I’m going out today.  The coming storm may or may not head straight for Manila, but I want to be prepared, and have enough food for the family if it ever hits Manila!  

We’re expecting the stormTyphoon Pepeng – within the next few days and this is what we just saw on this site:

http://www.goes.noaa.gov/sohemi/sohemiloops/shirgmscolw.html as of 11:30 this morning, Wednesday Sept. 30. 

I hope everyone gets the chance to see this too, and be prepared for whatever happens.  We don’t want the same disaster to occur again in our country.. Please, everyone, please be prepared!  If Typhoon Pepeng moves away, Thank God, but if it doesn’t, let us all be ready! 

Philippine flood victim hailed a hero

http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/articles/20090928115327/Article/index_html

2009/09/28

MANILA: Muelmar Magallanes braved rampaging floods to save more than 30 people, but ended up sacrificing his life in a last trip to rescue a baby girl who was being swept away on a styrofoam box.

Family members and people who Magallenes saved hailed the 18-year-old construction worker on Monday a hero, as his body lay in a coffin at a makeshift evacuation centre near their destroyed Manila riverside village.

“I am going to be forever grateful to Muelmar. He gave his life for my baby. I will never forget his sacrifice,” said Menchie Penalosa, the mother of the six-month-old girl whom he carried to safety before being swept away himself.

Magallanes was at home on Saturday with his family when tropical storm Ketsana unleashed the heaviest rains in more than 40 years on the Philippine capital and surrounding areas.

At first the family, long used to heavy rains, paid little attention to the storm.

But Magallanes and his father quickly decided to evacuate the family once they realised the river 800 metres (2,600 feet) away had burst its banks.

With the help of an older brother, Magallanes tied a string around his waist and attached it one-by-one to his three younger siblings, whom he took to higher ground. Then he came back for his parents.

But Magallanes, a strong swimmer, decided to go back for neighbours trapped on rooftops.

He ended up making many trips, and eventually saved more than 30 people from drowning, witnesses and survivors said.

Tired and shivering, Magallanes was back on higher ground with his family when he heard Penalosa screaming as she and her baby were being swept away on the polystyrene box they were using in an attempt to cross the swift currents.

He dived back in after the mother and daughter, who were already a few metres away and bobbing precariously among the debris floating on the brown water.

“I didn’t know that the current was so strong. In an instant, I was under water. We were going to die,” said Penalosa, her eyes welling with tears and voice choking with emotion.

“Then this man came from nowhere and grabbed us. He took us to where the other neighbours were, and then he was gone,” Penalosa said.

Penalosa and other witnesses said an exhausted Magallanes was simply washed away amid the torrent of water.

Neighbours found his body on Sunday, along with 28 others who perished amid Manila’s epic flooding. The official death toll stands at 86 but that excludes those recovered in Magallanes’ village, called Bagong Silangan.

Standing next to his coffin, Magallanes’ parents paid tribute to their son.

“He always had a good heart,” said his father, Samuel.

“We had already been saved. But he decided to go back one last time for the girl.”

His mother, Maria Luz, wept as she described her son as incredibly brave.

“He saved so many people, but ended up not being able to save himself.” — AFP

A lot of people take jobs that they don’t like at all.  Sometimes I wonder how they can even survive a whole work day in a job they simply dislike.  It’s no fun at all.  I have always made it a point to choose work that I know I would enjoy doing, and enjoy the benefits at the end.  I can’t imagine myself doing something that I really don’t like doing.  I would surely be so miserable!

An excerpt from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet goes:

 Work is love made visible.

And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger.

And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distills a poison in the wine.

And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.

I believe that a person who doesn’t enjoy the work he does will not make a good output.  Oh, yes, it may be so-so… just fine, that’s it.  But not really something that would show that he or she definitely loved what they were doing.  When you love what you’re doing, it shows.  You become so proud of your accomplishment.  And with good accomplishments, you don’t only feel proud of yourself, you also inspire others to do their best in their own work.  It’s like a chain reaction, isn’t it?  So if you’re not enjoying your work, then that’s no place for you to be working in at all.  Get into something that you really like… or better yet.. LOVE YOUR WORK!