Homeless Diver

Almost came and sat right on top of us. Wind speed estimates were from 90 to 120 km/hr. I dont think anyone actually recorded it here in Boracay.

Apparently Fengshen means “God of Wind” in Chinese…which is odd and retarded at the same time. This wasn’t a Chinese storm and only hit Hong Kong after is settled down (as expected). And really, God of Wind? Yes, it was a lot of wind……thats normally the idea behind typhoons….its windy. I’m not knocking the Chinese, but how did they come up with this for the name? ahhhhhh….I found the answer:

http://www.pagasa.dost.gov.ph/genmet/rpnames.html and http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/jma-eng/jma-center/rsmc-hp-pub-eg/tyname.html

These names are preselected in advance and they just go down the list as the storms occur. I had not known this. The first list is for use within the Philippines only. I have no idea why they’re the only Asian country to be so obtuse about what they’re calling it - and theirs was “Frank”. Everyone else is all one the same list, which is the second link. If they had made it to 25 storms last year, the Philippines would have named it…hehe…. “ZigZag”. BWHAHAHHA!!!!! I love it, a typhoon named after rolling papers!

The main Asian list has words/names donated from most countries that touch the Pacific basin. Next one will be Kalmaegi meaning ‘Sea Gull’ donated by DRP Korea. but the USA has some entries I dont get…

I had to look this up…what the hell is a Chamorro? It seems they’re the natives of Guam. Apparently, theres a huge anti-american wave going thru there. I mean, look up their web sites…seems like they truly and utterly hate the Americans.  I dunno why we would submit their names, must’ve been a PR move.

Palau is not even an American territory, its independent.  How did the USA manage to submit those words under its name? Thats like Texas claiming a polar bear as its official animal.

Aere is Latin….and it does NOT mean storm, (that would be ‘tempest’). Its just a general Latin term for ‘air’. Oddly enough, I found a lot of references that it IS the Marshallese word for storm. What are the odds of a pacific native language having a word in general common with Latin?

“…the vessel carried 724 passengers, 111 crewmembers, and 26 sanitary aides.”

What is a sanitary aide? Is it a health care professional or a janitor? And why the term ‘aide’, are they not actually qualified in this field?  Who are they aiding, the crewmembers?  That would make 111 supervisors for 26 staffers..on a ferry that sank in Typhoon Fengshen.

I’m going to assume these are some form of health care people but it still leaves me wondering why the requirement to have so many and not even properly trained ones at that. 26 for only 800 people seems like a lot. Are they transporting a leper colony? Just how sickly are these passengers? Obviously they’re not regularly trained medical personnel or they would not be using the terms ’sanitary’ or ‘aide’. So we now have 26 people who generally can clean up human bio waste and generally keep it from like being the below-deck hold of a 1700’s slave ship. I think. Generally.

When I think of the term aide, I think of a subordinate staffer. But then again, whenever I think of the term sanitary, it’s always followed by the word ‘napkin’.

I’m not making light of this but it was odd to see this combination of words in an article about the Ferry search being halted because of toxic pesticides that werent ever supposed to be on a passenger boat:

A handful were positively identified by clothes, scars and jewellery [sic], including a policeman who was returning from Manila on the ferry after processing his retirement papers.

Wearing face-masks, relatives wept. Some fainted and vomited, at what they saw. One of the bodies, a female, was clutching a headless baby to her chest.

Across the street, music blared from karaoke bars.

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