Coping with life’s ‘eruptions’

By Herbert Vego

AS I was writing this yesterday, Bulusan Volcano in the Bicol province of Sorsogon was on its third day of phreatic (steam-driven) ash eruptions, affecting 2,784 families or 13,920 individuals on 2,683.40 hectares of agricultural land. Toxic gases emitting from this volcano could mix with water vapor and form acid rain, which is damaging to crops.

The month of June being a rainy month, we can only hope and pray that the eruptions would go the way of its previous phreatic eruption in December 2016, a minor one which claimed no life.

With the prices of rice and other prime commodities rising, unexpected changes in the weather could aggravate the survival problem of the less in life.

The thought of previous typhoons that had also horrified and devastated us ought to jolt us into empathizing with the Bicolanos.

It’s scary to even imagine that people who are supposed to rest on their laurels, having retired and are tired of any more work, may suddenly lose everything they have to natural disasters. Imagine a farmer who loses what could have been a bountiful rice harvest to “act of God.” He suddenly falls back to poverty – if not underground for eternal rest.

There are nevertheless ways to soften the impact of natural disasters. We have heard it said that God would not shower us with problems we can’t cope with.

Everybody has heard this saying: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

Everyone needs as little inspiration as a reminder that we have the potential to chase and hit our dreams, and rise above the harsh realities. And so this writer would like to quote a few inspirational writers:

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” – Oscar Wilde

“It’s not about how hard you can hit; it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. “—Rocky Balboa in the movie “Rocky”

“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”  – Winston Churchill

“If you are working on something that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you. “- Steve Jobs

I once wrote in this corner about losing valuable possessions to typhoon “Frank” in 2008. It made me realize that while good days give us happiness, the bad ones give us experience to learn from.

May those words be our guiding light as we dash through another season of adventure, leaving behind the sad memories of the previous year, even if we had been victims of typhoons, floods, landslides, earthquakes and other natural calamities.

It has been almost nine years since super typhoon “Yolanda” battered us with strong winds that wrecked thousands of homes and drowned thousands of people and livestock to death in November 2013. Don’t we deserve a respite from the wrath of nature?

To the religious but superstitious, each natural disaster is literally an “act of God” to punish us for all our sins.

I beg to disagree. Why blame God when it’s we who “sin” against nature? An example of such “sin” is illegal logging that depletes forest cover, consequently causing killer floods.

For the fault of a few, the innocent also get nature’s punishment.

On the positive side, we come to terms with this “punishment” as a wake-up call. It alerts us into realization that we are not owners but mere temporary custodians of the earth and all material possessions thereat.

To quote the Bible in 1 Corinthians 10:26, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.”

-oOo-

MORE POWER’S SURPRISING FB PAGE

MORE Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power), the distribution franchisee in Iloilo City, has a Facebook page.  Like any other corporation, it naturally heralds all good news about itself.

But, wait, the page is also open to critics who tend to demonize the company. To give you an example, here’s one from Allwyn D’Cunha: “What’s with you? MORE has been shutting power on and off here in housing Mandurriao! Are you planning to break all our appliances?”

More often than not, it’s not just a company employee who responds but customers who disagree.  So to Allwyn’s post, we see this rejoinder from Donald Delaon: “I don’t know how long you’ve been here. But since MORE Power took over, the service has improved dramatically. Maintenance work is necessary because of decades of neglect by previous provider.”

And so MORE Power has to post announcements to explain the causes of both expected and unexpected brownouts, which could also be attributed to problems in the transmission facilities of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP).

There was a time when we asked MORE’s president and chief operating officer, Roel Z. Castro, to comment on bashers.

“It hurts,” he said, “since we have been doing our best to upgrade our facilities in view of our five-year development plan. However, we take their criticisms as incentives for us to work harder and faster.”

Even the most minor repairs may necessitate temporary shutdown as in hot spot detection and correction, referring to monitoring measures that help prevent insulation deterioration.