AVI BINUR: MERCY GATE בָּרוּךְ הַשֵׁם

||If you commit a crime here,|| Mayor Agsunod says wryly, glancing toward the rough seas outside his office window, ||there’s nowhere to run.||

Laurel Fantauzzo: The water buffalo was out. He taught Ibay to look daily toward the promontory called Disiay south of Uyugan, where the island’s main throughway, National Road, wrapped around a cliff. If a lone water buffalo looked out from Disiay over the water — forgetting, for a time, its grazing and its herd — a destructive typhoon was on its way to Batanes, one that would require the islanders’ best preparation.

Walang ligaya sa lupa na hindi dinilig ng luha.

Filipino Proverb: There is no earthly bliss not watered by tears.

Bnei Lot are of an ancient origin. In the migratory tradition of Ruth begun more than two millennia ago, a remnant of David and Solomon migrated into Maritime Southeast Asia which comprises what is now Brunei, East Timor, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, The Philippines, and Singapore, as well as Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, with a sizeable minority of Malays migrating back to their tribal allotments in Sephardic Judah, besides Terrestrial and Figurative Jordan.