I was reading through  my tweets, when a tweet from Seussville came up. It had a quote from The Lorax, which is a classic tale of the environment by Dr. Seuss  The book was published in 1971 and featured the Lorax who “spoke for the trees” and the Once-ler who cut off all the Truffula Trees  in their town leaving it dry and desolate.

One of the more famous lines from the book went:

(image from celticsblog)

Dr. Seuss had it right on the nose.

I can’t believe Ondoy was one year ago. I remember waking up on a Saturday last year and the rain was just pouring. No one went out of the house except for Dad who had a meeting that day. Saturday turned into Sunday and the rain just never stopped. A friend MMS’ed a pic of their submerged house that’s just by Quezon Avenue and I just felt helpless. We couldn’t get out and go anywhere. Although our area wasn’t flooded the streets everywhere were.

Aside from the almost  24-hour news from the big channels I got my information from Twitter and Facebook. People were exchanging and relaying info so fast. I was relaying all these to the management team in my office. We didn’t have a solid disaster management/business continuity plan. What we prepared for then were for earthquakes and fires.

That Saturday, 2 of my teammates were stuck in the office. One was from Antipolo. She spent the night in the office but eventually she stayed at our house because she learned from her relatives that 3/4 of their house was under water.

I remember feeling a big sense of urgency and that everyone was frantic and scared but everyone rose to the challenge of helping our fellow Pinoys. Our family quickly put together several boxes of old clothes. Our dad drove to Ateneo to drop them off. I remember that my hands were shaking because I couldn’t pack fast enough.

Then when I went back to the office, news of friends and office mates living in Marikina and Antipolo with their houses and cars completely submerged in mud were the most important items in an emergency meeting. Our colleagues from other countries made a sizeable donation which our company matched and it was distributed to our officemates who needed help.

Volunteerism became the norm then. People took time off to go to shelters and relief areas to help pack and distribute items. Our own office had a relief drive and we one of our conference rooms became a repacking center.  Everyone did everything they can to help.

There were so many lessons that Ondoy taught us. I learned to be prepared and I became much  more environmentally conscious. It really takes a huge change in one’s mindset to be pro-environment. The conveniences of modern life enabled the rise of a “throw-away” culture.  We should really be aware that the things we do create ripples across our ecosystem that takes years to undo. Kawawa naman mga anak natin…

The Lorax represented that small voice inside of us that tells us to take the effort and to love and respect mother earth. We should listen to the fella, now more than ever.
How about you, what have you learned from Ondoy? What are you doing differently now because of Ondoy?

Also, I have a BIG announcement on Monday, but if you can’t wait, you might want to head over to my family’s blogs: Manila Reviews, Manila Fitness, Manila Blogs and Manila Shopaholic to see what’s in store for you for the whole month of August! (Clue: You can get to win a gadget!)

But first, here’s one more thing on my to-do list for this week:

When Ondoy struck us last year, I did a post on preparing a Go-Bag A go-bag is essentially a bag that contains all your family’s essentials that you keep in a safe place at your house so that when disaster strikes, you can grab the bag and just GO!. We have a basic go-bag in the trunk of our car but last time I checked it had 2 bags of Pee-Wee and a bottle of mineral water. Good luck naman diba It’s nothing like this:

A Kid’s survival kit from Imperative Gear (toys and coloring books included!)

Before I begin building a new go-bag for this season, one thing I want to have right now is a first aid kit. I’ve been wanting to do my own first aid kit.  Right now I’ve always been fumbling around the boxes of medicines we have in one of BDW’s drawers just to find out that we’ve run out of Biogesic!

Good thing though that some local pharma companies have done the preps themselves like this Handy Health Kit from Unilab, which has:

- 4 capsules of Alaxan FR (for body pains)
- 4 capsules of Diatabs (for diarrhea)
- 10 tablets of Biogesic (for headache or fever)
- 4 capsules of Tuseran Forte (for cough)
- 10 tablets of Decolgen (for colds/flu)
- 8 tablets of Kremil (for stomach acidity)

Of course, you can add more like Iodine, Calamine lotion, bug spray, bandages, cotton balls and other special medicines and items that your family might need. The kit comes in a cardboard box but I suggest that you transfer it to a waterproof zip-lock bag.  Zip-lock bags don’t take up too much space too.

The kit is a good start and best of all it’s just 200 pesos!!! So aside from our own supply, I’ll be buying one for my wife and his bro, my mom and dad, my other bro and our household help. Buti ng handa diba. Then maybe you can slowly build your kit so that it would look something like this:

Career!! Family First Aid kit from Well Promo

Aside from the first-aid kit, I also want to include these two in my go-bag:

Pic of the radio is from here

A wind up solar powered rechargeable radio and a squeeze flashlight! I bought a transistor radio so that we could still hear the news during blackouts but that still needs batteries (I’ll take a pic of it soon). A squeeze LED flashlight would be wonderful too since it’s self-recharging. Does anyone know where these are available locally (at sana di mahal!)

Anyway, have a safe weekend everyone!

Connect with Unilab via their website, facebook page and twitter!

Disclosure: I was invited by Unilab to take part in their health and wellness advocacy. I agreed to the partnership given that our family has been using Unilab products for the longest time now. Please know that I will not be involved in any partnership that conflicts with my own beliefs and that will compromise my family’s welfare. Thank you!

(artwork from studio mela)

For a complete list of how and where to help the survivors of Ondoy and Pepeng, please go to Bayanihan Online

To help school kids who lost all their school books and school supplies, you may support the National Bookstore Foundation’s Project Aral 2.  National Book Store also needs volunteers at the Megatent Relief Center to repack these school items. The operations will be from Monday (October 19) to Wednesday (October 21), 10 am to 12 midnight.

(click to enlarge)

You can also support  Black Pencil Project’s school supplies drive

(click to enlarge)

If you want to donate medicines, RockED Philippines has organized RockEd Relief. On Oct. 25 at 6 pm, just bring medicines to the CCP Main Ram Driveway.  Bands performing are: Sandwich, Markus Highway, Itchyworms, Pedicab, Imago, Chillitees, Peryodiko, Juan Pablo Dream,  Mozzie, Malay, Noel Cabangon, Sleepwalk Circus and many more.

I’ve also been actively tweeting relief efforts so please follow me at @manilamommy as well. See you around the net!