To make up for the days I could have posted but didn't get to because of the typhoon, power outage and homework, I'll be posting about what happened this week involving typhoon Milenyo.

I got home this Wednesday (late, as usual) to print out my EnviSci reports for the next day and to review a little for the coming long tests. At the door, I saw that the news was already on, showing something about a typhoon coming. Big deal. It's been raining hard for a while here, so it might not affect us that much. I just continued inside and saw my sisters slacking off, when they should have been doing homework. They said that typhoon Milenyo, a supertyphoon, was coming and that there were no classes. Yay. I forgot about doing all that work and went to sleep.

The next morning was pretty cold. Did the usual thing and got started on my homework. Alas, the electricity got cut off at around 11. Now all we did was watch as the coconut trees swayed to the very strong winds the whole day. We heard some trees falling on roofs, branches dropping on the chickens and the dog. Not much to do except to sleep, watch the chaos, sleep, then watch the chaos--in the dark.

There was electricity the next morning and most of the storm was over. What a way to start your birthday after all that trouble the day before. I went outside to see the glorious outdoors I missed for a day. Wow, the street was all green. Lots of trees fell on the street, all the banana plants were bent. I saw the cable that was disconnected during the storm and caused the blackout in our street. I heard from classmates that lots of them still don't have electricity. We also went out that day to see most of the city without electricity, lots of streetlights, posts and even billboards were blown down.That was probably the worst condition I've seen Metro Manila in after a typhoon.

News about Manila being in a state of calamity was really new to me. I thought that this location would never be as badly affected by a typhoon as the other "storm-prone". Such a metro we thought was very mighty was thrown into chaos after being passed by Milenyo for a few hours.

I think there was a lot to learn from this.

• What goes up must come down.
  
• Preparation for a storm is key.
  
• Be thankful.
  
• If you weren't so fortunate, be hopeful.
  
• Try to finish your homework before something unexpected happens. No, seriously.
  
• Gray doesn't know how to conclude posts.
  

Hope everyone is still intact, in one way or another.