Weather breaks

RAIN, rain, go away.

I remember this childhood chant when brooding skies open up these days. Squeezing inside a jeepney minutes after an early morning downpour raised the stakes in the usual dementia of reporting for work on time, I noticed how, aside from nearly interlocking passengers’ knees blocking the aisle, I had to go through a gauntlet of furled and dripping umbrellas.

Once upon a time, we referred to them as parasols. They came in summery or frothy colors because only women could be induced to carry these in their purses.

Now, even man bags are flipped open to reveal a black or neutral-colored umbrella when the skies open. Though not quite as indispensable as the mobile phone, umbrellas guarantee a livelihood beyond the assembly line.

In our neighborhood, a fellow regularly does the rounds, crying out for umbrellas to be repaired. Once, I asked him if the fee he was asking wasn’t too high, considering the flood of cheap imports.

Have you tried relying on this in windy weather? was the rejoinder.

Darn, I said to myself as I surrendered my disabled “payong” to the king of sales rap, who had already made himself comfortable by our gate, enthroned against bristling spires of recycled umbrella ribs.

The search for the longest working umbrella is, fortunately, only what’s preoccupying me these days. Remembering the flash floods that immobilized many parts of Cebu City last January, I am glad that it is not yet necessary to tote a pair of boots, a foldaway boat or complete diving gear.

I believe, though, in the daily necessity to have a plastic bag or two in my purse.

When I was a teen, my grandmother took out from her smart black purse a thin square that she shook out to become a plastic bag. With this, I was able to dump the sticky tamarind seeds I had been clutching because I ate first and looked in vain for a trash receptacle only later.

I stashed this bag holding the remnants of our fruit repast and only remembered to throw this in with the household trash when I had to empty my knapsack for a needed wash almost a year later. At least, my garbage didn’t end up on the face of a motorist, as happens when you jettison stuff out of the window of the vehicle you’re riding.

I live by my lola’s advice to always carry a disposable bag or two “in case of emergency”.

Does today qualify as one? A little rain nowadays means watching anxiously the gutters for the steady rise of waters. You walk out to the streets for lunch and kick yourself later why you didn’t just row out in a boat after a downpour makes one of those startling urban makeovers, converting a street into a lake, a dusty spectacle into a muddy obstacle.

Invest in boots, a friend advised my husband, who relocated to Manila when the skies were bright and dry. This week, we sound like a pair of bloody Englishmen, opening and closing our chats with a comment or two about the rain. A 30-minute drive from the office stretched to three hours, he reported, sounding several scales less chirpy than Kuya Kim, my favorite weather commentator.

Keep a green bag or two always in the car, I advise. You might net yourself a passing tuna or something for dinner.

In Dumaguete City last weekend, it rained and rained. I didn’t even see a puddle for motorists to swerve away from on Perdices St. or in the minor tributaries. It became even more surreal when walking into one of the quiet tree-lined streets that seamlessly blend the commercial with the residential areas, I saw children play in the afternoon drizzle.

No, they didn’t sing “Rain, rain, go away”. I still watched them for a long time.


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)



* First published in Sun.Star Cebu’s June 26, 2011 issue of the “Matamata” Sunday column

Fire or ice

IT’S back.

The best piece of news I’ve heard in days came from a much discredited source. Yet, for some peace of mind, I’m willing to believe again that the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) is right this time when it predicts the end of the dry spell.

“Scattered rainshowers and thunderstorms” is that strange amalgam of our age. Every weatherman spouts it. But camouflaged by the slickness of the professional vocabulary are vibratoes that bring more than just a fugitive memory of coolness in the time of El Nino.

According to Pagasa weather chiefs, the past days were part of the “El Nino anomaly.” In their jargon, the disturbance could be traced to the temperature, which was markedly “higher than normal” over the equatorial Pacific Ocean.

It is a state of affairs that perhaps explains why the May 27^th issue of a daily—the first one I’ve opened in weeks—reports that some journalists in Metro Manila have banded to seriously pursue weapons training.

More used to the sight of wild-eyed colleagues firing away at the misuse of prepositions and verbs, I mentally shook myself many times while staring at the photos of black-clad journalists aiming their .45 cal. pistols at cardboard cut-outs of people.

The sight of writers wielding guns may be anomalous, but not while the issue of media killings seethes. Media workers assail the government’s failure to bring the murderers to justice, there being already five journalists murdered this year.

According to reports, no one has yet been convicted for the murders of nearly 70 journalists since the overthrow of president Ferdinand Marcos.

The newly formed Association of Responsible Media (ARM) believes that the worsening situation calls for the self-protection of the media.

Yet, while agreeing that the government has been slow to respond with results, and the justice system is even slower, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) rejects the call for journalists to arm themselves.

Self-regulation in the responsible practice of the profession should curb opportunities for journalists to commit excesses. Any cause for complaints against reporters and photographers must be addressed through democratic means, not by liquidating media workers.

NUJP also believes that while the decision to arm oneself is one’s choice, the legal process should be followed.

This NUJP qualifier, on top of ARM’s formation, brings with it a shift of weather, the way changes in the temperature follow the movement of air in the atmosphere.

Twenty years ago, when I sat in a classroom, self-asphyxiating while a professor droned on about media and ethics, the idea of toting a gun as part of a day’s work was comic and tragic. The professor was killing me by increments but I got the gist of the lecture: if your reader wanted, at the end of reading your piece, to throttle rather than reason with you, then you miserably failed at communicating—and deserved whatever form of death he designed for you.

Perhaps because my professor was such a dry soul, it took me years to realize the joke. In these anomalous times, perhaps there is no joke at all.

Come June, when I face a classroom of Mass Com students, I wonder if they will see the joke at all, or just walk away, blind to journalism, aspiring only to organize events or rake in dollars in Dubai.

If the weather experts are right, the heat wave should break soon, ushering the monsoon season. We are “normally” visited by 20 cyclones a year. Will ice be better than fire? Let the rains come soon.

mayette.tabada@gmail.com or 09173226131