Half of my plans for the weekend disappeared with the strong winds. We stayed in Anilao for three days, thinking I could still dive on the house reef—which turned out to be the best coral diving during our entire stay—on Saturday afternoon before sunset and early morning before we leave. Nope, the weather said.

I couldn’t even make sketches or watercolor painting on my art book. Power went out this morning so packing our stuff in the dark was tough.

We left even before official check out time because I thought I could outrun the typhoon. Hehe, fat chance. I drove through it. Good thing I had new tires so I had one less thing to worry about.

The typhoon in Batangas was mild but the more we drove to the east, the wilder the rain became. When we got to our town, we saw how strong the typhoon was: trees were uprooted and some streets were flooded. Some barangays had no water since the utility had to cut the supply off due to fluctuating power that could short the pumps. Good thing we have our reservoir, which stores potable water good for three days for two households. (Yes, I have measured it when I emptied it in October for cleaning.) My older sister is now asking me to ask my contractor how much would it cost to have another tank installed.

Another good thing is that we have four tanks of rain water to flush the toilet in my mom’s house so we know if disaster strikes, we can still poop and clean the bathroom.

We have a power generator set on standby but for the life of me I forgot how to turn on and run that thing. I’ll somehow know how to operate that when desperate. It is also imperative now to invest in a solar power system since I think our typhoons will be nasty this year given the very hot summer that we had. The Pacific Ocean is warmer than it has been the past years so the typhoons this time will be stronger.

Trees in my neighbor’s backyard were down and some of the banana trees went over my fence, knocking out my small solar panels. Thankfully, my trees are still upright, even my beach umbrella was still standing and unharmed. I did a good job of securing that thing on my stairs’ handrails.

I had been craving for arrozcaldo the entire day but we haven’t found any arrozcaldo places along the road. Well, if I can’t buy it, then I can make it.

Perfect for a stormy weather like this. ❤️