earthshaking, heartshaking

i can’t blame PUP for sending students home after calls from panicky parents and guardians, never mind that the radiation scare being relayed via texts and twitter are said to be baseless because the wind is moving away from us, or so ricky carandang says.   but what if the wind changes course, as is known to happen occasionally.

in times like these, of devastating earthquakes and damaged nuclear facilities in japan, and it’s impossible to know exactly what is happening and there’s a sense that we aren’t being told everything, parents are well within their rights to want their kids home with them, just in case.   not that home would be absolutely safer than school, but being together in scary times is less aggravating than being apart.

and really, i doubt that parents are panicking just over the radiation scare.   it’s only one layer on top of deeper fears of a long-overdue earthquake striking here, where we’ve been building on top of the marikina valley fault that runs through metromanila, when we’re so unprepared and can only think as far as emergency kits, if we have the money for it.   the only thing going for us, we now see, is that we don’t have a functioning nuclear plant, consuelo de bobo.