‘I hate you, Mina’text jokes circulate

26 November 2007
By Ephraim Aguilar
Inquirer Southern Luzon

LEGAZPI CITY—I hate you, Mina.

This was part of a popular text joke that circulated among Al-

bay residents yesterday after Typhoon “Mina” suddenly changed its course.

The full text joke was: “I hate you, Mina! Ano ba talaga? Saan ka ba talaga? MINA-luya, MINA-kusog, MINA-uran, MINA-paros! Ano daw kun MINA-layas ka na sana! (Where are you really, Mina? You slow down, you gain strength, you bring rains, you bring winds. What if you just go away!)”

“Mina” is a Bicol prefix added to a verb to denote an action in the present tense.

Mina was also fondly nicknamed “Ara Mina” by some residents.

When Albay folk sent text messages to radio shows to ask about the latest weather update, they would say, “Kumusta na si Mina (How is Mina)?” referring to the typhoon as if it were a person.

Coping mechanism

Dolly Laguilles, sociology professor in Bicol University here, said the text jokes were the people’s way of coping with the stress caused by preparations to avoid the typhoon’s wrath.

“You see the humor of the Filipino? It’s a good coping mechanism as long as it maintains respect toward other people,” Laguilles said.

She, however, lashed out at the comment made by a male radio announcer, who on Saturday morning compared Mina’s erratic behavior to that of a woman.

“He was saying it was typical for Typhoon Mina, just like a woman, to change her mind,” Laguilles said.

Sexual innuendo

She added that jokes were circulating through text messages that Mina could not move “dahil napapatungan pa siya ni Lando (because Lando was on top of her).”

Lando hit the Visayas before Mina did.

“It was a sexual innuendo. Women are always subjected to [this] in macho conversations,” Laguilles, a feminist, told the Inquirer in a mobile phone interview.

Although male names were now being used to name typhoons, she said, gender bias still prevailed as reflected in the sexist comments and jokes.

She added there was a need to educate people to be more gender-sensitive.

Human traits

Laguilles said it could be the “baransagan” (name-calling) culture that made it easy to associate typhoons with people.

“No mother would want to name her children Reming or Sisang,” she said.

She noted that people easily associated Typhoon Mina with Ara Mina, a popular celebrity.

But more than that, Laguilles said, typhoons were also believed to have a quality of “spontaneity” just like human beings.

She said typhoons could be associated with emotions of people who could go into a frenzy or who could get angry.

Not all that bad

Laguilles said a Bicol historian once wrote that the typhoons that frequented the Bicol peninsula were not all that bad.

She said the historian, whose name she could not recall, wrote something like this: “The Bicol region was abundantly blessed with natural wonders, God had to invent typhoons to balance everything.”