Milenyo - Two Days of Darkness

Day 1 Wednesday & Thursday

Everything seemed normal Wednesday afternoon. I decided to use up my half day leave and left work. No, it wasn't because I wanted to goof off, but rather I had a stomachache and was scared to make a mess in school...hehehehe....so I went home after class. I made sure that I attended my classes and then after dismissal, left for work.

As usual, I brought home my papers to check. I had lunch at home. I had it packed and decided to eat at home instead of eating at home. Again, just in case my stomach wouldn't take the to the solids...hehehehe. Watched a bit of tv and then took a nap, a long one. When I woke up, it was already raining pretty hard. I was lucky that I caught a break in between the rain and spared my shoes.

When I watched the evening news, Malacañang had already declared that were wasn't going to be any classes. Well, none for the kids anyways, but I was so sure that it wasn't going to be the case with us.

I finished checking my paperwork and felt good about going back to work the next day. I had finished checking papers and was ready to start the new day with new papers...lol...

The next day, I woke up early ready for work....hey, I'm talking about work, so let's fastforward to me having no work for the day cause of the bad weather condition.

I went back to sleep, and when I woke up, there was still electricity. Through the years, whenever PAG-ASA declares that there's a "supertyphoon," chances are they're wrong. So as usual, I didn't take their warning too seriously. Although, I did put water in the buckets just in case. Made sure that I found the candles and had some food in the fridge.

I went downstairs to turn on the TV and my PC. It was still around 9 am by then but the wind was really strong. I could hear it hitting the roof, like it was about to fly off. Not the roof of the apartment but the neighbor's. And lo and behold, no power!!!!

It was kinda dark outside too. So I decided after eating biscuit for lunch to go back to sleep. Might as well take advantage of the holiday by catching up on sleep. When I woke up, the storm was still brewing. In fact, the rain would change direction. I had no choice but to move some boxes away from the window. Put some towels underneath. Rain would go in, in between and was making puddles on the floor. With that done, I went back to sleep.

I finally got a chance to open the window after awhile. Neighbor's roof were still intact, thank goodness. Trees were uprooted. Branches everywhere.

When it was finally night, I lighted the candles that I could find around the house. Two scented candles and three "normal" ones...hehehehe. Then I got my books from my room and decided to read to pass the time. Then I had dinner, sandwiches for a change and then read some more.

I decided to move upstairs to my room. I was careful with the candles. Making sure they were away from curtains. I've heard so many horror stories of houses catching fire cause of candles that people forgot to put out.

I tried to read but it was just too difficult. I decided to go to sleep. Put out the candles and then just laid in bed. Listening to the neighbors talk, trying to stare out of the window. Couldn't even see the stars. It was cloudy outside.




Day 2 Friday

The second day was basically the same as the first. No power. It felt like the medieval ages. The dark ages, literally. We finally ran out of water. But I had my buckets...two of them just in case. I woke up late and the only sound that woke me up was the phone ringing. Strange huh? We had no power but you can reach me through the phone. It was Mems, asking if we had water. I told her nope.

So I went back to bed and then woke up again as my landlady was knocking on the door. She decided to give me another bucket of water. Of course, I wasn't going to turn that down. I used it to take a shower. Then returned the empty bucket to her. I asked her when would we have power, she said tomorrow. Hmm....tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya tomorrow, you're only a day away. Oh, another day in the medieval ages.

I had breakfast and then went upstairs to read. It was the only thing I could do under the circumstances. I was starting to worry since I had hotdogs in the fridge. Luckily, I'm too lazy to defrost the fridge so the ice was quite thick. Seriously, penguins could move in there...hehehehe. So the hotdogs were cold and frozen there, with the remaining ice.

I tried to clean up a little. Removed the wet towels under the windows. Checked the boxes to make sure that they were starting to dry. And as usual, was napping and napping like there was tomorrow. Dang, I felt like Rip Van Winkle, except for the beard. But heck, why should I complain right? It was my one chance to catch up on sleep.

I skipped lunch and went right to snacks. I foraged what was left in the cupboard. I had peanuts, biscuits as usual and juice. I made pineapple juice and had some peanuts and some Mentos, leftovers from my review classes. I had cheese but not more bread. Oh well, at least I still had food. Then I realized that I didn't have rice for like almost 2 days. I was lucky I hadn't gone crazy yet...hehehehe....people who know me know that I can't survive the day with at least one meal with rice. Since there was no power, couldn't use the electric stove. I thought about going out but I was too lazy...hehehehe....so I decided to eat the cold rice in the fridge. Let it thaw for a while and then ate I think about two tablespoons of rice with Ma-ling. That pretty much satisfied my craving for rice. Maybe its just psychological after all...hehehehe.

The good news that day was that my landlady had water delivered so we had water. I was contemplating doing my laundry...hehehe...but again, I was too lazy. Plus I was afraid it wouldn't dry up what with the weather and I'd end up washing it again.

So it was back to my favorite past times, sleeping and reading. Reading and sleeping. Hmm...its like a vacation except there's no water. But like my friend says, maybe it did me some good. Vacation away from the PC. Its amazing how people are attached to it, including myself. I don't think I can picture a day that I wouldn't be working at my PC for at least an hour. If I'm not uploading pics, I'm reading the news, or writing my blog. There's always a reason why I'm online. But for the last two days, no nothing. No TV, no PC, no radio (makes me wish I had a transistor radio), no nothing. Almost as if there was a news blackout. I even contemplated taking a pen and a paper and actually writing....not!!!! I've got a horrible penmanship that sometimes I can't even understand.

Day 3 Saturday

I woke up early Saturday. There was supposed to be an event at work and I didn't know if it was cancelled or not. Well, considering most parts of the metro didn't have power, I figured there was none, but you never can be sure about stuff like that. I turned on my mobile phone and sent a message to Ms. Jenneth. She said she couldn't go to work. I still didn't get anything by 7 am so I thought I'd better go back to sleep.

When I woke up, there was no network coverage from my phone. Wow, weird huh? Finally, I went back to sleep. When I woke up again around 8 am, lo and behold!!! The light was on at the landing. Woo hoo!!!!

Got up as fast as I could. Had breakfast. Cleaned up the fridge, the house as best as I could. I texted some people and it felt good to have things back to "normal."

I know that I'm lucky to have power back. I read in the paper that there's this only certain percentage with their power back. I'm sure they'll get their power back again....(as long as those foolish people don't steal power cables...)