HELP THE PEOPLE OF MANILA

Illustration by Anjo Aborlada

Manila and the National Capital Region were flooded this week due to heavy rains. Poor drainage systems and high tides combined with less care for the environment complicated the situation creating a deluge reminiscent of Typhoon Ondoy (international codenamed Ketsana) in 2009.

Please help them, help us in the Philippines.

The safest way to donate is via the Philippine National Red Cross (PNRC). By saying the safest, I mean your donations will not be used by politicians and other entities for personal gains and will directly go to the recipients without fanfare.

For details on how to donate, please follow this link: DONATE.

Frank Lurzano captures Janela Arcos Lelis rescuing their school's flag during a flood
that hits  the town of Malinao in Albay province.

You can also find other means of how to help, especially if you are an alumni of Manila schools or if you belong to an organization, by reading the details of the activities being done by schools, universities, companies and other entities here. Please follow the link: Flood PH: How Can You Help?

Photo courtesy of CNN/Getty Images

CNN/Getty Images

I HAVE LANDED!

Photo by Leo Odtuhan

Travel is little beds and cramped bathrooms. It’s old television sets and slow Internet connections. Travel is extraordinary conversations with ordinary people. It’s waiters, gas station attendants, and housekeepers becoming the most interesting people in the world. It’s churches that are compelling enough to enter. It’s McDonald’s being a luxury. It’s the realization that you may have been born in the wrong country. Travel is a smile that leads to a conversation in broken English. It’s the epiphany that pretty girls smile the same way all over the world. Travel is tipping 10% and being embraced for it. Travel is the same white T-shirt again tomorrow. Travel is accented sex after good wine and too many unfiltered cigarettes. Travel is flowing in the back of a bus with giggly strangers. It’s a street full of bearded backpackers looking down at maps. Travel is wishing for one more bite of whatever that just was. It’s the rediscovery of walking somewhere. It’s sharing a bottle of liquor on an overnight train with a new friend. Travel is “Maybe I don’t have to do it that way when I get back home.” It’s nostalgia for studying abroad that one semester. Travel is realizing that “age thirty” should be shed of its goddamn stigma.

- Nick Miller, Isn't It Pretty To Think So?

Inspired by PHL360, today I decided to make my blog a TRAVEL BLOG and should now focus on the travels I've made and will be making. 

Keep me company.