Last September 27, typhoon Milenyo hit Metro Manila and hit it hard. For the first time since I’ve lived here, I could not go to work because early in the morning, the flood had reached our door.
Then the lights went out and since we were stuck in a dark house with nothing else to do, we snuggled back into bed and slept the entire day.
We woke up around noontime to the sound of the howling wind shaking our windows. It was so scary because it felt like our windows were gonna get torn off.
Luckily they didn’t, though the next day we found out that the wind was so strong, it uprooted entire trees from their concrete grounds. Wow.
In the afternoon we woke up to growling tummies and still no electricty. The rain had stopped by then, so Zenie, Junjun and I decided we couldn’t take the hunger & darkness anymore and waded into the water to buy food & candles. It turned out to be quite fun, actually. We even saw the ingenuity of Pinoys in the form of the innovative contraptions they fashioned to combat the flood situation.
Back home after a foray in the waters, we realized that we had nothing to do after we had gobbled up all the lanzones. Luckily I remembered having a file of song lyrics, and the three of us found ourselves singing at the top of our voices. Zenie and I even sang the entire Phantom of the Opera script.
At around 9 we had run out of songs, so we decided to head out and look for more candles and coffee, this time with Chu. Unfortunately all coffee shops were closed, so we had no choice but to park ourselves in Jollibee.
Back home once again, I spent the rest of the night playing “Name that Tune” with my officemates the Ceemea boys on the phone.
The next day I headed back to work, my mouth agape when I saw all the damage the typhoon had caused. On the way up, our elevator got stuck on 12th floor. A good think it got stuck with its doors wide open. I am not even sure if I have a tendency to be claustrophobic.
When I got to our floor, the electricity was fluctuating which was no way to work till finally, it turned off completely.
Since we all had urgent payments that needed to be run, we were advised to head to 6750 building, where our Philippine counterpart was based, because they had a fully operating generator.
So we went down the fire exit — 19 flights of stairs on stilletto heels and more darkness. And I thought the previous day was bad.
Once in 6750, our entire department crammed ourselves into one conference room. And since not everyone had laptops, we had to use our team leaders’ to communicate with our contacts. They must have been confused because they were all talking to the same persons.
For lunch our team leaders gamely treated us to pizza. It was actually sort of fun having the entire department all in one room.
Then it was time to go home, and since I knew that there was no electricity at home yet, I watched the movie “Step Up” with a couple of officemates. But before that, we had a pictorial moment with the movie poster of an upcoming movie.
After dinner, since there was still no electricity at home, I watched another movie, “Zoom,” with another set of officemates. This blackout is costing me, man.
The next day I spent almost the entire day in the gym because it was cold there. I also charged my cellphone there.
When I got home there was still no electricilty, so I went with housemates Chu, Gay and Reggie to Greenbelt where we watched “John Tucker Must Die.” Whoever said the third time is a charm must have really known what he was talking about because this was the first movie out of the three I watched due to the blackout that I liked.
Reggie went home after the movie while the three of us sipped tea lattes in Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. At around midnight, Gay’s officemate Sherwin showed up and he turned out to be a riot.
The next day there was still no electricity at home but it was back on in our office, so I spent the entire afternoon and night there, catching up on work that had piled up during the typhoon. When I got home at around midnight, there was light already. Finally. Yey! I sure hope I will never go through all that again!