All posts tagged: metro manila

Metro Manila Flood August 9, 2026

‘Bad Weather’ Is a Luxury Word

Somewhere in Metro Manila this morning, someone is posting a photo of coffee by the window, captioned with some version of ang ganda ng weather, sana all pahinga. Not far from that window, a family in Rizal is arranging a wake for someone the floodwater took over the weekend. Somewhere else — Benguet, maybe, or a low-lying barangay along the Marikina — people are standing on a roof right now, watching the water climb, waiting for a rescue boat that hasn’t come yet. I’m not writing this as either of those people. I’m the guy in between — the one who got mildly, expensively, embarrassingly inconvenienced last night trying to get home, and who’s uncomfortable enough about that to actually sit with why. The Weather Is Not the Same Weather for Everyone Here’s the thing about a red rainfall warning: it describes rainfall, not risk. On paper, everyone under it gets the same millimeters. In practice, “bad weather” means a cancelled outdoor lunch for one person and a flooded sari-sari store for another, sometimes on …

Cubao Expo, Metro Manila, Philippines

Cubao: Where the Philippines Meets Itself

There’s an old saying that as long as you can find your way to Cubao, you’ll never truly be lost in the Philippines. Everyone, it seems, passes through here eventually. Fold a map of the country in half, and the crease lands almost exactly on this stretch of Quezon City. The Machine at the Center Cubao isn’t just a junction where two train lines cross. It’s the country’s clearing house — a place where buses from the Cordillera mountains idle beside long-haul liners from the south, while jeepneys from the eastern valleys pour their passengers straight into the diesel-thick air of the highway. Nobody really stays in Cubao. Everyone is passing through, moving fast, trying to avoid getting stuck. The whole district runs on an economy of speed: how quickly you can tap a transit card, how efficiently you can wedge yourself onto a crowded platform. It’s a system built to move millions of bodies a day — and it was never designed with anyone’s individual comfort in mind. A Reputation Earned the Hard Way …