Remember that we are in the tropics

It’s weekend already. A rainy weekend in fact and it seems that the cool wheather has kept most of us indoors and glued to our books, beds, computers and blogs. The sudden rise of new posts from my blogroll tells me that there’s a lot to keep me happily bloghopping for the rest of the weekend, unless some natural disaster or not-so-natural disaster like power outtage, connection loss, pc crash etc strikes me down hapless. I hope not.
Speaking of a rainy weekend, I’m beginning to wonder who makes the umbrellas most of us use nowadays. Has the makers of today’s umbrellas forgotten that we live in the tropics and much more our country is in the so-called ‘[tag]typhoon[/tag] belt’? It means that if it’s not hot and sunny, it’s cool and often times stormy here in the [tag]Philippines[/tag] from the months of June up until February. That’s nine months of wet rainy season with an average of 3-5 [tag]tropical storms[/tag] assaulting our country.

It seems however that most of the [tag]umbrellas[/tag] today were designed and built for the three months of dry and hot summer season. Small, compact, light, fragile and sometimes downright expensive; these words I use to describe the umbrellas we have today. Sure it’s a three-folds, even a four-folds with a designer’s name on it with the hefty price tag to boot. It even matches the color of your pants and fits snuggly in your clutch or pouch bag, but trust me, it would never stand up to the kind of storms that regularly visit our country during the other nine months of the year.

Just this morning when I went to school, it was raining quite heavily and winds blowing strongly, the usual wet and rainy wheather we get during this times of the year. Wala pang bagyo nyan ha. The small, light, compact, fragile and expensive designer umbrellas that come in all the various shades of the colors of the rainbow dot the streets like flowers putting on their summer blooms. Until reality bites hard with a strong gust of wind twisting, turning and flipping those umbrellas inside out. Bye-bye cool weekend attire, say hello to wet, groggy and muddy look. Sayang ang damit, sayang ang make-up, sira ang ayos ng buhok. Bad trip!

Mutters, curses and screams you’d hear from those hapless folks especially students and schoolmates of mine whom had been failed by those poorly designed umbrellas. So much for compactness, so much for the designer signature, so much for the hefty pricetag, and so much for the carefully chosen weekend get-up. Alam naman kasing malakas ang hangin at ulan, bakit yung mga ganoong klaseng payong pa ang dinala?

Really, someone in the umbrella making business should rethink their craft and go take one of their impractical umbrellas for a walk in the midst of the harsh tropical wheather of the Philippines. I’m sure new ideas would rain down upon them, literally. New ideas like how to make their umbrellas more suited for our type of climate and wheather. New ideas on how to make umbrellas real umbrellas, the kind that will get you through most of the harsh [tag]wheather[/tag] conditions in our tropical country.

Tagged as: Philippines, Tropical storms, Typhoons, Umbrellas, Weather