My cats, aside from wanting to be with me, go to my room during the day to escape my Demolition Twins. Here we have Sushi hiding behind my curtains. She wants to be with me but invisible to the human twins.
Why?
Because this is what they do to the cats.
This afternoon I attempted to finish my car registration at LTO @20th Avenue in Cubao. Ehhhhhhhhh…they started dismantling the office because they’re transferring to a new building. Ergo, I will be delayed by another day. So I went to LTO Ali Mall in Araneta Center and it turns out it’s only for drivers license renewal. 😫
Damn it.
It was already past 5 pm so there’s no point in going to LTO at P. Tuazon Ave or at LTO main along East Ave. I have to go to the main office tomorrow to get this over and done with.
To make my parking fee at the mall worth it, I decided to buy some stuff that I always forget to buy, like a new desktop mirror. This is my third mirror and the first two were broken by my cats. 🐈 Talk about having a Demolition Twins 2.0
Speaking of twins, we are now having twin typhoons—and one is a super typhoon. Look at that clear eye in the middle that is fast approaching southern Japan. The more pronounced the eye is, the stronger the typhoon.
Although these may not make landfall in the Philippines, the two weather disturbances may pull each other and cause a lot of heavy rainfall as they could draw the monsoon rains from southwest towards northeast (the swirls are an indication of that). Diving could be dangerous as the currents would become stronger and more unpredictable.
Heavy rainfall is something that should be taken seriously in the Philippines, as proven by Tropical Storm Ondoy (Typhoon Ketsana) in 2009 that wreaked havoc in Metro Manila. Ketsana wasn’t even a typhoon; it was just a tropical storm based on the wind velocity. However, the amount of rainfall was unprecedented. Ondoy dumped a month’s worth of rainfall in just six hours hours (455 mm of rain within 24 hours = several months’ worth of rainfall). I remember I was about to go to my hometown that day but after reaching the subdivision gate, the floodwaters were already half my car tire. I quickly turned back. Good thing I did because a lot of people were caught off-guard by the sudden rise in floodwaters. It was a Saturday and countless people were stuck in their cars on the road. Katipunan Ave was completely submerged as Marikina River burst its banks. One reporter told me she was driving back home when she got stuck on the road because her home in Manila was like Waterworld. She spent 24 hrs in her car, I think.
So we were stranded in Cainta for days as the water reached neck-deep in our subdivision while in some parts of Cainta the water level was way above our heads. Marikina was underwater.
We tried getting out of Cainta through some back channels that were a bit dry but first we needed to push my car through the floodwaters in the subdivision. I needed to get to work because my boss shouldn’t be manning the desk alone (I was already an assistant business editor then). Because when disaster strikes, we journalists cannot NOT work.
We spent about two (or three?) weeks in my sister’s condo in Mandaluyong before the flood in Cainta subsided.
Several months after Ondoy, I still had emergency provisions in my car trunk like rain boots, food, extra clothes, flash light, emergency lamp, etc. The following year, we transferred to Quezon City and we made sure the place is never flooded. Every time it rained heavily, my anxiety levels go through the roof. This is why I always check NOAA Western Pacific satellite images to predict the weather and plan my activities accordingly. Blame Ondoy.