When it rains, it pours... and floods

First, the lights went out. Second, phone signal went zero. Next thing I knew, flood was entering my room, making my bed the 7,108th island of the Philippine archipelago. This was the situation we had here in Manila due to the typhoon Undoy. To add to that, streets were heavily flooded up to the mid-thigh level. I was about to go to duty that time. In fact, I was very determined to go to school that I even braved to walk the streets of Dapitan with some hesitations since I remembered the different parasites that Ms.Albano, one of my Microbiology and Parasitology professors discussed a week earlier. I forgot the metacariae and the other specific details but one thing that stuck my memory is that some worms can penetrate the skin even without open lesions. Drat! I don’t even know how to differentiate a Cestode from a Trematode. Nevertheless, I still played Spiderman while walking on the gutters to avoid the waters. At some point, it seems like being in a game, Super Mario Bro’s to be exact. Should you fall to the murky waters, the game is over.

I could just imagine UST at this circumstance, making the mythical city, Atlantis appear before our own very eyes with my stranded classmates and professors as its inhabitants. Living together, sharing the same food, sleeping together, who wouldn’t fall for that?

Fast track the next uneventful hours I spent reading about Community Health and Obstetrics… and the lights were up. Phone signal came soon after. TV was opened, saw Kristine Reyes at the roof of her house, Boy Abunda and Kris Aquino announcing several addresses in Taguig, Cainta, and Pasig that need rescuing, Piolo Pascual and KC Concepcion plugging their new soap, politicians un/sincerely doing their “kawang gawa”, companies then and there donating goods and pledging monetary contributions. Serving either for personal gain or not, these companies and politicians still are some of the things we have to be thankful for.

I think the message is now very apparent to us. We have to save the environment, practice proper waste disposal and segregation, use biodegradable materials, and maintain cleanliness and sanitation. Very grade 1 isn’t it?