Pathetic

I wanted to write this a few weeks ago. I'm only writing it now because I've got more perspective on it. Here we go.

I think it's pathetic that I actually put money over personal safety.

The story goes like this, during the heavy monsoon rains I mostly rode with my mom when I went to work. The reason is my wife didn't have work during the rains because she's a preschool teacher. The day after the government cancelled all work, both private and government, the rains were still pretty bad.

I had heard from an office mate that his wife was saying that some private offices had cancelled work already. The office where my mother worked was also sending home their employees.

So what happened at work? Well, they just announced that everyone was encouraged to go home once work ended. No early dismissals. Just go home as soon as work ends. And I almost followed it. That wasn't the bad part.

I was rationalizing with myself that it was okay to lose one to two hours of my salary just to go home early and avoid the rush hour traffic. Crazy, in hindsight. Anyway, personal safety won. I left work early, with the approval of my director and my producer.

What happened after that? Almost everyone in the office went under time like me. When they saw that going under time, with permission, was allowed everyone went home. Or at least almost everyone. I guess they were just waiting for someone to go home early for them to realize that they could do the same too.

So in hindsight, I thought my actions were pathetic. I didn't even consider my personal safety, just because I didn't want to lose a few hundred pesos of salary. That's something I realized was just wrong. Always, always put personal safety above almost all else.

Out.

Flooding

I was fortunate enough to not be in the Philippines when Ondoy hit a few years ago. The flooding was bad, and my family was fortunate enough that our house was not affected by the flooding.

Last week though we experienced worse conditions than Ondoy. Lots of places were heavily flooded, school was cancelled for almost a whole week. Work was cancelled for a day. And here's the kicker: It wasn't a storm that caused the flooding this time. It was monsoon rains, being pulled into Luzon by a storm that was already in China.

That storm in China came from the Philippines. When it was here in the Philippines the results weren't as bad as when it left. And that was scary.

I just hope that the events that happened will open more eyes for everyone to start doing something to unify the nation, clean up the environment, and avoid another set of flooding.

Out.