Tropical Storm Ketsana/Ondoy devastates Metro Manila

Over the past few days, tropical storm Ketsana (known as Ondoy in the Philippines) has devastated the northern Philippines, with Metro Manila taking the brunt of the storm.  Manila took in 12 hours the amount of rain it usually gets during the entire month of September, more than the amount of rain that fell in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina’s height, overwhelming drains, and stranding thousands of people on roofs of houses and tops of buses. While an official body count has been at around 100 all over the Philippines, the exact number might not be known due to the millions of people who live in  slums around Manila.

If you want to donate to the ongoing relief work caused by the storm, check out this blog post by the Age of Brillig, which lists ways to donate directly to the Philippine Red Cross.

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About Efren

Efren is a 30-something queer Filipino American guy living in San Francisco. In the past, he was a wanna-be academic even teaching in Asian American studies at San Francisco State, a wanna-be queer rights and HIV activist, and he used to "blog" when that meant spewing one's college student angst using a text editor on a terminal screen to write in a BBS or usenet back in the early 90s. For all his railing against the model minority myth, he's realized he's done something only a few people can claim--getting into UCSF twice, once for a PhD program in medical sociology which he left; and then for pharmacy school, where he'll be a member of the class of '13. He apologizes profusely for setting the bar unintentionally high for his cousins. blog twitter
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