Snippets from an instant message from Mom yesterday:

[09:12] Here’s an addition to the bilin* list: KRISPY KREME DOUGHNUTS!!!

[09:12] We are expecting a super typhoon tonight.

The typhoon hit, as so many typhoons have before. I’ve never lived in a nipa hut — not for extended periods or through a typhoon, anyway. To us upper-class Filipinos living within the walls of gated subdivisions, typhoons just meant cancelled classes, a power outage, and wind and rain rattling the windows while we sat inside, eating arroz caldo and watching cartoons. (Except, perhaps, for that one time a Signal No. 3 storm flooded our swimming pool and had six year old me praying to the Mary statues at the family altar that the rising water would not flood our home and drown us all. I knew nothing about drainage and plumbing.) Within a day or two, things would be back to normal, and the scenes of destruction and loss would never touch us except as images from the nightly news.

From BBC, Talking Points on Typhoon Nanmadol/Yoyong, pictures, and more pictures. From Sassy Lawyer, her day with Typhoon Yoyong.