It's never strange for me to receive a lot of text messages whenever it's raining hard outside. It'd be a frenzy. Someone would ask me a question, and I'd answer back, saying that I don't know the answer. Someone else would ask me the same question, and I'd give the same answer. It'd go that way for hours, a literal frenzy of questions and answers, and the only thing that happens is a larger profit for the mobile phone networks. At the same time, I'd be tuned in to the news, probably by force or by my own choosing, a little worried for myself.

And then I'd get a text message from someone in the Student Council, basically answering the questions I can't answer: there are no classes.

I don't know why exactly people ask me that question. And, all the time. I know people know I watch the news all the time. I know people call me the "block Inquirer" - well, at least Huey did - because I always updated this blog every day with whatever's happening in my little excuse for a microcosm of society. And I know I posted all those reminder bulletins during our frosh year, about links to homework and deadlines for stuff. I must be trustworthy. Perhaps I still am - I still got those questions during my first months at work, and I could only tell them that I've graduated already.

I knew this summer wasn't exactly going the way most beach bodies hoped it would go. I found myself using the umbrella at the weirdest of dates, and my new white rubber shoes have been relegated to its box. I never had an idea of how the weather is during work, though. There's headphone-induced complete isolation, made worse by my preference for foreign radio stations like this one right now. And then there's the lack of access to windows - I used to sit in front of one, and quickly determine whether it's raining badly or not. Now I've been isolated by office politics, I can't make myself turn around just to look at the window. Or, it's inconvenient.

It's funny, then, when I was browsing through Twitter and seeing all those tweets from people who are amazed at the rain. I know there's a typhoon, or two at one point, and I know the latest one is hovering somewhere on the South China Sea. But that's all I knew.

"It's raining real hard," James tweeted. I ended up looking outside, and I realized that it is raining badly - it's just five in the afternoon, but it looked like I was working overtime, or the way things usually go at work, wasting company resourced on watching stuff. And then he tweeted again: "and it's raining even harder."

And I wondered about the possibility of me, the guy who used to be updated about all these things, not knowing what exactly is happening around me. Have I been too engrossed in my work? (After all, yesterday was Allison's elimination.) Have I lost my touch? Have I just lost it? I ended up enduring two hours of traffic, expected when cars slow down because of slippery roads - stuff I learned when I went to driving school - and got home just in time to see her get eliminated again. It still broke my heart. But I digress.

Today, I woke up to my mother watching the morning news shows. Apparently the typhoon entered Luzon last night, and went through northern Luzon just as I went home. So that's why Rey was stuck in Baguio. It was that bad. And as I watched the news, I was literally staring at awe, at the fact that the clouds that formed the storm was now in the Philippine Sea. It crossed the road, and I had no idea it did.