notion underpinning urban planners’ archaic flood “control” master plans. Although response to the disaster has “improved”, the feel-good rhetoric around Filipinos’ cockroach-like…
Read More “Metro Manila a candidate for urban ‘catastrophic failure’ according to policy expert” »
“Filipinos are very adaptable.†“Even storms can’t deter their will to survive.†“I’m so proud to be a Filipino.†“Baha ka lang, Pilipino ako.†(You’re only a flood; I’m a Filipino.) The torrent of praises aimed towards Filipinos isn’t likely to end after braving fierce winds of the southwest monsoon that ravaged the Philippines these…
Read More “Rainy season proves Filipinos are stuck in a time loop” »
In another one of its infomercial articles that it would like to pass off to the average sucker as a news “report”, ABS-CBN trumpeted another one of those dubious “achievements” Filipinos owe mainly to their enormous population — our undisputed place in the global scheme of things as the “social media capital of the world”….
Read More “Social Media and Big Telco emerge as Filipino heroes” »
Haring habagat – this is the name that some people on Facebook are throwing around to call the latest series of torrential rains that has besieged Metro Manila. Habagat refers to the southwest monsoon experienced by the Philippines every year. The total volume of rainfall from this incidence has seemingly exceeded that of Ondoy in…
Seriously, does President Benigno Simeon ‘BS’ Aquino III always have to wear yellow? Even while on relief visits to flood-affected areas in time of disaster? kelangan ba naka yellow talaga pag pupunta sa flood affected areas? kelangan ba may media muna bago umpisahan magbigay ng relief operations? [Photo and preceding caption courtesy Showbiz Government.] tumabi-tabi…
Read More “PNoy should ditch yellow and start wearing neutral colors” »
According to Mark McDonald in a New York Times blog post, the recent floods that hit Metro Manila this week “seem to have caused little public anger over further municipal dysfunction in the densely populated capital of more than 10 million” and that, instead, “Filipinos demonstrated a remarkable civic spirit as they shared news of…
Read More “Metro Manila had long ago set itself up for its own destruction by flooding” »