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 Mediterranean chicken.

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.

The Philippines is visited by at least 20 typhoons a year, being at the edge of the Pacific Ocean near the equator. This is the perfect location for low pressure areas to build up. We are used to it.

However, the typhoons are becoming more severe and despite being used to it, we’re never going to outwit these disasters.

Typhoon Kristine destroyed my hometown, my home province. What hit the whole Bicol region before Kristine’s landfall was the same intensity and severity that hit us a day after. The tail of the typhoon had a bigger and wider cloud system than the center of the cyclone. I don’t remember experiencing this kind of intesity. We were being battered by heavy, non-stop rains and strong winds for two whole days.

The typhoon bore down on us the entire day of my birthday. By nightfall, we were like inside a washing machine on wash cycle. The wind and rain were so violent that we could hear glass breaking and GI sheets being torn up. The wind was howling like crazy. I was so worried for my outside cats. They made a brief appearance but disappeared again. I was intent on catching them to keep them inside and just ignore the protests from Kimchi and Sushi.

We couldn’t operate our power generator for some reason—we  were doing something wrong. We were without running water (our water utility is in util that’s why I keep on picking fights with them) and we need power to run our water booster pump to pull water from our reservoir tank to circulate water between two households. Good thing my mom has four water tanks of rainwater to flush her ground floor toilet. That’s why for Number Two, we had to use her bathroom. For everything else, we had to fetch water in pails from the faucet outside that is connected to our clean water reservoir. I had to carry buckets of rainwater up and down the stairs to flush my toilet in my house that we use for Number One. I did all this under torrential rain and howling wind. I also had to bring up buckets of clean water to wash dishes and our faces and hands.

I had to be economical with my cooking because my drinking water is dwindling. We also have to eat down the contents of my fridge before they get spoiled due to lack of refrigeration. I also had to supplement our food rations with cup noodles because I don’t want to open my freezer. It’s still full of ice and I estimate my frozen food will hold out for three days if I don’t open the freezer door.

Yesterday was the height of Kristine’s wrath in our region. Because we didn’t have Smart cellular signal for two days, we were cut off from the rest of the world. We have no idea how flooded the rest of the universe was. Good thing my outside kitties, Gorrilla and Socks, got hungry and made an appearance, so I snatched them from the violent weather outside. I have no idea where they were hiding because I had been calling out for them around our compound for two days already.

So waited out the storm. Two days of howling winds and rain pelting our windows. Flying GI sheets, wooden planks and trees. I couldn’t sleep; I was afraid that anytime our own roof would be blown away or windows would get smashed.

The typhoon died down at about 5 am today and only then I could sleep.

Glad that I’m done celebrating with family last night because today is such a dreary day and my sister-in-law and my nephews may not be able to come if I held the dinner today. So last night I ordered everthing via Grab and everyone was full.

I woke up to the news about the entire Bicol region being flooded as Typhoon Kristine, which hasn’t even landed yet, dumped a huge amount of rain in the region. Leni Robredo was asking for more pump boats for low-lying Naga City because they could no longer do rescues with what meager resources they had. She wrote the SOS in Bicolano, which I still understood as I had a bf in college who is from Legaspi City and I learned the language. Legaspi is also inaundated with water; it’s also a low-lying city that is also near the sea and Mayon, making it a natural basin.

With all the bad things happening, I’m not in a mood to celebrate. I’ll just savor the last day of my week-long leave by staying in bed and keeping warm.

I cooked the leftover katsu I made two nights ago and made it into a katsu egg rice curry bowl.

I made space in my fridge now that I used up the leftover rice and katsu cutlets. The meal was good, if I could say so myself.

Now I need to free up space in the fridge by feeding my brood the tiramisu cake that I bought for them yesterday. It’s tragic that I could no longer enjoy such treats. I also have two tubs of macha ice cream in my freezer.

The wind here is howling and the rain has gone horizontal. And to think the bitch Kristine hasn’t made landfall yet.

Rain is minimal but the winds are strong. It’s only 5:50 pm but feels like it’s already 9 pm. It’s so dark and the wind is still howling. No announcement yet of suspension of the conference tomorrow but I doubt if I could push through with that drive. It’s going to be suicide.

…

We don’t have power. The typhoon is getting more violent by the hour.

I decided to do the re-tinting of my car while Typhoon Kristine hasn’t made landfall yet. The sky is overcast but no rains yet. I’m maximizing my free time so better do what I can do before disaster strikes.

Why did I even reach this place? Well, I’m having the re-tinting at my nephew’s second car accessories shop (my cousin’s son) so that I’m assured that the job is done well. His first shop is nearer my place but is not yet protected from storms so cars may get wet.

I was asked if I want the entire windshield tinted. I initially said yes when the shop guy told me I can convert my halogen headlamp to LED. A quick Google research showed me that there is no clear-cut law on LED headlamps but this Reddit thread told me that if I do that without changing the entire headlight unit, then it would make me the number one asshole on the road. The old housing is made for halogen lamps that reflect and scatter light to make it brighter in the dark. While halogens look dimmer on the street, its reach is farther than that of LED lamps. So if I don’t change the housing, the stronger LED lights would reflect and diffuse the light, blinding the driver of the car ahead of me and the driver of the oncoming car on the opposite lane.

Ergo, I would become one that I hate most on the road. I hate those cars with strong LED headlamps, especially that I have astigmatism. They blind me at night on the highway.

Meanwhile, it doesn’t look good for me here in Southern Luzon as the typhoon moved lower, with the eye estimated to hit Cagayan Valley Region and/or Central Luzon. Metro Manila and Southern Tagalog could be placed on Signal #2 or #3 if northeastern cold winds pushed it down further.

Ooops! Our provincial government has just cancelled classes for this afternoon and tomorrow. It seems like the eye of the typhoon is lower and would hit Metro Manila, based on the satellite image from NOAA. No clear eye or the center is disorganized (it means it’s not a supertyphoon) but the rains are scattered and will hit a large swathe of landmass.

The whole of Luzon is now under Signal #1.

I was planning to drive to Makati on Tuesday night for birthday dinner with friends or have it Wednesday night and book a hotel because I have a conference on Thursday at Marriott the following day. Nope, Kristine erased my plans because she would be pulling the winds from the southwest and the cold front from the northeast.

Another Kristine to spoil everything. 😑