This afternoon I spent some time depositing my monthly check to myself at the bank (yes, you can write a check to yourself and deposit it in a bank account in the Philippines … it’s easy and it’s cheap … hard to believe how many people search here every month looking for information on that subject, but I am happy to furnish it.
I took out pesos and made sure there was plenty food and water as well because Pepeng. Palmas is coming and I don’t like the look of things at all … nor do I like the sound of a downpour I’m listening to through my open windows right now, either.
I spent some time at lunch watching a live cabinet meeting in a makeshift office in Cainta, metro Manila, chaired by the president herself. Very instructive, actually, as you would never see anything like that in the US, live and unedited. Also interesting to see how many presidential hopefuls who normally never miss a chance for free TV time …but since the President was demanding answers of those she addressed question to, and most of these pretty boys think that your qualification for the presidency revolves around how your father died and what color shirt you wear, a few were conspicuously absent. Explaining pictures like this one are more difficult than chanting slogans.
Noteworthy were senator Dick Gordon, head of the Philippine Red Cross among other tough jobs (but not yet an official candidate) and Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro Jr. …. who had plenty opportunity to toot his own horn for the excellent work his AFP forces have been doing, but actually had very little to say … not very impressive in the leadership department.
The President looked very presidential, although very tired and run down. She was actually working from a written agenda, which I noted virtually no one else bothered to have with them .. since she kept using the agenda and steering each speaker along the meeting didn’t deteriorate in to the usual Congressional hearing style blather group where people start reciting the wrongs that were done to their grandfather by some else’s grandfather … the Hatfield’s and the McCoy’s were rank amateurs at having a family feuds compared to the family feuds here in the Philippines.
Anyway, the weather picture right now looks like this:
MANILA (Reuters) – The Philippines declared a nationwide state of calamity on Friday as a "super typhoon" bore down days after flash floods killed nearly 300 people in and around Manila.
Typhoon Parma, 180 km (110 miles) northeast of the island of Catanduanes in the central Philippines, was gaining strength as it churned west-northwest toward the Luzon mainland, bringing heavy rain.
It was expected to make landfall near the northeastern province of Isabela on Saturday. The area is mountainous and not heavily populated, but Parma was likely to lash Luzon with rain over the next two days, making life worse in flood-hit regions…. full article on more Philippine floods here.
I posted up to date sites to keep track of this storm …I’m not worried abut the wends but if it hangs around as long as it predicted to the amount of original flooding could be horrendous. I also posted a direct aid to the Red Cross link a post or two back, please think about sending some help if it fits into your plans at all, believe me, tings are still a long way from recovered here in the Philippines.
Hope all is okay there today. I’ve been watching the forecast models and the GFS model seem to be more accurate for these parts. The NOGAPS model was predicting it to be closer to Manila and going towards Hongkong area. Anyway, as of 2 days ago, the GFS model revised it to not deepen on landfall. Hope that is the case. Good luck. As for here, Davao area gets very hot when a storm hits north.
Well this morning it is calm and cloudy here just north of the city. It rained off and on all night, I don’t have a rain gauge, I’d make an educated guess rgwe rainfall was about an inch. The latest track seems to show itclipping the north-east corner of Luzon and making a right turn to go east of Taiwan. The problem for Manila is the rain, being in the south-west quadrant as we are now, we could get a lot.
You certainly are in the right place in Davao. A lot of people make claims about their weather, but I’ve looked up storm tracks for more than 40 years and exactly _no_ typhoons have hit Davao … closet thing was a numbered depression that passed very close to the city more than 25 years ago and that one never grew to storm status.
Stay cool and hopefully we’ll stay dry.