White Hair Chronicles XI - Ondoy (Ketsana) and The Age of Stupid

I just watched "The Age of Stupid" last September 24. It is a documentary/ futuristic take on climate change that is more engrossing than Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth". And then on September 26, it was as if it actually happened. Typhoon Ondoy (Ketsana) poured torrents onto a hapless Metro Manila, deluging us without relent for 6 hours, resulting to the worst floods (I've seen many) I've experienced. This is the age of stupid and we have to learn fast.

I was about to leave early that Saturday morning. But the street was already flooded so I decided to stay home. My son, who was going to attend make-up classes, forgot to bring his lunch money and came back. It turned out to be wise decision. By 11:00 am the water on the street was already waist-deep, and the rains never let up.

My neighbor has moved by then his brand new Pajero to an elevated driveway in the barangay hall across my house. Flood water continued to rise and swiftly crept to the wheels of the Pajero. It was too late to move it to higher grounds because that would mean passing thru already chest deep floods. All the owner could hope for was for the flood to remain at that level.

By noon, the water is already around 8 ft high. And the current was strong. This flood is like no other that I've seen. Whereas before, the flood waters would slowly rise and then ebb, but not flow, as if it was slowly drained out. But this time, the water current was strong enough to move stranded vehicles.

By 2:00 pm, water has started to seep in the second floor of my house. We vainly tried to stack things on top of the tables. The water then was around 12-13 ft. When the flood reached electric outlets, we decided to move next door, where my mother lives. Her portion of the house has an attic, perhaps the floods won't reach us there.

Power was cut off. It was getting dark fast. We had to be rescued quickly before total darkness sets in. But help won't come soon.

Some brave souls decided to use an air bed to take us out of the house. It was around 5:00 pm. We had to go by batches. The first to go were my mom and the kids - my sons and nieces, then ladies - my wife and sister-in-laws. My brother and I carried them piggy back style. But going from the attic to the door meant wading through cold, murky, chest-deep floods, while pushing away floating tables, chairs, TVs, monitors, etc. in near total darkness. And in the little moonlight aided by a tiny penlight, I could see that there were snakes. They were around 10-12 inches long and just about a little finger in diameter, nevertheless, they were scary. I managed to grab a floating plastic flute recorder and swatted away the snakes. I hit around four snakes. It was crazy. This typhoon would put to shame any Hollywood special effects movie.

My brother and I and a neighbor were the last to leave. On the airbed, the rescuers deftly tried to veer away from sharp and pointed edges of the roofs we passed. The flood was already at roof level. They had tied lifelines on the posts. We tugged on the lifelines towards the direction of the higher ground, against the swift current. We passed several houses with people on the roofs begging to be let on the airbed too. But we were already five people on a 5'x6'x8" airbed. And we couldn't risk the airbed getting nicked by the galvanized roof sheets and us sinking to the rushing 15 foot-deep flood waters. After what seemed an eternity, we finally reached higher ground. I was gnashing and gritting my teeth. Perhaps from the cold, perhaps from anger. What stupid thing have we done to deserve this. It was only 7:00pm. It's going to be a long night.

We stayed at my brother's house in the next barangay. My sister-in-law's family is such a nice family. They gladly clothed and fed us. The kids were in high spirits despite the ordeal they just went through. We were thankful we survived. Fatigue and biting cold were not a concern. We were concerned about the others on the roofs we passed by. We were sure many, many more were in far worse condition.

By Sunday morning, the water was gone. It was only then that I discovered that a portion of our adobe wall had collapsed towards the vacant lot next to us. The snakes surely came from that lot. The great flood is over but the cleanup has yet to begin.

It was at that time that I felt I aged a lot overnight. I was soaked in flood waters for a long time, but I felt shriveled, humiliated, and puny against Ondoy.

I am in the age of stupid.

White Hair Chronicles X - Seems like only yesterday...

from an email.

Seems like only yesterday...
BARBIE DOLL has her 50th birthday this year.......

Tweety Bird is 60 years old!

And what about all our other ....

CHILDHOOD

SUPERHEROES?

SUPERMAN

Thor

Wonder Woman (touch of menopause here I think?)

Batman and Robin

SPIDERMAN

"Life is short, break the rules, forgive sooner, love with true love, laugh without control and always keep smiling.

Maybe life is not the party that we were expecting, but in the mean time, we're here and we can still dance....."

Growing old is not for whimps.....Jock Smith & Bette Davis

White Hair Chronicles IX - COBOL is 50

We mark this month the 50th year of the COBOL language. COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language) is one of the oldest programming language. It is also the first computer language I learned. I had to study it back in college. We used punched cards then for our programs that run on big-double-cabinet sized computers at the university.

According to Wikipedia, a specification for COBOL was initially designed by Grace Hopper. Committees were set up to recommend an approach to a common business language. On September 18, 1959, they decided on COBOL for the name.

I also used COBOL in my job as an Operations Research analyst, though I didn't use punch cards anymore, I typed directly on to dumb terminals of a ref-sized mainframe. That mainframe, which had a 90 MB hard disk (yes that's right 90 megabytes) that took half-day to format. There were no defragment tools then. But it also had a BASIC (BASIC itself is 45 years old) version that can do matrix algebra. COBOL is still very much around, though largely unseen.

Those were the days. Life was so much simpler.

"Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now" - (My Back Pages-Bob Dylan)

White Hair Chronicles VIII - Ganito kami noon, ganito pa rin ngayon?

This week marks the 37th year of imposition of martial law. I was a frail, skinny kid then in a public elementary school and this weekend I will be meeting again with some classmates from those days, some I have not seen in 35 years. They will find me still frail and skinny and still a kid at heart.

I remember waking up and being told that were no classes that day, September 23, 1972, a Friday I think. We were not allowed to go out and check with our schoolmates/ neighbors. The streets were deserted anyway. No one knew what was going on. There were bombings and rallies going on the past weeks. Talks were rife that classes will be suspended until the end of the schoolyear. We were initially overjoyed but got immediately terrified when told that we may have to repeat the grade when school reopens.

The TV channels were cut off. When Marcos appeared on-screen with his "I hereby declare" speech, people confirmed what was whispered in hush-hush tones. After which, only one channel operated and all it showed was Maribeth Bichara gyrating in skimpy clothes, alternating with Sahlee Quizon and Sonny Cortez singing something about sugar.

I'm sure my classmates can fill up my fading memories of how things were. These days we also have insurgency, bombings, journalists/activists missing/getting killed, corruption, military in the bureaucracy, poverty, efforts to change the charter, and more recently spying on the academe. Jun Cruz Reyes was my Filipino literature instructor in high school while Bien Lumbera was my professor in Pilipino 41 (an elective course - Critical Thinking) in college.

Alex Magno refuses to see the parallels between the situation then and now. But Winnie Monsod believes we are still haunted by Marcos' martial law, enumerating the problems that hound us up to this day.

While Alex Magno insists that dictatorship is impossible at this time, it is not dictatorship per se that bothers us. It is the damage being done to the institutions just to perpetuate oneself in power. It is to that that we say never again.

Pacquiao will have a tough time versus Mayweather

As I expected, Mayweather ran roughshod over Marquez. The Pretty Boy was simply much faster, sleeker, and mas magulang. And the fellow who gave Pacquiao fits in their two fights had no answer to the bigger Mayweather. The easy Mayweather win was an impressive fight for the two boxers. It was not boring at all, despite the virtual shutout.

So, how will Pacquiao fare against Mayweather? Marquez lost two controversial fights against Pacquiao. They fought on the same weight classes over the years, although Pacquiao started out much smaller. But Marquez was able to hold his own against Pacman. Against the naturally bigger Mayweather, the story was drastically different. They were in different fighting classes.

I have to give props to Marquez. He tried to make a go of it. But his best was not enough. Mayweather can rightfully claim to be the best fighter of all time. But not necessarily the most endearing or the most exciting. He can beat them all. Period.

If Pacquiao fights Mayweather, Pacman must be wary of the left hook. And he must counter with his own left or upper. In short he must be perfect on that night. Then he will have a chance.

In the meantime, Pac's corner will have to consider not letting Cotto get too much weight advantage over their fighter. In this fight, Mayweather visibly outweighed Marquez by more than 10 lbs. Manny, for his part, should start training seriously. With everything else equal, a good natural welterweight will always beat a good natural featherweight, as Marquez learned tonight. A superb training regimen/ discipline for this fight will make the difference for our pambansang kamao. For all Filipinos' sake, all showbiz/politician leeches, this goes to his network too, tantanan niyo muna si Pacman. Train in Batanes, for pete's sake.