It’s late Friday afternoon, my brain is already on weekend mode, so I just took this photo of my desk in its current state. Note the presence of two food items. One I’m eating, the other an unintentional decor. Can you guess which is which? Haha! Ok, ok, that fruit will be eaten soon, I promise. Happy weekend, everyone!
My new online desktop toy. 😀
I love this! Another time-waster, haha! I downloaded it to use for work – really! But of course I had to test it on my accounts first. 😛 Seriously now, I’m going to add our brand’s Twitter and Facebook accounts as soon as we get them in shape.
For those still not aware of what TweetDeck is, check out their website.
Typhoon, flood, exploding transformers and sub-stations, ergo, blackouts… Disaster seems to be raining down Eastern Metro Manila!
Just as we’re picking up the pieces from Typhoon Ondoy’s onslaught, us residents of Marikina, Pasig, and Rizal are now facing several days’ worth of long power interruptions. First, it was due to a transformer that exploded in Tanay. Then it was compounded by the explosions of three sub-stations! We just got our electricity back last Thursday night, and barely a week after, we’re facing darkness again. All we want is for life to get back to normal as quickly as possible since it’s the best way to recovery. This recent round of disasters is making it difficult for us to go back to the comfort zone of our routines.
Sorry, I’m just whiny today. These recent events are really stretching my nerves to the limit. It’s heartbreaking enough to see what has happened to my beautiful city over and over again as I travel to and from work every day.
More than ever, I am reminded of the importance of faith. We just have to believe that this too shall pass, and that something REALLY good is waiting for us after everything we’ve experienced. We are not given trials that we cannot bear.
And now it’s our brothers in Northern and Central Luzon that are experiencing what happened in Manila two weeks ago. I really believe that one disaster after another could only lead to something exceptionally good. Can’t wait to see what it is!
Goldilocks popcorn for breakfast. Will now get off Twitter to get some work done. Have a nice stormy day! 🙂9:54 AM Sep 26th from web@cezhernandez Not yet flooded, thank God. But the water’s just a few meters na lang from the chapel. If it reaches there we’re flooded na.1:34 PM Sep 26th from web in reply to cezhernandez@cezhernandez How are you doing? Stay safe.1:35 PM Sep 26th from web in reply to cezhernandezMarikina flood report: Just a few meters and water fr Mrkna river will already reach Sta. Elena chapel. Some residents already evacuating1:52 PM Sep 26th from web water already on our street. logging off now . 2:10 PM Sep 26th from web
That was my series of tweets before the first time floodwaters ever reached our street and our home. How fast things could go from wonderfully mundane to the worst day of our neighborhood. Water eventually reached waist-deep inside our house and almost chest-level on the street.
We were having some work done on our house so we had two carpenters with us that afternoon – Bambam and the aptly-named Joseph. What a blessing those two men were. Kudos to them for still reporting for work in spite of the storm. Without them, we would have lost a lot more than just a few desks. They hoisted the refrigerator and the gas stove onto heavy tables to minimize submersion in the floodwater. They also took care of the furniture and all the other appliances.
Here was the order in which I brought stuff up to the second floor: our dog; the storage bin filled with my favorite books and lots of new books; my Mac; food (including cooking ingredients), water, dishrack, and other necessities. Our maid was very efficient in using big palangganas and boxes to haul other stuff. I was actually surprised that almost no books got wet, except for a few that were accidentally dropped in our hurry to bring them upstairs. My dad was great in pulling out drawers to save the items inside and at the same time use them to haul more things. So now we have more drawers than desks, haha!
By 3.30 pm, with the water already thigh-deep and power already out, we finally went up and began the vigil at the top of the stairs, waiting to see how the flood would rise. We nervously watched as the water covered step after step, finally topping the 5th of our 14-step staircase, before eventually subsiding by midnight.
We were also nervous while waiting out the flood because of the thought of how bad the situation could be for other people in other more flood-prone places if we had been flooded that deep! We have NEVER been flooded before, so we were already imagining the worst.
We eventually settled down and began to think of the next hours. Dinner was the priority. We had some cooked rice and raw lumpiang shanghai, with cooking oil and frying pan, but no stove to cook it in. I even made the desperate suggestion of putting the pan over a lighted candle. Then we remembered that our next-door neighbor’s living quarters are all on the second floor as their first floor serves only as a garage. Our helper climbed out our window, walked on the roof over the first floor of both houses, and knocked on our neighbor’s window to ask if she could cook our food on their stove. To her surprise, she found a number of other people inside – our neighbor took in some residents who live much closer to the river and whose houses were almost totally submerged.
The evening passed uneventfully after that, and the flood eventually subsided by midnight. It was probably the worst 9 hours of our lives. But still, it was nothing compared to what many others went through – are still going through as I write this.
Under the Sun 