Livin La Vida 19th Century
(I’m updating my blog in my sister’s boyfriend’s house. I was whisked away from my stone aged Makati pad because electricity was nowhere in sight. This is done via dial-up connection. Weight loss is faster than waiting for two photos to upload but I am sooooo grateful that I'm in a climate-controlled environment. I wrote the following blog entry yesterday. Let me just put it this way: it’ll be a stormy series.)
I type this in the smoking lounge of a café in a posh mall. I don’t have electricity at home. So I brought my laptop and my phones to charge for free. The only price is the second hand smoke wafting in the air that will hound me in the future.
I am not here because it is posh. I am here because the owner of this mall owns the electric company that has put a stranglehold over the millions of consumers in Manila. This virtually assures me that there is ample electric power in the mall. I was right.
When I went out just some minutes ago, I saw a sign dangling by the electric lines and I concluded that there won’t be any electricity for some days more.
Be careful what you wish for eh? I wished for a typhoon, but the cosmos decided to give an overkill and give me a super typhoon. What’s so funny is that the typhoon only lasted a few hours but did enough damage. Right now, the sun is shining down on a devastated Manila mocking us with searing heat. It was cold yesterday but now it is all but a memory. It is like summer again and the typhoon just had a short blast.
It was the 13th typhoon to enter this country but the first one in eleven years to directly hit Manila. I remember that typhoon eleven years ago. I was a resident at the freshmen’s dormitory. The winds howled at night and we had no electricity for days. No water for several days, too. I was saving water in my pail inside my closet. I learned at the premiere university of the country that anything can be stolen, even a pail of water. So, I managed to bathe and collect water from the basement and drag it up to my room at the third floor.
So, there came a point when even water at the dorm's basement ran out. And everyone at the dorm decided it was ok not to bathe in a humid clime. I would have none of it. I took a cab and went to the SM Supermarket and purchased gallons of mineral water to bathe with.
Looks like this will be reprised. If there’s no electricity, there’s no water pump to bring water at the top floor where I live.
Last night, it felt surreal that I could hear crickets in the city. No karaoke. No tv. No Dvd. Just crickets and the occasional brat wailing. It felt so strange. Alien. I had a candle by the bedside for me to read some books. It felt so 19th century! I had no means of communication except for my dying mobile phone. I did not know what was happening. I had a radio but how can I listen to it if there’s no power? It felt like I was Robinson Crusoe in a city of 12 million.
I decided to risk it and called the newspaper where I used to work for. The wires reported that 42 million Filipinos had no power. That’s half of the entire population. That short but strong gust of wind really did damage. The lines for the Manila electric company (Meralco) is reportedly jammed and no one can get through. Right. I’m sure they just unhooked the lines to avoid the wrath and whines of irate consumers who pay exorbitant bills on time yet don’t get service they really deserve.
Typhoon Milenyo, what a stupid name, but it compensated for the terror it unleashed upon us. I was at the top of the floor and I could see how the typhoon ripped the roofs of the squatters like it was pieces of papers. How my unlatched windows burst open and I had to close it. As I was closing it, the wind proved to be so powerful I broke into sweat as I closed the windows and lashed them to my sister’s abandoned treadmill. At least that piece of machine had some good to me; it secured the windows via some bright green plastic ropes.
As the winds battered Manila, I finished some of my cache of comic strips. I only lack about eight more strips and I’m set for more than a month. But I find my hands shaking, perhaps more from stress than fear, from the typhoon.
I could not see the other buildings across the river. It was all a white fury. I received text messages to get away from the windows lest some corrugated iron roof fly to me. Even my Labrador Onyx was so afraid she curled herself into a ball at my feet.
I had not struck a match in years. Hahahaha. I know. Loser. But I had a hard time lighting up my candle at 1am when my mother called me on the mobile frantic that she saw some overturned trucks on the television. Apparently there was a death from a fallen billboard. An overturned van here, a crushed jeep there. My sister’s boyfriend’s car had smashed windows. I feel bad for him because I know how much he loves that car. He told me that somebody fainted in his building from sheer fright. His sister's car was smashed almost to bits. I have not witnessed a strong typhoon at daylight and it was an actualization of white noise.
When I ventured out of the home today, I saw leaves piled on the streets and uprooted trees and the skeletal frame of the billboards.
I hate those billboards. They are like death and irritation lining up the main thoroughfares of Manila. So now, government officials are pointing at each other as to why this had to happen. I just roll my eyeballs in despair as I am breathing in the smoke from the next table. It was because of those damn billboards that power in Manila are taking so long to return. I take a mental note of those products who use the billboards and remind myself NOT to patronize these morons. The billboards are an eyesore and I cannot take the face of Kris Aquino greeting me every kilometer or so.
As I lay in the dark last night, I thought on the people who have it worse than me. The person in the car that was crushed by a fallen billboard? The children shivering in the cold as they look up to find a gaping hole at their roof. I am lucky, more fortunate than most. I keep telling myself that this builds character.
Yet, as I stare at the dancing tongue of flame by the candle, I ask myself how long will I take and be strained by this character-building. When is character more than enough?
Reading by candlelight is giving more strain to my already battered eyes. But I need to read something. I cannot stand the chatter of the neighbors, the strumming of an off-key guitar, the wailing of an unfed infant.
I miss electricity. I miss blogging. I miss visiting those nasty websites calling celebrities skanks. Im on the soaking bed and I thought this is very Jose Rizal. Reading by the candlelight is a major bitch. I have not done this in more than a decade.
I am preparing myself for another session with the 19th Century tonight as I strain my eyes to read short stories, magazine articles and novels to lull me to sleep. I am currently reading Shohei Ooka’s Fires on the Plain. It is about Japanese soldiers at the death throes of World War II in the Philippines, how they resort to cannibalism and such.
When I can’t blog as a coping mechanism, I resort to good old schadenfreude to calm my frayed nerves.
I type this in the smoking lounge of a café in a posh mall. I don’t have electricity at home. So I brought my laptop and my phones to charge for free. The only price is the second hand smoke wafting in the air that will hound me in the future.
I am not here because it is posh. I am here because the owner of this mall owns the electric company that has put a stranglehold over the millions of consumers in Manila. This virtually assures me that there is ample electric power in the mall. I was right.
When I went out just some minutes ago, I saw a sign dangling by the electric lines and I concluded that there won’t be any electricity for some days more.
Be careful what you wish for eh? I wished for a typhoon, but the cosmos decided to give an overkill and give me a super typhoon. What’s so funny is that the typhoon only lasted a few hours but did enough damage. Right now, the sun is shining down on a devastated Manila mocking us with searing heat. It was cold yesterday but now it is all but a memory. It is like summer again and the typhoon just had a short blast.
It was the 13th typhoon to enter this country but the first one in eleven years to directly hit Manila. I remember that typhoon eleven years ago. I was a resident at the freshmen’s dormitory. The winds howled at night and we had no electricity for days. No water for several days, too. I was saving water in my pail inside my closet. I learned at the premiere university of the country that anything can be stolen, even a pail of water. So, I managed to bathe and collect water from the basement and drag it up to my room at the third floor.
So, there came a point when even water at the dorm's basement ran out. And everyone at the dorm decided it was ok not to bathe in a humid clime. I would have none of it. I took a cab and went to the SM Supermarket and purchased gallons of mineral water to bathe with.
Looks like this will be reprised. If there’s no electricity, there’s no water pump to bring water at the top floor where I live.
Last night, it felt surreal that I could hear crickets in the city. No karaoke. No tv. No Dvd. Just crickets and the occasional brat wailing. It felt so strange. Alien. I had a candle by the bedside for me to read some books. It felt so 19th century! I had no means of communication except for my dying mobile phone. I did not know what was happening. I had a radio but how can I listen to it if there’s no power? It felt like I was Robinson Crusoe in a city of 12 million.
I decided to risk it and called the newspaper where I used to work for. The wires reported that 42 million Filipinos had no power. That’s half of the entire population. That short but strong gust of wind really did damage. The lines for the Manila electric company (Meralco) is reportedly jammed and no one can get through. Right. I’m sure they just unhooked the lines to avoid the wrath and whines of irate consumers who pay exorbitant bills on time yet don’t get service they really deserve.
Typhoon Milenyo, what a stupid name, but it compensated for the terror it unleashed upon us. I was at the top of the floor and I could see how the typhoon ripped the roofs of the squatters like it was pieces of papers. How my unlatched windows burst open and I had to close it. As I was closing it, the wind proved to be so powerful I broke into sweat as I closed the windows and lashed them to my sister’s abandoned treadmill. At least that piece of machine had some good to me; it secured the windows via some bright green plastic ropes.
As the winds battered Manila, I finished some of my cache of comic strips. I only lack about eight more strips and I’m set for more than a month. But I find my hands shaking, perhaps more from stress than fear, from the typhoon.
I could not see the other buildings across the river. It was all a white fury. I received text messages to get away from the windows lest some corrugated iron roof fly to me. Even my Labrador Onyx was so afraid she curled herself into a ball at my feet.
I had not struck a match in years. Hahahaha. I know. Loser. But I had a hard time lighting up my candle at 1am when my mother called me on the mobile frantic that she saw some overturned trucks on the television. Apparently there was a death from a fallen billboard. An overturned van here, a crushed jeep there. My sister’s boyfriend’s car had smashed windows. I feel bad for him because I know how much he loves that car. He told me that somebody fainted in his building from sheer fright. His sister's car was smashed almost to bits. I have not witnessed a strong typhoon at daylight and it was an actualization of white noise.
When I ventured out of the home today, I saw leaves piled on the streets and uprooted trees and the skeletal frame of the billboards.
I hate those billboards. They are like death and irritation lining up the main thoroughfares of Manila. So now, government officials are pointing at each other as to why this had to happen. I just roll my eyeballs in despair as I am breathing in the smoke from the next table. It was because of those damn billboards that power in Manila are taking so long to return. I take a mental note of those products who use the billboards and remind myself NOT to patronize these morons. The billboards are an eyesore and I cannot take the face of Kris Aquino greeting me every kilometer or so.
As I lay in the dark last night, I thought on the people who have it worse than me. The person in the car that was crushed by a fallen billboard? The children shivering in the cold as they look up to find a gaping hole at their roof. I am lucky, more fortunate than most. I keep telling myself that this builds character.
Yet, as I stare at the dancing tongue of flame by the candle, I ask myself how long will I take and be strained by this character-building. When is character more than enough?
Reading by candlelight is giving more strain to my already battered eyes. But I need to read something. I cannot stand the chatter of the neighbors, the strumming of an off-key guitar, the wailing of an unfed infant.
I miss electricity. I miss blogging. I miss visiting those nasty websites calling celebrities skanks. Im on the soaking bed and I thought this is very Jose Rizal. Reading by the candlelight is a major bitch. I have not done this in more than a decade.
I am preparing myself for another session with the 19th Century tonight as I strain my eyes to read short stories, magazine articles and novels to lull me to sleep. I am currently reading Shohei Ooka’s Fires on the Plain. It is about Japanese soldiers at the death throes of World War II in the Philippines, how they resort to cannibalism and such.
When I can’t blog as a coping mechanism, I resort to good old schadenfreude to calm my frayed nerves.