Sad news.

The other day while on the train to work a woman reading the paper was sitting in front of me and while she was flipping through the pages, I caught sight of one of the headlines that had “Philippines” in it. Since it’s not everyday that you see news about the Philippines on a Canadian newspaper, I immediately got curious as to what it was about. I scanned the seats beside to me see if someone had left a copy of the paper behind and luckily enough, there was one not too far from where I was sitting.

I scanned the pages until I found it… an article mentioning the ferry that capsized killing more than 700 people onboard. It mentioned that divers were knocking on the sides of the boat, listening for signs that someone inside is still alive but that they heard no sound. It’s sad that when I read something about the Philippines on the paper, it’s always something tragic. I would have preferred to read something happy about my country for a change. The capsizing of the ferry has been the talk of the town even amongst non-Filipinos here in Canada. I don’t know the specifics of what had happened except that it sunk during the typhoon but I am a little puzzled as to why it was allowed to even leave the port even though their was a typhoon warning. I mean, typhoons don’t exactly appear out of nowhere right beside a boat. It typically develops somewhere further off-shore and we typically get some form of warning in the news of an impending storm. I thought the main purpose of being warned was so we’d take precaution. Obviously, when we don’t heed warnings, we are exposing ourselves to harm.

I was doing some online reading yesterday and stumbled upon photos taken of the damage caused by Typhoon Frank in the Philippines. It showed the floods, damaged property and even some of the casualties. There was one particular photo that struck me the most.. it was a man who appeared to be distraught, asking the people around for help. The succeeding pictures were of the same man, appearing to have found his relative or a loved one’s body in the water. Even from the photos, his pain is evident and I cannot imagine what it must be like for him. I know there are a lot of Filipinos coping with the loss of a home, property and loved ones.

For a country as impoverished as the Philippines, with all the natural calamities we get and all the shortcomings and problems Filipinos experience, I am often amazed at how resilient Filipinos truly are.