pusang maganda

after the storm

the sun is shining brightly today, as if the storm that we had yesterday noon was just a dream but every broken tree and debris in every street tells me that the typhoon was real. the whole of luzon was covered in darkness, because power lines were destroyed, luckily for us at caloocan we have electricity already when I woke up this morning, but the others are not so lucky coz they are still relying on generators and candles. some roads are fortunately getting passable after the flood but too sad, death toll is increasing due to landslides. a lot of people got injured and died because of those huge billboards (those people kept on talking about how dangerous these billboards are but not doing anything bout it, maybe they will now.. but that’s too late huh). that milenyo is the worst typhoon i’ve ever experienced in my life, it’s scary seeing the strong wind coupled with the rain bashing everything on its path… i still cant believe that a wind can actually break and uproot even the most sturdy looking tree. i was actually stupid enough to go to work yesterday even though it was declared as signal no. 3 in metro manila, and i even saw the satellite image of the storm covering the entire luzon prior to the announcement, kinda scary but experiencing the actual storm is actually scarier. it actually took me an hour from buendia to paseo due to flooded street and heavy traffic!

since our office is at the 14th floor, we can see that much what’s happening outside, trees falling, roofs lifted, just across our building is the paseo carpark and the parking booth, fully cemented collapsed in a nearby parked car, i pity whoever owns that car, and some of my officemates even saw a van toppled at valero street. you can hear the howling of the wind and it seems that our windows will break because of its strength. it was lunch time when the eye of the storm crosses metro manila, getting hungry, gina and i bravely went down to buy some food, at the ground floor, we’re like oh my god, it’s even scarier outside but that didn’t deter us going out since we’re really hungry, we opted to go to henlin since it’s the nearest just around the corner, but it was closed when we get there. no power, no nothing… what’s worse is that we even thought we’ll gonna die out there coz this strong wind just blew just when we we’re at the corner and our umbrella was turned upside down (so much for thinking that it was strong coz it was big) i even thought it will carry the two us down the road along with this huge chunk of tree that fell on the ground and got strewn right in the middle of the road. no choice but to go back to our building where it’s much safer, hungry and all and we just got ourselves wet.

back at the office, we learned that somehow, some of the windows got opened by the wind and a couple of rooms got beaten, one room’s ceiling even fell. anyways, with all the excitement that’s going on, we’re still hungry and the fear made us more hungry. since, it’s a desperate time, we took on desperate action, we actually raid the ref and check out what can be eaten, I even got a can of coke hahaha, we managed to eat leftover rice, tuna, and ate betsy’s tocino. empty stomach problem, solved!

next to our worries is how to get home, hr already declared halfday but we got work to do and a deadline to beat, why do i have to be so damned concerned, why oh why… anyways I stayed up till 4pm, monitoring what’s happening to the outside world through online radio, people were stranded, so i also figured better stay at the office and wait till the flood at least subside. figured I’d rather be home just in case it get worse again, finally decided to pack up and plan which route to take just in case. Darn, darn darn, why is it I don’t have my own car, anyways I’m pretty sure i will only get stuck in the rain if I have car anyways. the president of our company offered his home just in case we got stuck but I wish he just offered us a car and a driver (but that’s wishful thinking hehe). outside, the strong wind has stopped but it’s still raining and it seems to me that almost all the trees fell, actually the newly opened coffee bean store’s window got broken, and the park near pse looks like Jurassic park, it’s a mess…, luckily I was able to get a ride from pse to buendia but omg it took us more than an hour to reached buendia and I was getting hungry again. At buendia, I immediately crossed the street and bought bacon mushroom melt (yummy) at wendys for fear that it would take me another hour before I get home since the lrt is not operational as well. good thing there is this abad santos route fx and he just asked for 40pesos. we traveled along roxas boulevard and only one lane was passable since most of the trees fell of the road… it was too dark actually to see the extent of the damage… good thing there’s no traffic and it seems all the people are already home. so i got home safely but there’s no electricity, not much to do, but at least I’m home.