P-Noy rebounds in ‘Juan’ while my brod celebrates

Al S. Mendoza

GOOD job.

That sums it up.

I mean, how else can we best describe P-Noy’s performance in handling super typhoon “Juan?”

Or, in the same breadth, should we not also give the ones given the marching orders to handle “Juan” more than a pat on their shoulders?

Oh, yes, “Juan” still destroyed houses, crops and other infrastructure to the horrific tune of billions of pesos (was it P3.4 billion?).

But then, on the more grievous side of life, there wasn’t many casualties this time.  As of last count, “only” 10 perished.  And this is not to mean that life, even if only one, isn’t as precious as oxygen to humankind.

I’m only trying to stress the significance of the exceptionally high passing mark P-Noy and his men and women had scored in licking “Juan.”

Why, “Juan” had packed winds of more than 250 kph.  Definitely not only scary, but also equally terribly deadly.

The fastest I drove a car at the Fuji Speedway in Tokyo was at 200kph a while back.  And it felt like I wasn’t touching ground anymore, that I was like flying already. Real hellish!

The preparations against “Juan” ordered by P-Noy were simply awesome that the super-typhoon’s wrath, recorded in America as Category 5 – the highest ever weather disturbance – had been substantially contained.

Mainly, the swift, if not forceful, evacuation of folk directly situated on the path of “Juan” was done in almost clockwork-precision that virtually thousands of lives had been absolutely secured, mainly in Isabela, Cagayan, Pangasinan and La Union.

With proper coordination, with unselfish act, with political will, it can be done.

When it was over, when “Juan” had exited, my balikbayan-brother, Kuya Pepito, heaved a sigh of relief.

“Now, I can finally play golf,” he said.

Well, I can’t blame him if he always pines for it.

Back in his abode of 23 years in that charming place called Mississauga in Toronto, my Kuya Pepito can only play about three, four, months a year.

“It’s so cold there most times of the year you could die playing golf,” he says, recalling one terrible ordeal that had him suffer nose bleed and also see blood dripping from his ears due to freezing weather.  “Real, hot summer there only happens practically two weeks a year.”

Upon my advice, he’s been coming home now almost yearly, beginning 2005.

Told him to spend some of his money (he’s retired) here and, heeding my counsel, he has never been happier since.

I guess, that should be the paradigm shift of all Filipinos living abroad.

They should come home once a year and enjoy life in their roots, seek the company of old chums they had left behind in search of the so-called “greener pastures.”

To me, there is no “greener pasture” worth holding on to than one’s own land of birth.

How can home be “home sweet home” when we don’t live by that adage?

I can see Kuya Leonie (Galvez), if not Kuya Mario (Panoringan), smiling.

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