A storm just passed through Luzon today. And what a storm it was! I woke up this morning to the whistling and howling of the wind outside our window! It only grew worse as the day went on, and I had to go to our gym and move our equipment off to the other side of the room, away from the windows. The wind was so strong that some of the rainwater were starting to get blown under and upwards between the jalousie glass slats.

We lost power right after lunch too. Electricity only came on around 6:30 or 7pm. Cable was out so we tuned in to news right away, and — man! I saw a small truck or bus getting blown to its side by the wind! Geez! The wind had been that strong! I know at least one guy died when a pole fell on top of his vehicle, but yeah, things were pretty hairy everywhere for a while.

Fortunately, the storm’s already blown past the Philippines and is on it’s way… where? I don’t know, and I don’t care, so long as it’s outta here!

Good thing I’m on leave for three weeks; otherwise, I’d be one of those guys stranded out on the road, regardless if I was driving an SUV or not.

I don’t know why I didn’t think of this earlier, but on a whim I started browsing for ‘filipino‘ and ‘Philippines‘ tags in wordpress.com. And what do I find? I find entries by a guy named Mike Cohen, that’s what. Tons and tons of it.

The name sounded familiar somehow, and the About page, while it did say he was a broadcast journalist, it didn’t really say much in the way of where he’d worked, etc. So I Googled him and — whoa! He’s that white guy that I’d seen surreally reporting on ABS-CBN. I say surreally, because his caucasian features were really incongruous to the station he was working in, i.e., a local news channel, which you’d expect only had Filipino-looking reporters. Anyway, after that initial shock had worn off, it was funny watching him exchange pleasantries with the other news anchors in the channel.

I don’t really follow local news much. I got sick a long time ago, of all the political this and political that going on every day. I’d only seen the guy on TV a couple of times.

But.

I find his blog interesting. I’m not really much into journalism; if I write, I’m more interested in writing fiction. Still, I’d like to read this guy’s perspective on local news and the Philippines in general. He doesn’t strike me as one of those activist types who are blindly anti-government and pro-poor (or even blindly pro-government, for that matter). Anyway, whatever — I’m adding his blog to my blogroll, if only to bookmark it for easy reach.

Which reminds me — I’ve come across other blogs that I find interesting and would like to add to my roll. Will do those later… but only after I put some kind of disclaimer to my own personal blogroll rules.