I’ve been doing laundry for three days. My cleaning lady did not come yesterday because of the Todos Los Santos holiday and my kids’ uniform needed to be washed before she ironed them today.
I have already gathered and folded several batches of clean laundry to make room for the new ones I had been hanging since midday Wednesday. I did that in-between edits, which helped me to clear my head.
I surveyed my surroundings and saw that my cleaning lady didn’t have to do any yard work anymore since everything has been taken care of after the bitch Kristine has left.
I still have fruit trees. One rambutan tree looks like it died after going bald after Typhoon Kristine. The avocado tree is leaning dangerously lower; it was almost uprooted. I must have it adjusted with some kind of support to keep it upright.
Yes, I buy 8 kg of cat food. I feed too many cats.
I had cleaned out the contents of my fridge and now I had to replenish it. I’m almost afraid of buying too much meat again in case another horrible typhoon hits us again and leave us without power for a week. And it seems like there’s another big one coming…
… when you get giddy about household items you just purchased, just like this pink kettle I bought from Lazada.
While we were without power for almost a week, I realized that I can’t continue boiling water using pots/casseroles. I already burned myself by spilling scalding water because the pots don’t have spouts. I had been dependent on my electric kettle to boil water for coffee and tea for years and I never found any use for the stovetop kettle.
Now I do. I bought a cute one so I can just leave it on the stove and not bother getting it out of sight. More frequent strong typhoons are the norm and this is not going to be the last time we will be out of power for an extended time. We have yet to recover from that bitch Kristine/Trami, and here we are, facing another disaster…
We have now a supertyphoon barreling its way to Taiwan. Signal # 5 is hoisted over Batanes and Typhoon Leon/KongRey is not even going to land in the Batanes/Babuyan group of islands.
The eye of the typhoon is big and clear—an indication of the strength and speed of the winds that KongRey is bringing. Typhoon Haiyan, which I covered for my former media outfit in 2013, had a very clear eye but KongRey’s eye is bigger.
Haiyan/Yolanda = 315 kph winds
KongRey/Leon = 240 kph winds
Now that Typhoo KongRey has made landfall in Taiwan, it has lost the eye, so likely it has slightly weakened.
We had electricity just a few minutes ago. ❤️ My corp comm friends made it possible. One of them said they kept on bugging the operations network guys to expedite the repair of whatever. She said they even escalated it to one of the officials sitting on the panel infront of us during the presscon yesterday…
The local operations team must have had a scolding because they had been calling me and updating me about the progress of the repairs. They had been asking me every now and then if we already have power. One of the guys said they will not leave the site until our power is restored. They told me they are replacing one busted transformer at the university gate but I told them the transformer near our compound needs replacing, too, as it keeps on exploding due to overcapacity during school days.
😭 I love my corp comm friends.
I am now doing the first batch of laundry. All our laundry won’t fit in our clothesline downstairs so I have to do the washing in batches.
I was creeped out by this statue that an unknown neighbor had been keeping in their yard. Because the trees were either uprooted or became bald, I can now see the formerly obscured neighbor. And their creepy statue.
So I’ve been doing the laundry and hanging them for the past 3-4 hrs because they’re all beddings. I’ve been going up and down the stairs in the middle of a very windy night. I am thankful that I don’t live an a condo or renting an apartment that doesn’t have an in-unit provision for a washing machine hook-up. When I was looking for an apartment to rent, my non-negotiables were a laundry area and a parking space. With those requirements, it’s no wonder I ended up in an old two-storey apartment because that kind of housing ticks the two boxes.
I’m glad that I’m not in New York City and struggling with transporting laundry from a laundromat to a walk-up apartment, like this couple:
If I live in such situation, my laundry will never get done. 😬
Still no power while the rest of my town is already electrified. Even the university. What’s ironic is that I just came back from a press briefing by our power distributor. I asked the corp comm friends to help me out; I don’t know how I can work like this and I need to file at least three stories tomorrow.
It’s hot and muggy tonight. I was only able to charge our mini fans partially. I don’t know how I would be able to sleep tonight.
I brought my daughters with me to Ortigas today because we have no power and they are on a scheduled school break. I left them at Megamall so they can loiter around safely while I attended the presscon nearby. They contacted their dad and they told me he went there to meet them.
I wasn’t able to write any story because by 4:30 pm they were already asking me where I was. Before leaving the premises, I was assured by the corp comm team that they have already expedited my request for speedy power restoration.
Dinner and ran a few errands in Megamall then we drove back home for two hours.
Our town is officially under State of Calamity. This means prices of goods and services cannot be jacked up due to high demand and scarcity. Calamity funds from the national gov’t will immediately be released and it will be the priority area for relief efforts.
Mobile internet is very spotty after my sisters have turned off the power generator, so getting this blog updated after hours is a challenge. Smart is not smart these days. I texted a friend from PLDT’s corp comm unit about this.
My older sister read in some chat group or Facebook post that some barangays in our town near the lake are still underwater. Count ourselves lucky that we are at the foot of the mountain that’s why water that flooded my mom’s porch drained quickly.
It’s 4:51 am, I’m awake. I checked on Twin I who had a long fit of coughing trying to get the sticky phlegm out before we turned in for the night. I’m on standby in case we need to nebulize again at the hospital because we’re still out of power.
I wanted to catch up on sleep but I need to move my butt or else the food inside my freezer will get spoiled. I shopped for an ice box and searched for stores with tube ice—and that was the most challenging part. It’s always sold out wherever I went. I remembered one Alfamart near a Mount Grace hospital and went there, thinking that people won’t be buying tube ice there because they already have electricity. Eureka! I was right! I bought three bags and flew home.
Now the distasteful part—the cleaning of the freezer. It was great that my freezer held out for this long and my meat and other frozen goods were still cold albeit already defrosted. I needed to cook the unmarinated ones because they won’t last in the ice box. The rest can be chilled in the ice box and the freezer with a bag of tube ice.
For the next 1.5 hrs I cooked: gyudon, bak kut teh, pininyahang manok (chicken in cream and pineapple), and grilled porkchops and grilled Mediterraneanchicken.
Told my sis in law to bring her entire brood because all this food needed to be consumed tonight. I don’t think my fridge will be turned on tonight. 😩
After the winds had died down yesterday, my sister and I surveyed the damage while we tidied our yard. Our neighbor had their roof torn and blown away while another’s windows were smashed. A tree fell on my sister’s Toyota parked outside and we still couldn’t tell the extent of the damage.
I started cleaning up my laundry area and my immediate vicinity at 6 am so my path is clearer when I bring up water. We rummaged through own own refrigerators for foodstuff that we needed to consume. My sister and I drove out of the university campus to fetch washing up water from my brother’s house and to check up on his family since my bro’s in Australia in the meantime. We also bought drinking water from refilling stations that had water service and bought canned goods (for my mom’s household). It seemed like everybody is doing the same so there was a gridlock of cars up and about.
In that hour of driving around, we were able to charge our phones and at the same time saw the extent of the damage c/o Kristine. Huge trees were uprooted, a local mall torn apart, broken glass windows and shop fronts, downed huge electrical posts and snapped electrical/fiberoptic wires. Hungry students were spilling from all over. Imagine being locked up in your dorm for 2 days without provisions since you were dependent on the eateries around you… 🥺 Poor kids.
When we got home, my other sister was able to run our power generator with the help of the utility guy of our neighboring church. This is why I’m able to post, we finally have internet, albeit for a few hours only.
Grilled the yellowfin tuna jaw that’s best for sinigang and grilling and some skewered pork barbecue.
Here we are, at the hospital to nebulize Twin I. She has an asthma attack and couldn’t breathe. We can’t run the power generator at 2:30 am to do that. Besides, I don’t know how to run that thing.
This event justifies the possible purchase of the expensive Bluetti or Ecoflow portable solar/power storage combo. 😬
The thing that I’ve been dreading has finally come. I need to clean my refrigerator. 😬
It’s not that bad as I had feared. I had been eating down the contents of my fridge for days now leading to the typhoon touchdown. The only thing that smelled was kimchi and I was able to get rid of the smell by spraying it with Human Nature’s kitchen spray.
I’ll tackle the freezer later after I buy an ice box and lots of ice.
Still no power. Our power genset is just enough for charging phones, laptops, the water pump, and one or two electric fans. Refrigerators are power hogs.
I am so hankering now for the on-grid/off-grid rooftop solar power setup that I had been eyeing. It will set me back by PHP 300k-PHP 500k, depending on the kW.
A lot of the trees around me have been shaken or uprooted by the typhoon. It’s kind of sunnier in my garden area now.