Morning Thoughts

Woke up in the morning with drizzles, and eventually it went away. We've been having intense rains since Sunday, and I'm unaware at that time of Typhoon Maring hitting the northern part of the Philippines. I can't hardly sleep last Sunday night because of strong winds. I checked the update by the weather bureau, and we're under Typhoon Signal Number 1. I'm wondering why there's strong winds when other typhoons passed in our province, and we're placed at Signal Number 2 (or even 3), but the winds are hardly felt.

Then Monday came, the winds became stronger especially in the morning. There's heavy rain, if not torrential, which persisted for hours until it became moderate. The rain never stopped until Tuesday, when the weather is improving yet very gloomy.

I try to avoid news on TV because of large percentage of distorted reports so I turned to social media regarding the damages of the typhoon and monsoon rains. In fact, there are Noise.Cash members who are badly affected by the floods as well. There are landslides in Benguet which claimed lives, while low lying areas are submerged.

My brother sent a photo in our family group chat, and Dagupan City was flooded again. It's not rare because the city is subject to flooding but it's at its deepest this year.

That area isn't the deepest in the city, but if you are walking, you have no choice but to have your feet get wet if you have no flood protecting boots. Some areas of the city gets flooded despite the absence of rain due to high tide. Also, water from the highlands flow to the river surrounding the city and nearby towns causing floods in such areas.

My friend had sent a photo in their place and their road has been flooded too. Inside our house, minimal floods entered our house too. Gladly, we have the second floor to stay on.

Last night, one of the biggest dam in Southeast Asia, San Roque Dam, has open its gates to release some water. If not, it will cause huge destruction so they have to do it. The water releases contributed to the flooding. The said dam is located here in Pangasinan, and the water released pass through the rivers in the province.

The weather is better now, though it's intermittent. The sun peeked, while it hides behind the clouds at times. Our front yard needs to be cleaned because of the branches and leaves of our moringa tree littered over the concrete ground. Also, moss has built up over the ground surfaces so I have to brush them so no one will slip. While brushing the ground, my wife is sweeping the leaves, and splashing some water so the moss will flow into the canal.

My wife was disgruntled because of the snails killing our plants. Their teeth are extremely strong, might have the best snail dentist, that they ate some of my wife's snake plants aside from the vulnerable ones. We haven't had such enormous snails around after several years. Everything is concrete in our place, and they may be passing the drainage. My wife did everything to shoo them away but to no avail.

I am waiting that someone may sell bangus in our place because they're cheap today. Poor fish pond owners, fishes are freed from their ponds, and caught by others. In my wife's place, fishes freely swim in the flooded streets. Still, there's a need to be cautious because snakes normally go out when their habitat is submerged.

North-central towns of our province has large swamps and ponds, and aquaculture is a common livelihood. During floods, there's a possibility of income and profit loss for these owners. We actually had such business around two decades ago, but profit losses led my father to cease operation on our fish pond. There are many people happy during floods because of plenty of fishes being caught elsewhere, but the sad part goes to the pond owners.

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