Over the weekend residents of Florida had been in anticipation, talking about one name. Fay. She’s not one of the American Sweethearts battling for gold in the Olympics. She’s not a swimmer, neither a gymnast. In actuality she is not a person but she caught our attention- allowing us to spend our weekend in a rather different way. As you may have known by now, Fay was the name of the tropical depression that threatened the state of Florida yesterday.
For a tropical depression, she was treated as an inevitable mischief. In our household alone, Dad spent so much time monitoring the radar to see the path of the storm. And when he learned that it was actually heading towards us, we wasted no time in doing our own preparation. We installed the last four sets of hurricane shutters. We cleared the lanai from all the plants and moved them to a safer spot. The house was set for the first blow of what we thought would be the first hurricane of the year.
But as it turned out, Fay did not gain strength to become a hurricane. And the moment it reached inland, it started to swerve and direct its path northeast- sparing the northwest side of Florida including Sarasota. And at this point, Fay proved that she had what it takes to be characterized as a storm. She was unpredictable.
Okay, so Fay stood us up. What I thought would be my first hurricane experience did not come into place. But I had learned alot from this what-could-have-been experience. Another set of cultural difference among Americans and Filipinos flashed before me.
Filipinos call our severe tropical system typhoon. That’s our counterpart to the Americans’ hurricane. None of the 7,107 islands of the Philippines is exempted from the occurence of a typhoon, though some that are situated in the center of the archipelago are more fortunate than those that are exposed either on the Pacific Ocean or the China Sea side. While in the United States, The east-coast get more of the hurricane particularly the state of Florida. And since Filipinos and Floridians have already accepted this weather condition as part of their way of life, still the two vary in their approach in dealing with the calamity.
Both group enjoyed the aide of a weather forecast. In the Philippines, we have access to it over the radio or on tv when a commentator interviews an official from PAGASA (Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration). In Florida, people glued on the weather channel that shows the radar- revealing the path of the typhoon. When learning about an approaching typhoon, we Filipinos turn to God for help that we will be spared. We pray as our initial reaction and then we start doing our preparations. Americans on the other hand gather their resources up as they await for the storm. Most of them don’t really pray. As long as they have all the shutters down, all the trees cut, they are ready to face the storm.
Hurricanes, typhoons, storms or even just rain is an act of God. It cannot be stopped, but its damage can be avoided…that’s when the Americans’ prudence come in. But as it is an act of God, God itself can make it go away…thus he can make it stop. Then comes the Filipinos’ faith. And that’s when we realize that even a hurricane or a typhoon can stood us up. And in their case, there is no raincheck.
