A Plea from My Heart to Yours October 2, 2009

There has been nothing worth writing these days. I haven’t written in this blog for weeks. Caught up in the haste of trying to make a living and trying to live a life, I had no time left for creative pursuits. But now I have a reason to write and perhaps even to make a simple plea.

After typhoon Ketsana pummeled Manila, Quezon City, Marikina, Pasig, and Rizal and left thousands of families homeless, penniless, starving, and lost, it’s difficult putting up an indifferent countenance, pretending as if nothing is wrong with this country.  And now, typhoon Parma is already heading toward the same ravaged cities and municipalities, just when many of the homes are still submerged in murky flood waters. It’s disheartening, yes, but with the number of Filipinos helping each other out, it’s easy to be hopeful despite all the loss.

If you are reading this post, and if you are a kababayan, please don’t forget to offer your prayers, and maybe a bit of the contents of your wallet too. You can donate in cash or in kind– bottled water, powdered milk, noodles, dried beans, rice, and even extra clothes.  I have heard that SM is willing to ship grocery donations to Manila, so if you are in the provinces, you can shop for groceries and ask for SM to transport your donated goods. Aboitiz and Negros Navigation offices are also willing to accept donations.

If you are somewhere near Manila and its neighboring cities, and you have some time to kill, don’t hesitate to volunteer at relief centers and do what little you can to help. No, we don’t need to do great things, we are only asked to do small things with great love.

And if you have some extra cash to spare, please feel free to make cash donations and pledges. If you can put off buying that pair of shoes for another payday and give the money as a donation, may you be blessed a thousandfold. The collective sum can be used to feed more people should this recent typhoon intensify and should relief goods begin to run out. And if there is anything left, the cash donations will be used for the rehabilitation of villages and the reconstruction of homes and buildings ravaged by the catastrophe.

The environment needs your help, too. Accordingly, clogged waterways and garbage-ridden river ways have contributed to the heavy flooding and may very well be the reason why some of the villages in Pasig and Rizal remain submerged in water, six days after last Saturday’s typhoon. If you have the time, do some research about proper waste segregation, garbage disposal, and environment conservation. It is never too late to start our awareness on the environment. The time is NOW.

Lastly, please don’t forget to pray. Pray even during odd times, and ask that the people who suffer be given enough strength to endure everything — loss of lives, loss of loves, loss of living. Go to Church and light a candle for those who are hungry, cold, disoriented, and those who have started to give up. If you are a practising Catholic, please pray the rosary for the whole month of October.  And to the rest who are free spirits, ask your God, whoever you conceive him to be, to heal this land and its people.

We can always help.

After the Heavy Rains February 11, 2009

For the past weeks, the house has been under renovations. Since the day of the flash floods about a month ago, the entire family has been planning on renovating the property. We decided finally to repaint, re-tile, and redecorate the house. It was out of necessity yes, but somehow, we did not want anything to remind us of the horrible ordeal, which had us sleeping in a hotel the first night, as the beds and pillows were all soaked.

Hopefully, by the time the renovations are done, we’ll add a few decorative touches here and there, so nothing of the past nightmare will ever haunt us again. Well, I really hope so. Each time the rain persists for hours, I now find it hard to sleep, silently cursing the clogged drainage systems, deforestation and quarrying activities, and the oh-so-smug city officials who think placing Cagayan de Oro under a state of calamity is going to be enough. Um, excuse me, but there are grave issues here, and we can’t afford to have another deluge drown this city before you all start taking action. Thankfully for us, no major appliance or piece of furniture was damaged. My casualties included a few old handbags, some newly bought fashion magazines, DVD player, a love letter, USB, and other trinkets.

So. I think the repainting will begin this week, and I’m thinking of choosing a shade less predictable than white. Taupe, maybe? Or corn yellow, perhaps?

One thing is for certain, though, I want the house to look sunshiny and bright, happy and resilient- all the things that a home should be, even after the heavy rains.

End of Summer May 25, 2008

“Anyone who says sunshine brings happiness has never danced in the rain”

Endless Puddles November 19, 2007

-Raining, raining, raining for three straight days-

 

I grew up thinking that the rain is a beautiful thing. And it still is. But when you’re stuck inside the house, alone on a Monday, with a hoarse throat, a running fever, and the winds are singing a depressing tune outside, the rain could be anything, except beautiful.

One of my guilty pleasures as a child, and even as a blundering adolescent, was frolicking under the rain. No, I don’t mean just standing under the leaking gutters, and bathing in murky rainwater and slimy dead leaves (gross!), but waiting until the downpour gets to a slashing degree, then happily hopping unto the green lawn, shrieking and dancing like crazy, completely soaked to my underwear. As if the rain was not enough, I would open the garden faucets, then using a watering hose, or a balde and tabo, rinse myself entirely, the warm faucet water surprisingly delicious against the cold rain. My siblings would almost always join me in these wet excursions, and whether they took pleasure with these things as much as I did, I can never be certain. I was always the last one to dry myself with the towels, looking the other way when my mother begins throwing disapproving glances at me.

Then, when I am no longer allowed to dance under the rain because I am already told to please, please grow up, I began to associate the rain with anything romantic, of cool dreamy nights, perhaps the stuff of distant fairytales. Everything romantic, everything dramatic happens when it’s raining. An old couple sharing a tiny umbrella, reunited friends having espresso in a café, and a toddler in a yellow raincoat, holding tight to her mommy’s hand. Or strangers conversing under the same shade, and people finally having the time to pick up that novel, and begin reading because there’s nothing else left to do. And the way those dead, brown leaves fall carelessly to the ground, when the rain is about to start and before the winds get impatient, like little parachutes dancing in mid-air, is always a thing of beauty. Of course, weathers like these could get merciless, and there is nothing dreamy with overflowing rivers, and people getting stuck in traffic because a ten-wheeler has skidded on the slippery highway. Or even that time when I was caught inside a bus for hours because a landslide threatened to throw people, cars, and buses off the ravine. But the rain is still a beautiful thing, because everything is washed with color— the leaves look greener, those red roofs look like shiny carpets, and the earth always smells luscious and heady after the wet spells.

Except that today I have a terrible throat, unwashed hair, and still have to travel to those melancholic mountains for work, in this cold, cold weather. And the house is deserted, so I can hear the sound of the radio, my own breathing, and the rain slapping the ground simultaneously. For once, as much as I worship it, I hope that it stops so I can travel in comfort, and our laundry can dry out in the sun.

 

Those Puffy Clouds October 19, 2007

I am a weather person. My temperament, my interests, and even my little imaginings are all affected by the weather. What I would choose to eat during the day, for example, has to be patterned on how the weather is, and though I do not have the liberty at all times to be rather picky with my meals, peeking out the window to stare at the skies has become an everyday practice for me. The other day, somebody brought gallons of ice cream at the office but no amount of prodding on my colleagues’ part could make me eat even a single spoonful, since outside everything was gray and wet. If for instance, the sun is out, the trees are dancing, and the air reminds me of a summer midmorning, I would crave for tempura and chocolate cookie milkshakes, because a few years back that was what we always had on humid summer afternoons back at home, or at the long canteen at Xavier University.

Sunny weather keeps me cheerful whenever I’m indoors, and sometimes even under trees or under an umbrella, when the sun’s heat has not yet reached its smoldering peak. But the noontime sun usually drives me mad, and so does thrashing rainy weather. These extremes are usually worse on my physical self: I get annoying prickly rashes under intense heat, and I suffer from back pains and dry, peeling lips during cold weather. I get crazy whenever it rains after office hours are over, because that translates to getting home in wet high heels. But I do so love rainy Sunday afternoons, because that would mean lounging inside the house with not much of a plan for the rest of the day. Reading and sipping coffee or hot chocolate beats everything else, except when the phone rings and some girlfriend needs to have some pointless chismisan with me.

Rainy bedtimes are my favorite. The thing with me is that I have difficulty sleeping whenever everybody else is asleep but myself; I have to sleep way ahead of the others. There is a certain eeriness to a silent late evening when everyone has gone to bed and all the lights are turned off. Of course I can always play some music but since I love to hum the tunes, I doubt if I would ever get to sleep at all. But when it starts to rain, that’s when I would slide under the blankets in perfect contentment, as the steady patter of water on the rooftops drowns my solitude away.

Today’s Friday was an odd mixture of sunny and wet – I woke up to a blinding morning, walked to lunch under scorching noonday heat, and heard thunder and lightning by three in the afternoon. A few hours later, the ground was soaked with rainwater, and the downpour slowed down to a drizzle by five. But if the rains don’t come tonight, I won’t go to bed until I’m drowsy to my bones, and my head voluntarily drops face down on the pillows.