R.I.P. X-Deal

I lost my cat
Just as he was getting fat
He turned into a splat
Of blood and spilled gut
He ran out of the house
Under the car he went
The owner did not know
He crawled under the car
Behind the front tire
The driver sped away without knowing
That my cat was about to be flattened
Happily playing, he was
A minute ago
Then the next his brains were all over the floor
And later that afternoon
He's at the creek's bottom
How I missed my cat
I never got to see him grow fat

Super Douche

While I am on my way to work, the night of August 16, I heard on the news that COMELEC had more than 5M pesos of furniture budget for their rest house in Baguio. Majority of the costs were due to the customized bed that they had ordered from Angeles, Pampanga (that what I thought I heard). These beds cost around ~91K each. The rest of the money was used for curtains, and probably at some kind of device or process that killed the logic and conscience out of the people in charge of this shit.

The news is so annoying that I was putting on an ugly face the whole time I was listening to it. I never put on an ugly face since that is so hard for someone as pogi as I am.

Aside from that news, I also heard that one of the officials of COMELEC threatened to quit if the requested budget was not approved by the government.

Fuck this government, hard. In the ass. With a bread knife.

That's just not right, like super-douchebag-type of not right. Think of all the families that this amount of money could have fed. Think of all the children it could have sent to school.

And this is certainly not the kind of information that you would want to here after a calamity struck down your place.

COMELEC needs to straighten out its priorities. Hard. In the ass. With a bread knife.

That Unnamed Monsoon

Finally, the flood and this god-forsaken storm weather somewhat subsided and I am thankful that I didn't have to go through what we had for Ondoy. Why? Because I don't have the resources to recover from another one of that muddy, flood-y ordeal.

I was lucky enough to be allowed to work from home, which would not be possible at my old office. I'd rather work from home, than skip work at all. I'm at home, I earn, the team will have its needed manpower - everybody wins.

And so all that hard rainfall turned out to be the another Ondoy in the making.

My Twitter account at that time was running wild with information, rants, and all sorts of emotions from everyone. It's like a fully packed longganisa, except that it's not wrapped in pig's intestine.

Going home was quite easy from Taguig to Ortigas. Everything seemed so relax. Perhaps it's because it's 1PM and no one left for work that morning, and every one from the night shift had gone home earlier than noon.

Ever Gotesco Ortigas was the last stop of the FX that I have, like, made para. And at that point, I already know the reason. Of course, none other than flood.

I don't know, maybe it's the kid or the adventurer within me that had me walking that flooded path. I had the choice to wait for a bus (which passed by as I am already walking in knee-deep of water), but I didn't. I just had to roll up my shorts and sink my thighs into the water, while holding my umbrella and preventing my work-laptop from getting wet.

I saw a couple of motorcycles force their way through the flood, but ended up getting off their bikes and pushing. That, I guess, is what you get when you take your time walking through the flood. You see stories - Of stupidity, of fun and laughter, and of despair. Nobody wants their homes to be soaked.

I checked the path that I took on Google Maps, and here it is.

Perhaps I should have brought my man-kini the night before this all happened. 

Bigger image size, if you are interested:

I got home with minimum damage and a bag full of McDonald's treat for mom and Kath.

That night, was of course different. More emotions filled Twitter as if it is competing with the amount of rainfall that we've been getting.

I was getting a bit worried of the water rising too fast for us to raise our things to the house's 2nd level. We were conserving our energy so we just dumped everything in the living room.

The "Ilog Bandong", a creek that was already overflowing, is located at the end of our street. If it rises, the flood in front of the house rises with it. So it sucks being a resident of our village, at that particular street.

Good thing it didn't.

Anyway, here's some of the pictures taken with Kath's camera.

This is Steve and his hush puppy. The dog was crying and does not want to be left alone so he decided to  bring him along. What a bitch, that dog.

Yes, the owner left his truck to drown.

This was water was probably chest-high if you sat down on that street.

You can check out Kath's blog for her own flooded story.

The house is a mess but everything is back to it's normal state. Apart from an indoor pool that the flood caused (the back part of the house was the lowest part and water seeped through the cracks of the walls), we were pretty good.

I just hoped that this is to never happen again. Ever. To the Philippines.