Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Food Break: The Tortang Talong
This is probably my favorite dish. I like lots of dishes but this one is my go-to viand, but we have our own recipe for it. Let me share to you this recipe we use.
Disclaimer: We don't really measure ingredients at home, so pardon the lack of digits in this recipe:
Ingredients:
egg plant (shorter ones are easier to manage)
egg (1 egg per eggplant)
flour (1/3 cup per egg plant)
ground pork (1/2 kg would be good for 3-4 eggplants)
pepper
salt
garlic
optional:
carrots, small dices or grated (these will sweeten the mix)
peas
potatoes. small dices (less than 1cm per side)
Procedure:
1. Grill the eggplant until the skin is blackened.
2. Remove the skin. It's thin, so be careful not to peel to the seeds.
3. Set aside the eggplant.
4. In a bowl, mix in all the other ingredients. You shouldn't be able to make balls from the mix. If you can, that means you put in too much flour. To remedy, add egg.
5. Use a wide frying pan and heat some oil. Stay on low heat.
6. Put 2 tablespoons of the meat mix onto the pan and shape it into an flat oval.
7. Quickly add the eggplant by flattening it onto the mix.
8. Add 2 more tablespoons of the egg mix and spread it generously over the meat and eggplant.
9. Increase the flame to a medium setting. Wait for the mix to brown. It takes about a minute or less.
10. Use two spatulas. Put one under the mix and the other on top to secure it. Carefully flip it. Be careful here because the whole thing can break if it's not yet properly cooked on one side.
11. Cook until the second side is brown.
The number of servings depends on the number of eggplants you use. You have the option to use catsup here. (Personally, I don't use catsup.) Best served with hot rice. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: We don't really measure ingredients at home, so pardon the lack of digits in this recipe:
(photo from marketmanila.com)
Ingredients:
egg plant (shorter ones are easier to manage)
egg (1 egg per eggplant)
flour (1/3 cup per egg plant)
ground pork (1/2 kg would be good for 3-4 eggplants)
pepper
salt
garlic
optional:
carrots, small dices or grated (these will sweeten the mix)
peas
potatoes. small dices (less than 1cm per side)
Procedure:
1. Grill the eggplant until the skin is blackened.
2. Remove the skin. It's thin, so be careful not to peel to the seeds.
3. Set aside the eggplant.
4. In a bowl, mix in all the other ingredients. You shouldn't be able to make balls from the mix. If you can, that means you put in too much flour. To remedy, add egg.
5. Use a wide frying pan and heat some oil. Stay on low heat.
6. Put 2 tablespoons of the meat mix onto the pan and shape it into an flat oval.
7. Quickly add the eggplant by flattening it onto the mix.
8. Add 2 more tablespoons of the egg mix and spread it generously over the meat and eggplant.
9. Increase the flame to a medium setting. Wait for the mix to brown. It takes about a minute or less.
10. Use two spatulas. Put one under the mix and the other on top to secure it. Carefully flip it. Be careful here because the whole thing can break if it's not yet properly cooked on one side.
11. Cook until the second side is brown.
The number of servings depends on the number of eggplants you use. You have the option to use catsup here. (Personally, I don't use catsup.) Best served with hot rice. Enjoy!
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Second of a series: Filipinisms part 1 - Making sense of some terms
One of the biggest difficulties I have noticed among my Filipino students is their tendency to transliterate from Tagalog to English. Case in point, they would say "Kill the lights" because one would say "Patayin ang ilaw" in Tagalog. Patayin literally means "to kill".
And thus was born this thing called Filipinisms.
Encyclopedia.com defines Filipinsm as "A linguistic usage specific to or typical of the Philippines, such as Open the light Switch on the light, captain-ball basketball team captain, and viand any dish eaten with rice."
Mind you, these terms may be popularly used in the Philippines, but these are terms unique to the Philippines. So, please, try not to use them when talking to foreigners.
Filipinisms don't end with transliterations. The funnier aspect of this phenomenon is when Filipinos try to put Tagalog expressions into English, or using English terms in the Tagalog context. To many, these terms then become their go-to terms when speaking in English.
Some are terms that came about using popular logic (it may not be straight logic but it could make some sense).
In old Tagalog, there were no terms for toothpaste, picture-taking, photocopying and other activities related to new technology. As these innovations were introduced to Filipinos, what most would encounter would the commercial products related to them. Hence, the toothpaste got to be more popularly known as Colgate. picture-taking was Kodak-an and photocopying was Xerox. So it wasn't uncommon to hear of people going to the store and asking for "Colgate na Close-up" when wanting to buy a tube of Close-up toothpaste. So when they try to speak in English, they'd most likely say, "Can I have these papers xeroxed?"
Here are some other commercial terms used as common nouns:
Chicklet - chewing gum
Coke - soft drinks
(feel free to suggest more)
Have you ever wondered what the Tagalog is for "pedicab" (that 3-wheeled contraption that is a bike with a sidecar)? It's traysikad (pronounced as try-see-khud). The term is actually a mash-up of "tricycle" and sikad (to pedal). Since part of its origin is already an English term, many would use the new Tagalog term to refer to it in English and say, "Let's ride the trisikad here."
There are also the classic terms that were created based on real English terms. For example, people do "tuck in" shirts, right? So Filipinos coined tuck out to mean that one has "untucked" the said shirt.
In referring to periods of time, Filipinos like saying next next week instead of "the week after next". The number of "next"'s would reflect the number of weeks hence. So three weeks from now would be next next next week and so on. This is also applicable to months, years, decades, centuries, etc.
When referring to people, there the:
Oppositor - someone who opposes
Senatoriable/Presidentiable - someone who could be a senator/president
Tutee/Advisee - as opposed to tutor or adviser
Sewer - one who sews
(Feel free to add more here too.)
Amused yet? There are more. The next one will be about terms whose origins I am not sure of.
And thus was born this thing called Filipinisms.
Encyclopedia.com defines Filipinsm as "A linguistic usage specific to or typical of the Philippines, such as Open the light Switch on the light, captain-ball basketball team captain, and viand any dish eaten with rice."
Mind you, these terms may be popularly used in the Philippines, but these are terms unique to the Philippines. So, please, try not to use them when talking to foreigners.
Filipinisms don't end with transliterations. The funnier aspect of this phenomenon is when Filipinos try to put Tagalog expressions into English, or using English terms in the Tagalog context. To many, these terms then become their go-to terms when speaking in English.
Some are terms that came about using popular logic (it may not be straight logic but it could make some sense).
In old Tagalog, there were no terms for toothpaste, picture-taking, photocopying and other activities related to new technology. As these innovations were introduced to Filipinos, what most would encounter would the commercial products related to them. Hence, the toothpaste got to be more popularly known as Colgate. picture-taking was Kodak-an and photocopying was Xerox. So it wasn't uncommon to hear of people going to the store and asking for "Colgate na Close-up" when wanting to buy a tube of Close-up toothpaste. So when they try to speak in English, they'd most likely say, "Can I have these papers xeroxed?"
Here are some other commercial terms used as common nouns:
Chicklet - chewing gum
Coke - soft drinks
(feel free to suggest more)
Have you ever wondered what the Tagalog is for "pedicab" (that 3-wheeled contraption that is a bike with a sidecar)? It's traysikad (pronounced as try-see-khud). The term is actually a mash-up of "tricycle" and sikad (to pedal). Since part of its origin is already an English term, many would use the new Tagalog term to refer to it in English and say, "Let's ride the trisikad here."
There are also the classic terms that were created based on real English terms. For example, people do "tuck in" shirts, right? So Filipinos coined tuck out to mean that one has "untucked" the said shirt.
In referring to periods of time, Filipinos like saying next next week instead of "the week after next". The number of "next"'s would reflect the number of weeks hence. So three weeks from now would be next next next week and so on. This is also applicable to months, years, decades, centuries, etc.
When referring to people, there the:
Oppositor - someone who opposes
Senatoriable/Presidentiable - someone who could be a senator/president
Tutee/Advisee - as opposed to tutor or adviser
Sewer - one who sews
(Feel free to add more here too.)
Amused yet? There are more. The next one will be about terms whose origins I am not sure of.
Monday, April 13, 2015
Filipinos and English
Can Filipinos in general speak English very well?
That would be 'yes' AND 'no'.
It is true that the Americans practically educated the Filipinos. Historically speaking, they established the existing educational system. Given that, one would think that Filipinos should be great at speaking their language.
There are many who can speak English well, especially among those who have the financial capacity to afford the expensive schools. There is a vast majority, however, who find it difficult to speak English.
Case in point, go to any public school and choose any student not endorsed by his/her teacher and conduct an interview in English. Even those in the higher sections, even Section 1, would be too shy to participate in the said interview. Why they simply have no confidence in themselves.
While it is true that English has been taught to Filipinos from their very first formal lessons, many do not practice the language. How come? There are English movies shown in the Philippines. There are many books in English. English lyrics fill the airwaves. How then can these people not be exposed enough?
There are many reasons. Some say English is the language of the rich. Those who speak English well must've been able to afford the big expensive schools. Those who dare to speak English well in public places get to be stared at with increduility. Some say "we are in the Philippines. Speak the local language." What that "local language" is -- well, that still depends on where you are physically since there are several languages spoken in the country. Tagalog is popularly acknowldged as the national language but the Visayans will have a lot to say about that issue.
In response, I'd say, "how about going global?"
From my experience as a teacher, one reason I see is sheer laziness. Kids see studying as a chore to be done -- a kind of work that is more often too tedious or sometimes even difficult. Since English is a subject in school, they don't want to learn it because they already have a language. It doesn't matter that they will eventually use English to find a good job. Immature shortsightedness just tells them that having to learn English is not a fun thing to do. And it boils down to the lack of the love for learning. If you love to learn, it would be fun. To these kids, learning isn't fun so having to learn English another things they'd have to suffer through.
Another apparent reason that I see in my students is the sheer lack of support from home. Their parents grew up not wanting to speak English, so no one encouraged them to speak the language. They believe they can get by with the English they learn from local TV shows, music and the movies they watch. Yet they do not watch enough English shows or movies nor do they appreciate enough English songs. No home support, little exposure -- a detrimental combination for learners of a new language.
Personally, I am not a rich person. My family is not rich. But I grew up in a household that valued education. As a child, I was exposed to Mary Poppins, Little House on the Prairie and Star Trek. We had books in volumes, of which I especially like the Reader's Digest collection, including the condensed books anthologies. In school, I wasn't a popular girl because I'd rather spend time in the library reading rather than playing. I never really appreciated Tagalog songs because I found English ballads more relatable. I got into good schools because we were able to get scholarships.
So here we are with me, the English major who isn't rich. How did it all happen? I never really liked stereotypes. I'm hardly the conventional Filipina. I worked around the conventions. Can you?
That would be 'yes' AND 'no'.
It is true that the Americans practically educated the Filipinos. Historically speaking, they established the existing educational system. Given that, one would think that Filipinos should be great at speaking their language.
There are many who can speak English well, especially among those who have the financial capacity to afford the expensive schools. There is a vast majority, however, who find it difficult to speak English.
Case in point, go to any public school and choose any student not endorsed by his/her teacher and conduct an interview in English. Even those in the higher sections, even Section 1, would be too shy to participate in the said interview. Why they simply have no confidence in themselves.
While it is true that English has been taught to Filipinos from their very first formal lessons, many do not practice the language. How come? There are English movies shown in the Philippines. There are many books in English. English lyrics fill the airwaves. How then can these people not be exposed enough?
There are many reasons. Some say English is the language of the rich. Those who speak English well must've been able to afford the big expensive schools. Those who dare to speak English well in public places get to be stared at with increduility. Some say "we are in the Philippines. Speak the local language." What that "local language" is -- well, that still depends on where you are physically since there are several languages spoken in the country. Tagalog is popularly acknowldged as the national language but the Visayans will have a lot to say about that issue.
In response, I'd say, "how about going global?"
From my experience as a teacher, one reason I see is sheer laziness. Kids see studying as a chore to be done -- a kind of work that is more often too tedious or sometimes even difficult. Since English is a subject in school, they don't want to learn it because they already have a language. It doesn't matter that they will eventually use English to find a good job. Immature shortsightedness just tells them that having to learn English is not a fun thing to do. And it boils down to the lack of the love for learning. If you love to learn, it would be fun. To these kids, learning isn't fun so having to learn English another things they'd have to suffer through.
Another apparent reason that I see in my students is the sheer lack of support from home. Their parents grew up not wanting to speak English, so no one encouraged them to speak the language. They believe they can get by with the English they learn from local TV shows, music and the movies they watch. Yet they do not watch enough English shows or movies nor do they appreciate enough English songs. No home support, little exposure -- a detrimental combination for learners of a new language.
Personally, I am not a rich person. My family is not rich. But I grew up in a household that valued education. As a child, I was exposed to Mary Poppins, Little House on the Prairie and Star Trek. We had books in volumes, of which I especially like the Reader's Digest collection, including the condensed books anthologies. In school, I wasn't a popular girl because I'd rather spend time in the library reading rather than playing. I never really appreciated Tagalog songs because I found English ballads more relatable. I got into good schools because we were able to get scholarships.
So here we are with me, the English major who isn't rich. How did it all happen? I never really liked stereotypes. I'm hardly the conventional Filipina. I worked around the conventions. Can you?
Thursday, April 09, 2015
On the hunt... again
I guess you can call me career job-hunter. Every so often, i find myself on "the hunt" for various reasons. In my most recent jump onto the fray, there are changes I've noticed in the whole process.
The job market is decidedly LARGER now. For a writer like me, there are now more avenues for the skill. The best way to take advantage of the breadth of opportunities out there is to to BE OPEN to new things.
When I was starting out, the only jobs available to me were journalism, copywriting, feature-writing and corporate communications. These days, you have content-development, proposal-writing, email-writing and social media content management; not to mention non-voice support in call centers which would require good writing skills too. The bottomline is: if you can write, be ready to write about anything. The key is: have a skill that you can build on.
There are more options on the workplace and work hours now. There are shifts. There is telecommuting. If you prefer the traditional office-based 9-6 jobs, there are still a lot of those. If you go by the other options though, you can avoid the traffic and rush hour, but you will have non-traditinal working hours as well.
Be prepared for one-day processing. This is not to be taken lightly. One-day processing means you get the job within the day, if you pass. Passing means a rigorous application process that entails hours of waiting. Be prepared to wait -- and I mean, the patience-testing-kind of wait. How long? Some could last 12 hours for the entire process. No kidding. So, bring a book or install a good game in your phone. And do not forget to bring a charger and even a power bank.
And, of course, the traditional tips still work here.
And the best tip I can give: BE YOURSELF. No one can question what you are and who you are. Besides, trying too hard to impress employers might just set you up to fail in the job if you do get it because you make them expect too much from you.
The job market is decidedly LARGER now. For a writer like me, there are now more avenues for the skill. The best way to take advantage of the breadth of opportunities out there is to to BE OPEN to new things.
When I was starting out, the only jobs available to me were journalism, copywriting, feature-writing and corporate communications. These days, you have content-development, proposal-writing, email-writing and social media content management; not to mention non-voice support in call centers which would require good writing skills too. The bottomline is: if you can write, be ready to write about anything. The key is: have a skill that you can build on.
There are more options on the workplace and work hours now. There are shifts. There is telecommuting. If you prefer the traditional office-based 9-6 jobs, there are still a lot of those. If you go by the other options though, you can avoid the traffic and rush hour, but you will have non-traditinal working hours as well.
Be prepared for one-day processing. This is not to be taken lightly. One-day processing means you get the job within the day, if you pass. Passing means a rigorous application process that entails hours of waiting. Be prepared to wait -- and I mean, the patience-testing-kind of wait. How long? Some could last 12 hours for the entire process. No kidding. So, bring a book or install a good game in your phone. And do not forget to bring a charger and even a power bank.
And, of course, the traditional tips still work here.
And the best tip I can give: BE YOURSELF. No one can question what you are and who you are. Besides, trying too hard to impress employers might just set you up to fail in the job if you do get it because you make them expect too much from you.
Monday, April 06, 2015
Throwback: My Ondoy Story... Finally
Note: This blog was started in December 2009. It was finished only recently.
=)K
----------------------------------
Months after the big flood, life still has not returned to normal at home. From the outside, things look pretty much the same as before but the inside is another story. The house is still in a pretty bad shape. It's liveable but it's in dire need of a paint job and some repairs too. A lot of things had to be thrown away and I find myself longing for those that I took for granted before (perhaps even scoffed at). Talk about starting from scratch.
Let's start on that fateful day in September. It was a Saturday so the whole family slept in. At 8 in the morning, my daughter had already gotten up but didn't want to be active yet so she put on a DVD and started watching. To be more comfy, she laid out the sofa bed on the floor. My husband and I were still very much sound asleep. I had spent the day before taking a short "break" from school work thinking I had the rest of the 3-day weekend to study and do my notes. I stayed up the night before until late basking in the brief respite and loving the idea that I could choose to sleep late and wake up late for once.
All of a sudden, my 10-year old burst into the room screaming, "Mama! Mama! It's flooding!" In a stupor, the message did not register right away. What did she mean by flooding? It barely rained the night before. I woke up in the wee hours and yes, it was raining but only then. Flooding in the house?!? Why is she in a panic?! Oh geez! It's flooding in the house!!!
With me up, she proceeded to her Tatay and then Ate Jenny. All four of us promptly started gathering things from the floor up. We raised things, brought them upstairs, put them on top of shelvings and cabinets. No one thought of eating. No one thought of changing clothes.
The water was rising fast. When the water was about the reach the lowest electrical outlets, I decided to turn off the main switch. When it got a little higher, I thought "Oh crap, the car! Geez! It's too late to move it now!" So I just got a plastic bag and tried to plug the exhaust pipe as securely as I could while I shivered in the cold.
We all thought, the last time the waters went really high, the elevated bedrooms were not spared but most of our things there were. So, as the waters went even higher as the morning wore on, we just kept on piling our things higher and higher. My husband recalls have to place the important gadgets onto even higher places at least three times.
The pets were too scared to move and had to be carried up to the rooms. The hamsters, my daughter's beloved pets, had to be brought up as well in their respective terrariums.
By the early afternoon, the water finally reached the elevated bedrooms. It was then that I decided that we had to find a way out. I had shed off the boots that had proven useless and heavy when the water got too high. Still, I went out of the house with the water up to my stomach and looked for a floatation device that could carry my daughter and some of our things. Inside the house, my husband and the girls were packing our things to bring with us. I had heard him tell the girls to pack bags before that and had already packed my scrubs, some underwear, the canned goods and some fruits. No, I did not forget the can openner. And, no, I did not pack any slippers nor shoes. I had packed my netbook but decided to put it in what I thought would be a high enough place for it to be safe, right beside the hamsters.
I found an old wooden door. That would do. I also found an old cooler that could carry bags. At that point, our neighbor, Dina, whose family had shared their home with us in the big flood of 1986 called out to us to move over to their house. They were also calling in the other families in bungalows -- the Quitaligs right across from us and the old Palomares couple. We gratefully accepted the invitation. Jenny and I held on to the wooden door as my daughter sat on it while she held on to the dogs. Joel held on to the cooler with our bags. I could barely feel the street as we crossed over to Dina's house. I hadn't realized it but I wasn't wearing anything on my feet. As luck would have it, a group of four young men came by and helped us cross. They had been going around looking for people who needed help. They cracked jokes and made us laugh as we practically swam.
Joel went back and secured the house. Even then, he wanted to ensure against looters who might take advantage of the calamity. As we settled in Dina's house, he was out there helping people trying to swim to safety. He told the story of the small family who refused to let go of their already submerged motorbike over and over because he was able to persuade them to tie it to our tree so that they could swim freely to higher ground.
The power was down by this time and we were all furiously sending messages asking for help from people we had on our cellphones. People soon complained of running out of load or running out of battery charge. I had resorted to using only one phone to conserve on battery life. A text message I had sent to our class president must have sounded too hard to believe because one of our classmates responded for him and asked me if I was kidding about needing a boat. Turns out, the one who replied lived near our area and was soon on his way home from school after receiving my message. No one else answered. We guessed that the cellphone companies were having problems with the traffic of messages already. We also couldn't make calls anymore-- partly because we couldn't get though and partly because we needed to conserve power.
As the afternoon wore on, we converged at the patio outside one of the rooms. It faced the street. We could see our respective houses go under slowly. We also saw the water turn from just dirty to brown with mud in mid-afternoon. At first, we were making jokes and reminisced about the flood of '86, but as the water became higher and higher, we grew more and more quiet. As we realized that all the work of raising stuff that morning had been for naught and that all our valuables were sinking in front of our eyes, the mood became more pensive. By late afternoon, the mood went into panic mode again. The water was still rising and the second floor of Dina's house was about to get flooded.
After sharing an early dinner, Dina's nephews and sons started to open ways to go on top of roofs so we could hike over to another neighbor's house -- the Losa Tower -- the highest house in the street with three floors. In the dark, we walked on the slippery GI sheets and got to there. We were all wet. Bong, the older of the Losa boys, a childhood friend, welcomed all of us -- more than 30 people. The rained poured on until late that evening. We shared stories, had private prayers said and got to know our neighbors little better.
It's funny, looking back now, that it had to take a calamity for us neighbors to get in touch with each other again.
Based on our experience from 1986, if the rain stopped that night, the water would soon receded and we could probably go back home the next day. So, when the rains did stop at around 10 in the evening of the 26th, we were hopeful. Dina and her boys were able to go back to their second floor early the next morning. To our dismay, the waters stayed high the whole day of Sunday, September 27th.
In the morning of the 27th, however, we had the most welcome surprise-- my brother, along with his brother-in-law and a son of Mr. Palomares arrived bearing relief goods -- rice, canned goods, mineral water and a fully-charged cellphone.
Though his house was just as submerged as ours, the floods caught my brother with his son and his brother-in-law's family in Ateneo for the grade school family day, while the women of their respective families were in St. Paul Pasig for their family day also. They spent the whole of Saturday in the campus being cared for by the staff. They had tried to reach us but were hampered by the floods and the heavy traffic. They had access to power, food and communication lines but were frustrated because those of us left behind didn't have power nor communication lines and the cellphones were already down to the last bits of power.
My brother's in-laws lived in the house directly behind the Losa's and we all had a reunion when they arrived. Luckily, they too had a second floor that was spared from the floods.
It was quite a sight seeing them arrive. The breeze was cold as we stood on the roof watching the damage being done to our homes. The water current was visible from where we were. It was going East. Floating debris of house parts and tree branches trudged slowly on the murky from Main Street to Marietta Street. All the bungalows in our street only had rooftops visible. And the water level was not going down, at least not fast enough for us.
Through the day, the people in the Losa Tower took care of each other. Water was conserved and food was rationed. No one had any appetite anyway.
The kids seemed to be doing better compared to the adults. My own daughter asked several times to swim in the flood because "there was finally enough water to swim in." She communicated with neighborhood friends by shouting across the flood while standing on the roof. I dreaded having to tell her about her pet hamsters which would be drowned by this time because their terrariums had screen tops that wouldn't let them out. Worse, one had just given birth two days before the flood came.
My brother had carried of my cellphone and left his so that he could charge mine and my husband's, along with a couple of others. Family from the states finally were able to communicate with us but only for a few precious minutes. We told them we were fine and that nothing could be saved from the house, but they were happy to know we were ok. As mama said, those were just things anyway.
Choppers came by. The first few ones were obviously just trying to assess the situation. The later ones dropped relief goods, but not near us. We frantically waved at them. We tried to get their attention but none gave us any.
While the kids played, the adults sometimes joined them or went about telling stories about the 1986 flood, comparing devastations. I don't remember much of the stories anymore. All I knew was that we were all praying for the flood to subside already. Towards sunset, it had gone down by a few feet and we prayed some more that it wouldn't rain anymore. Thankfully, there were no more rains that night.
As Monday morning came on the 28th of September, the flood waters had gone down even more. Most of the refugees at the Losa Tower decided to thank our gracious hosts and headed to their respective homes. For us, we couldn't go home yet. Standing on the roof of the Losa residence, we could see that the house was still pretty much submerged.
=)K
----------------------------------
Months after the big flood, life still has not returned to normal at home. From the outside, things look pretty much the same as before but the inside is another story. The house is still in a pretty bad shape. It's liveable but it's in dire need of a paint job and some repairs too. A lot of things had to be thrown away and I find myself longing for those that I took for granted before (perhaps even scoffed at). Talk about starting from scratch.
Let's start on that fateful day in September. It was a Saturday so the whole family slept in. At 8 in the morning, my daughter had already gotten up but didn't want to be active yet so she put on a DVD and started watching. To be more comfy, she laid out the sofa bed on the floor. My husband and I were still very much sound asleep. I had spent the day before taking a short "break" from school work thinking I had the rest of the 3-day weekend to study and do my notes. I stayed up the night before until late basking in the brief respite and loving the idea that I could choose to sleep late and wake up late for once.
All of a sudden, my 10-year old burst into the room screaming, "Mama! Mama! It's flooding!" In a stupor, the message did not register right away. What did she mean by flooding? It barely rained the night before. I woke up in the wee hours and yes, it was raining but only then. Flooding in the house?!? Why is she in a panic?! Oh geez! It's flooding in the house!!!
With me up, she proceeded to her Tatay and then Ate Jenny. All four of us promptly started gathering things from the floor up. We raised things, brought them upstairs, put them on top of shelvings and cabinets. No one thought of eating. No one thought of changing clothes.
The water was rising fast. When the water was about the reach the lowest electrical outlets, I decided to turn off the main switch. When it got a little higher, I thought "Oh crap, the car! Geez! It's too late to move it now!" So I just got a plastic bag and tried to plug the exhaust pipe as securely as I could while I shivered in the cold.
We all thought, the last time the waters went really high, the elevated bedrooms were not spared but most of our things there were. So, as the waters went even higher as the morning wore on, we just kept on piling our things higher and higher. My husband recalls have to place the important gadgets onto even higher places at least three times.
The pets were too scared to move and had to be carried up to the rooms. The hamsters, my daughter's beloved pets, had to be brought up as well in their respective terrariums.
By the early afternoon, the water finally reached the elevated bedrooms. It was then that I decided that we had to find a way out. I had shed off the boots that had proven useless and heavy when the water got too high. Still, I went out of the house with the water up to my stomach and looked for a floatation device that could carry my daughter and some of our things. Inside the house, my husband and the girls were packing our things to bring with us. I had heard him tell the girls to pack bags before that and had already packed my scrubs, some underwear, the canned goods and some fruits. No, I did not forget the can openner. And, no, I did not pack any slippers nor shoes. I had packed my netbook but decided to put it in what I thought would be a high enough place for it to be safe, right beside the hamsters.
I found an old wooden door. That would do. I also found an old cooler that could carry bags. At that point, our neighbor, Dina, whose family had shared their home with us in the big flood of 1986 called out to us to move over to their house. They were also calling in the other families in bungalows -- the Quitaligs right across from us and the old Palomares couple. We gratefully accepted the invitation. Jenny and I held on to the wooden door as my daughter sat on it while she held on to the dogs. Joel held on to the cooler with our bags. I could barely feel the street as we crossed over to Dina's house. I hadn't realized it but I wasn't wearing anything on my feet. As luck would have it, a group of four young men came by and helped us cross. They had been going around looking for people who needed help. They cracked jokes and made us laugh as we practically swam.
Joel went back and secured the house. Even then, he wanted to ensure against looters who might take advantage of the calamity. As we settled in Dina's house, he was out there helping people trying to swim to safety. He told the story of the small family who refused to let go of their already submerged motorbike over and over because he was able to persuade them to tie it to our tree so that they could swim freely to higher ground.
The power was down by this time and we were all furiously sending messages asking for help from people we had on our cellphones. People soon complained of running out of load or running out of battery charge. I had resorted to using only one phone to conserve on battery life. A text message I had sent to our class president must have sounded too hard to believe because one of our classmates responded for him and asked me if I was kidding about needing a boat. Turns out, the one who replied lived near our area and was soon on his way home from school after receiving my message. No one else answered. We guessed that the cellphone companies were having problems with the traffic of messages already. We also couldn't make calls anymore-- partly because we couldn't get though and partly because we needed to conserve power.
As the afternoon wore on, we converged at the patio outside one of the rooms. It faced the street. We could see our respective houses go under slowly. We also saw the water turn from just dirty to brown with mud in mid-afternoon. At first, we were making jokes and reminisced about the flood of '86, but as the water became higher and higher, we grew more and more quiet. As we realized that all the work of raising stuff that morning had been for naught and that all our valuables were sinking in front of our eyes, the mood became more pensive. By late afternoon, the mood went into panic mode again. The water was still rising and the second floor of Dina's house was about to get flooded.
After sharing an early dinner, Dina's nephews and sons started to open ways to go on top of roofs so we could hike over to another neighbor's house -- the Losa Tower -- the highest house in the street with three floors. In the dark, we walked on the slippery GI sheets and got to there. We were all wet. Bong, the older of the Losa boys, a childhood friend, welcomed all of us -- more than 30 people. The rained poured on until late that evening. We shared stories, had private prayers said and got to know our neighbors little better.
It's funny, looking back now, that it had to take a calamity for us neighbors to get in touch with each other again.
Based on our experience from 1986, if the rain stopped that night, the water would soon receded and we could probably go back home the next day. So, when the rains did stop at around 10 in the evening of the 26th, we were hopeful. Dina and her boys were able to go back to their second floor early the next morning. To our dismay, the waters stayed high the whole day of Sunday, September 27th.
In the morning of the 27th, however, we had the most welcome surprise-- my brother, along with his brother-in-law and a son of Mr. Palomares arrived bearing relief goods -- rice, canned goods, mineral water and a fully-charged cellphone.
Though his house was just as submerged as ours, the floods caught my brother with his son and his brother-in-law's family in Ateneo for the grade school family day, while the women of their respective families were in St. Paul Pasig for their family day also. They spent the whole of Saturday in the campus being cared for by the staff. They had tried to reach us but were hampered by the floods and the heavy traffic. They had access to power, food and communication lines but were frustrated because those of us left behind didn't have power nor communication lines and the cellphones were already down to the last bits of power.
My brother's in-laws lived in the house directly behind the Losa's and we all had a reunion when they arrived. Luckily, they too had a second floor that was spared from the floods.
It was quite a sight seeing them arrive. The breeze was cold as we stood on the roof watching the damage being done to our homes. The water current was visible from where we were. It was going East. Floating debris of house parts and tree branches trudged slowly on the murky from Main Street to Marietta Street. All the bungalows in our street only had rooftops visible. And the water level was not going down, at least not fast enough for us.
Through the day, the people in the Losa Tower took care of each other. Water was conserved and food was rationed. No one had any appetite anyway.
The kids seemed to be doing better compared to the adults. My own daughter asked several times to swim in the flood because "there was finally enough water to swim in." She communicated with neighborhood friends by shouting across the flood while standing on the roof. I dreaded having to tell her about her pet hamsters which would be drowned by this time because their terrariums had screen tops that wouldn't let them out. Worse, one had just given birth two days before the flood came.
My brother had carried of my cellphone and left his so that he could charge mine and my husband's, along with a couple of others. Family from the states finally were able to communicate with us but only for a few precious minutes. We told them we were fine and that nothing could be saved from the house, but they were happy to know we were ok. As mama said, those were just things anyway.
Choppers came by. The first few ones were obviously just trying to assess the situation. The later ones dropped relief goods, but not near us. We frantically waved at them. We tried to get their attention but none gave us any.
While the kids played, the adults sometimes joined them or went about telling stories about the 1986 flood, comparing devastations. I don't remember much of the stories anymore. All I knew was that we were all praying for the flood to subside already. Towards sunset, it had gone down by a few feet and we prayed some more that it wouldn't rain anymore. Thankfully, there were no more rains that night.
As Monday morning came on the 28th of September, the flood waters had gone down even more. Most of the refugees at the Losa Tower decided to thank our gracious hosts and headed to their respective homes. For us, we couldn't go home yet. Standing on the roof of the Losa residence, we could see that the house was still pretty much submerged.
The
Palomareses and Quitaligs had other houses nearby that they could stay
in. Our possible refuge was my brother's home but it too was submerged.
Through the kindness of their hearts, the Losas let us stay with them
longer than the rest.
As the floods went lower that Monday morning, my brother arrived in his SUV with more relief goods. I asked my brother to take my daughter with him, knowing that she would be in good hands and happy to see her cousins. We bade her a tearful goodbye not knowing when we can tell my brother it was safe and ok for her to come home. After they left, we were finally able to cross the street to go visit the house.
The house was a mess. It looked like a tornado hit the house inside and then a huge mud bomb exploded. Everything was all over the place and browned. We had problems opening the doors which jammed -- the wood had expanded after getting submerged, and things behind it were blocking the way. It was a sorry sight. Looking back, it would have been enough to make me cry but crying was not an option -- there was much work to be done.
It took more than a week for us to be able to clean enough space in the house for us to have some place to sleep in. People helped, thankfully. Relief goods poured in from friends and classmates (who had an Ondoy relief drive for us flood victims -- I have a feeling I was their primary recipient).
Actual clean up for a more liveable house went on for more than a month. Minor cleaning is still on-going. Repairs went on for about two months and they are still unfinished.
And this blog is surprisingly difficult to make. This is not a complete account, of course, but it gives the essentials of what happened. I guess wanting to move on makes me want to go forward and not look back. There was nothing I personally could have done to prevent what happened, so we live on...
Photo taken around 7am, Monday, Sept. 28, 2009; after much of the flood waters have subsided.
As the floods went lower that Monday morning, my brother arrived in his SUV with more relief goods. I asked my brother to take my daughter with him, knowing that she would be in good hands and happy to see her cousins. We bade her a tearful goodbye not knowing when we can tell my brother it was safe and ok for her to come home. After they left, we were finally able to cross the street to go visit the house.
The house was a mess. It looked like a tornado hit the house inside and then a huge mud bomb exploded. Everything was all over the place and browned. We had problems opening the doors which jammed -- the wood had expanded after getting submerged, and things behind it were blocking the way. It was a sorry sight. Looking back, it would have been enough to make me cry but crying was not an option -- there was much work to be done.
It took more than a week for us to be able to clean enough space in the house for us to have some place to sleep in. People helped, thankfully. Relief goods poured in from friends and classmates (who had an Ondoy relief drive for us flood victims -- I have a feeling I was their primary recipient).
Actual clean up for a more liveable house went on for more than a month. Minor cleaning is still on-going. Repairs went on for about two months and they are still unfinished.
And this blog is surprisingly difficult to make. This is not a complete account, of course, but it gives the essentials of what happened. I guess wanting to move on makes me want to go forward and not look back. There was nothing I personally could have done to prevent what happened, so we live on...
Photo taken around 7am, Monday, Sept. 28, 2009; after much of the flood waters have subsided.
Saturday, April 04, 2015
Blogging, There and Back Again
It’s Penny’s fault! She has been bugging me to blog for the longest time. When the school year starts, I’d probably blog less and less...again! Pretty sure, she will not be happy about that but hey, this momma’s gotta work! But during summer, I am scampering to find stuff to do. Without much budget, there isn’t much one can do, right?
Blogging – that time-consuming activity that a writer ought to do. Ought?! Yeah, ought – because it is a perfect outlet for that person who needs to express. Writers are, by default, people who have the need to express. Bonus points for need-to-express people who write well. And it can be worth their while.
There are many blog sites. For a blog site to be successful, it has to be popular. What makes a blog popular? It could be many things. It’s like asking how a person can end up being popular. Social media is a microcosm of real life gone viral. It really isn’t so “micro” anymore, is it?
So here I am wondering what I should write about. I used to write a lot – and I mean so much that I actually earned from it. This was the precursor of blogging – article writing for real life publications like magazines and newspapers;, later, there were websites as well. I did not really go into blogging when it started. By then, I was too busy with real-life work and motherhood.
I still enjoy writing, be sure of that. I still feel the need to express, but I am not the run-of-the-mill blogger. I belong to the era of assigned topics. I was called in by people who needed something written about a specific topic. I did reviews of gadgets, music and shows. So now that I have the freedom to write about anything I like, I am honestly at a loss.
Yes, I do not know what to write about. The answer – write about what I like.
So what am I interest in? Music, TV shows (no, not telenovelas or Koreanovelas), movies (sorry, not Tagalog movies either), books (yes, definitely books). What else? Food maybe? Perhaps I can cross that bridge when I encounter something else I like…
So here goes my attempt at reviving my blogging prowess… “prowess”!!! LOL, right…
Blogging – that time-consuming activity that a writer ought to do. Ought?! Yeah, ought – because it is a perfect outlet for that person who needs to express. Writers are, by default, people who have the need to express. Bonus points for need-to-express people who write well. And it can be worth their while.
There are many blog sites. For a blog site to be successful, it has to be popular. What makes a blog popular? It could be many things. It’s like asking how a person can end up being popular. Social media is a microcosm of real life gone viral. It really isn’t so “micro” anymore, is it?
So here I am wondering what I should write about. I used to write a lot – and I mean so much that I actually earned from it. This was the precursor of blogging – article writing for real life publications like magazines and newspapers;, later, there were websites as well. I did not really go into blogging when it started. By then, I was too busy with real-life work and motherhood.
I still enjoy writing, be sure of that. I still feel the need to express, but I am not the run-of-the-mill blogger. I belong to the era of assigned topics. I was called in by people who needed something written about a specific topic. I did reviews of gadgets, music and shows. So now that I have the freedom to write about anything I like, I am honestly at a loss.
Yes, I do not know what to write about. The answer – write about what I like.
So what am I interest in? Music, TV shows (no, not telenovelas or Koreanovelas), movies (sorry, not Tagalog movies either), books (yes, definitely books). What else? Food maybe? Perhaps I can cross that bridge when I encounter something else I like…
So here goes my attempt at reviving my blogging prowess… “prowess”!!! LOL, right…
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