Taifuu

Does it really matter that for the Japanese typhoon is a mere strong wind? Or that our word for typhoon comes from Japanese language?

For a long time, we had been naming typhoons after women, with the sexist notion that storms were like women's mind that changed and shifted direction every now and then.  The unpredictability of the storm led policy-makers to then call storms after women's name.

Our memory of storms became then a procession of women whose respective names sounded like they were coming from the gilded age of the pre-war and post-war Philippines. Elang, Reming, Sening, Ibyang, Oling. One can almost imagine them: Long-haired, their stout or thin necks guarded by panuelo, and around them a baroque display of flowers and vines.

A few years ago, there was a poll aimed at coming up with a cycle-set of names. The new listing of names partially removed the stigma about women and their so-called fickle-mindedness. A policy came with this listing: When a typhoon or storm has wrought so much destruction, the name given to that storm will be struck from the list. It is a kind of exorcism of nature.

Interestingly enough, whenever there's a strong typhoon, we think of it as the wrath of God. The great flood that came upon Metro Manila, for example, is now described as "Bangis ni Ondoy" (the Fury of Ondoy) and the "Hagupit" ni Ondoy" (the Lash of Ondoy). We blame Nature and quickly take back our words because we feel Nature has really been good.

The truth is we should be changing this discourse and start talking about how we have been cruel to Nature. That cruelty is our way of dating ourselves, or our generation not so much in the construction of our material surroundings but in its destruction.

I often wondered when I was a child what Bagyong Ugis meant? This typhoon was supposed to be a strong one. My memory of strong typhoons was that of Sening and Yoling. With those two typhoons was my memory of a weather forecasting office that could really never forecast then. And now.

Sening came one day when people thought it was a sunny day that turned overcast. There was no announcement then, or if there was, it was about a storm that changed its course, or that it was not that strong, and that it would not hit the city. Another version that came of that day was that the typhoon has veered its course and was somewhere already.