Cold Stormy Mornings

Cold mornings make you appreciate the warmth more - the touch of your blanket in the morning, the smell and taste of coffee, the embrace of a friend. Sometimes, yawning and stretching feels better, answering your homework is less tedious, and there seems to be more time to do something.

Cold mornings bring back a lot of memories. It reminds me of that night during our leadership camp in Bo's Coffee Bacolod - we were stuck there since there was a typhoon and looking at it from now, everything seemed to be in slow motion - the laughing and chatting. Dim lights, sounds of the wind and rain tapping the glass wall, and the smell of coffee in the air. We were a bit wet when we got back to the hotel, but it was a night to remember.

I remember an outing with my friends back in Lian, Batangas. We were swimming in the middle of the sea (super low tide), it was sunset when typhoon clouds and lightnings chased us back to the house. Some got gashes because of the corals, but it was all good.

This is me (in red) playing in the beach with my friends.

Some people remembered their cold stormy nights above their roof with dead bodies floating because of the flood. How can anyone forget Ondoy? It gave them a personal experience of the wrath of nature. And it has stained my memory of cold stormy mornings. It ain't something that we all look forward to - it always has that tendency to get worse.

I pray that this Ondoy experience won't happen again. I'm hoping against hope, on cold stormy mornings.