Journal Entry by the hour and minute

September 26

10:00AM

I was looking outside the window of our apartment, wondering when the rain would stop. It was about 10:04 in the morning. I cursed myself, saying I should have woke up earlier. I have a meeting in the afternoon. 2:00PM to be exact. I still had to prepare my materials. I still had to go about my morning rituals. I take my breakfast, not bothering the heavy rains pouring outside.

“It will stop in a few hours. Just one of those bad weather days,” I say to myself.

11:00AM

Finished my breakfast and also finished packing my stuff. The rain is still pouring down hard, harder than an hour ago. Living this high has its perks and problems. The weight of the wind and the rain hit our 5th floor windows. My mother is telling me to reconsider and not to leave the house anymore. I stay recalcitrant and proceed with my morning rituals.

12:00NN

After exiting the bathroom, I look out the windows.

“What the @#$. The water’s starting to rise up,” I wonder to myself. That never happened before. I start wondering if the meeting is still pushing through. I call my friend and ask him if the meeting is still a go. I am told it is. Just to fill my stomach further, I take my lunch.I am sure this will be a long day ahead.

1:00PM

The rain grows fiercer than the previous two hours. The waters have devoured most of the car tires and the people below are wading through the flood. This is really bad. I decide that I can’t risk myself going to the meeting anymore. I think this is just an appetizer for what’s going to happen the rest of the day.

I call my friend, and we decide that we won’t join the meeting. We just agree that the other attendees of the meeting (if they joined even) would understand.

7:00PM

We’ve been out of power for about 30 minutes. Normally, this area does not experience brownouts for more than 20 minutes. Looks like this is going to be one of those exceptions.

10:00PM

Well looks like this is the exception. We just tune in to the AM radio. It’s been a long long time since I last listened to the AM radio news. But I guess that’s the way it is as you grow older. You listen to FM, listen to MP3 perhaps (especially the younger ones), and then only switch on the AM radio if you don’t have TV…or power.

11:00PM

The news is depressing. I hear a lot of rescue efforts especially in the areas of Marikina, Cainta, other parts of Rizal and Ortigas Extension. I look out the window and can’t see anything as dark has fallen and there’s no electricity to power any lights.

Trapped in our own house.

September 27

6:00AM

I woke up, groggy from a sleep that felt more like a shortened nap. As if from instinct, I look through our window again. The flood water is brown, perhaps due to the mud and silt that mixed with it. It seemed almost dreamlike and I just returned to bed.

10:00AM

Power has not yet been restored. I still hear the news about the rescue efforts. Help is starting to pour in from the private sector.  And I am hungry. I just grab whatever is available on the dining table.

3:00PM

Since there’s nothing much else to do in the house, I just go back to taking a nap. My neck was sore because I didn’t sleep so well last night. Zzzz

5:00PM

Upon waking up, I still feel groggy and my stomach isn’t feeling so good. The water at home isn’t clean anymore. And I’m sure it’s because of the flood water that barged into the ground floor of the apartment.

While my mother is listening to the radio, I overhear a tragic story of a family who is sharing their flood drenched house with a corpse for a relative. I also hear about other cries for help, particularly from Provident Village.I also hear of multiple stories about water reaching waist high, knee high, and worse the height of one person. I also hear about 200 people stranded in Ever. I hear about the story of one person being trapped in his car and being swept away by the flood.

8:00 PM

All the people in the house are tired and feel hot from the weather. The rain has stopped and so has the wind. It was as if nothing happened yesterday. The news is still filled with tragic stories.

1130PM

Power has been restored. We try to rest well. I consider myself, as well as my family, lucky as the only things we had to contend with was lack of power, lack of water and lack of food. Others had to contend with hypothermia, one had to contend with shielding his children from trauma knowing they had a corpse in their house, others had premature births, others, I imagine, had encountered a fate worse than death.

Today, it is September 28. It is night time. The weather outside is fine, if not a bit cold.

In closing,

To those who have plenty, share.

To those who have few, persevere.

We hope that the next typhoon will go astray and not reach our shores.

Stay safe and be content.

I was at SM Manila today wandering around and wondering aloud when the last hurrah of such establishments as Odyssey Records and Astroplus will be. There were absolutely no customers inside. I wonder, given the level of piracy on and off the Internet, how can record stores survive? Prices of pirated music is 80 – 90%  cheaper and over on the Internet, the music you get can be quantified as free. How do you compete with free?

I used to love going to record stores and still remember the time when Music One and Tower Records at least had a respectable number of customers and a wide range of music titles. When they first opened, I’d usually go over the foreign titles available. These days, I hardly have the time to visit them because I get tired traveling to Makati. So Odyssey is the next best thing.

Unfortunately with Odyssey, the salesladies are clueless about the titles they are selling. You can read one of my older posts on how a trip to Odyssey can be an odyssey in real comedy. Also, they don’t have as many titles as you’d wish them to have. It’s quite understandable because theirs isn’t a business that must stock much inventory.

I just hope stores like them continue to exist and persist even in the face of piracy.

If you’ve been to SM Manila, you will note that a restaurant called Kitaro is just across Odyssey. It was dinnertime when I was still at the mall and I noticed that Kitaro was the lone restaurant with no patrons. The waiters and even the cook was outside waiting for any patrons they could welcome.

I pity establishments that have no business. It must be the entrepreneur in me. Perhaps they don’t have any good food or good products to sell, or they have the wrong pricing, or lousy service, or whatever. The point is when I see stores that have no business, it can also mean that the economy is bad. In this instance, I think they just have the wrong proposition because other restaurants were filled with people.

I am actually sad when I see businesses that are not being patronized. (Of course, I am talking about legitimate businesses.) The reason? Lost jobs when the business closes down. No job means no money for the employee and his or her family. Tsktsk.

World Teachers Day is held on October 5th annually. This year the Philippines is celebrating it by labeling it with a theme entitled “My Teacher, My Hero”. The celebration begins on the 4th of September and culminates on World Teachers’ Day. It is in the spirit of celebration that spurred me to again open my blog site and start posting away.

Visitors who have been loyal readers (including those with hopes that I will finally be able to post regularly so they drop by every so often) will notice that I still do not have any consistent schedule of posting.

Newbies will realize that I’m not much into creative design as I am into writing. Because my blog site is bland, I make up for it in quality posting… at least imo.

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I’m a frustrated educator. Since college, I’ve always wanted to teach. Unfortunately, I don’t have a masteral degree yet so I can’t “corrupt the minds of the youth” yet, as our college Philosophy professor used to say. So what I can’t do in the classroom, I try to do in the workplace by mentoring and coaching people. I’m no career guru but I try to share with my people my previous experiences and give them opportunities to shine.

So while I’m no professor in the school, perhaps I try to sublimate it by becoming a coach in the school of hard knocks.

I can never forget that cliche. I was at the canteen alone during my last term in college and an old Religion professor approached me and asked if we could share a table. I obliged. He goes on congratulating me that I’ll soon be a college graduate but that there is still much to learn in the school of hard knocks.

I haven’t visited my alma mater – regardless if it’s the college I went to or high school -  for a very long time. I wonder where my teachers are today. I guess this longing just reflects the profound effect educators have on their students. This is especially true for great educators as well as lousy ones. You always remember the extremes.

One time I was in ____ (I can’t remember the municipality), Bulacan doing a market visit of a public market (now doesn’t that sound double redundant….) and lo and behold I spot my grade 6 school teacher. She recognized me and we exchanged pleasantries. She had stopped teaching and was now doing business in Bulacan. She was our English teacher and she made us spell all those crazy words like o-no-ma-to-pee-ya, hai-per-ball-y, and other words that befuddled the minds of the tweens.

I also frequently see one of my college professor in a mall in Manila. He can’t remember me and I don’t call out to him because I am not even sure if he still teaches. This teacher did not corrupt our minds, but he did pollute it somewhat.

Of all the teachers that I hold close to my aorta is Mr. Hilario Francia. He was our professor for art appreciation and he would frequently ask his students to submit art reviews. At the end of the semester, I was one of the 5 or so students whom he asked to contribute to the Manila Times. I guess that’s where the writer in me was born. I still contribute today but not to Manila Times, due to limited time, I only contribute sparingly- a community newspaper and a personal finance magazine (although lately haven’t contributed anything to said magazine).

I wish that one day I can also plant the seeds for a student’s future success. To all the teachers of the world, happy teachers day(or month)!

I really don’t update my blog as often as I want to because I’m finding it increasingly more difficult to have the time to write.  However, from time to time when I stare blankly at my blog site, I tell myself, “Hey bud, you better write something or you’re gonna get rusty soon.” Today is that time.

As a writer, I read a lot. So because I read a lot, I have a lot (of books).

However, most of my books have been gathering dust.

I probably have what I call the book hoarding syndrome (HBS), especially when I see books on bargain. Unlike stocks, you aren’t catching a falling knife when you get something that’s 50% off its original price. And mind you, there are a lot on sale these coming weeks at the National Bookstore due to their annual September sale. I also can’t wait for the upcoming Book Fair.

I’m glad that there are now a lot of people flocking to bookstores, probably because of how Fully Booked redefined book reading and book selling. It’s also probably due to the proliferation of books to movies like Harry Potter and Twilight. I saw how teens save up money just to buy copies of the said series. At least people respect intellectual property rights when it comes to the printed media.

Going back to HBS, I found myself in book heaven recently due to the ongoing sale in National (Powerbooks recently ended theirs). I loitered around looking for great bargains.

I am especially drawn to hardbound business books that have lost half or more of its value. Business books are expensive and getting them at dirt cheap prices comes only once a year. So now I have a pile of books sitting on the floor just waiting for my curious eyes to take notice of their words.

During a recent trip to the Robinsons Ermita branch of National, I couldn’t help (actually, you really cannot) noticing (actually, hearing) a girl singing to her heart’s content at the Magic Sing kiosk. She belted one out out-of-tune song after another. I wanted to approach her and ask her if it was really part of her job description.

It’s one of the biggest mysteries of the universe. How do you attract people to buy something when the live testimonial for it is soooo bad? Maybe that explains why there are more people buying Magic Sing at Odyssey Record Bars than in National Bookstore. Or, it can just be a simple case of bad distribution strategy. I could be wrong.

While I’ve posted many a blog posts about pathetic customer service. I’ve encountered an experience that made me believe that all is not lost in the world of Philippine customer service.

Please visit my post in a different blog for more about it. Thanks!

I feel passionately about leadership and perhaps the passing of the late President Cory has inspired me to hammer away at my keyboard to reflect on the word leadership.

It used to be that leadership was summed up by having the biggest set of balls in the court. Being a leader meant someone who could order others around without having to listen to opinions – differing or not. I imagine that most organizations before succeeded because the underlings running it had their carrots in front of their eyes.

These days, that just doesn’t do it anymore. Today, leaders must inspire, not coerce. That is probably the reason why most authoritarian states have converted to democracies. There are still plenty of countries run by a single person or party but pockets of resistance are there. And, even if there is none, protests to the prevailing authority can be in the avenues of art, music or science.

Whatever the cause of this shift – be it women’s rights, more educated populace, the Internet, news, inherent human desire – what is in vogue today is consultative leadership. Unfortunately, change has been slower in this country when it comes to this new form of leadership. As yet, it has only been lip service.

Perhaps it is because the need for survival usurps the need for inspirational leadership. It is both a flaw and a puzzle that we allow ourselves to be subjected to abuse – oftentimes verbal – that we follow blindly and aimlessly so called leaders who we think provide us with our basic needs.

Imagine the employee who gets criticized heavily by his employer. Does he risk shouting or fighting back only to lose income for his family of 10?

Far too common is such a story that it remains the fabric of our lives here. Unless we are born of privileged pedigree or opulent wealth, we work in order to survive. In effect, we give power to already powerful people in high positions.

This is not a call to revolt as revolts do not always end in happy ever afters. This is just a slap on your face to wake up and realize that you do not have to subject yourselves to pity. There are better pastures out there and you need not go beyond the shores of these islands.

When your person is maligned, resign. People have a right to opine, but we do not have the right to shred the self-esteem and dignity of another.

In living, we can inspire. But when in death, to be able to draw hundreds of thousands of people to follow you, that is the consequence of true leadership. Only a few can claim to such immortality.

Thank you indeed Madame Cory. May you rest in heavenly peace.

The school season was supposed to have started last week, but due to the flu pandemic (as the WHO is labeling it now), most private schools will start this Monday. Traffic will certainly be bad as there will be a convergence of students on their way to school, families back from vacation, and the usual Monday traffic snarl.

I hope come Monday, it wouldn’t be as bad as I imagine.

It’s not as bad as say, the tuition fee most schools charge. I was talking to somebody today and I learned that high schools charge from as low as 30K to almost 100K per year. Imagine that. Is knowledge that expensive?

That amount does not include the books, school supplies, and your child’s snacks for the next 9 to 10 months. It’s amazing how we Filipinos still survive in this country with the level of wages we receive.

Pambihira.

What about public schools? While I never studied in a public school, I would assume that the quality is not that good. It is not my intention to demean people who came from public schools as I am knowledgeable of the fact that there are achievers in Philippine society who come from the public education system.

But this afternoon, a personal experience forced me to recall an old post of mine regarding our public education. This experience was anecdotal and worrisome.

I was at the Gateway Mall and entered a record bar there. I had been looking for a CD copy of a collaborative album featuring Eric Clapton and BB King. I approached a comely saleslady (SL), and asked this question:

Moi: Miss, meron po ba kayong Eric Clapton?

SL   : Yun po ba title ng kanta?

It might not be due to her schooling but just innocent ignorance; but, there’s no denying that her answer is up there with the best one liners in the world.

Ciao and enjoy the rest of the week. I will be back soon

Upon the request of someone, I wrote a poem for an upcoming event to be held at the Manila Doctors College grounds (near Blue Wave Macapagal) June 20.

Help Mother Earth! Support the Recyclables & Wellness Camp!

RENEWAL                                   by moi

The trees spoke no words,

Only the emotion of falling leaves.

The fish of the sea, the birds of the sky,

The four legged beasts that prowl the land;

All lost on man’s hand.

The corrupted spirit,

The tortured mind,

Avarice spreads like the filth of the sea.

The death song plays across the land,

All because of man’s hand.

Yet in the darkness of day,

The seed of the good and the deed of the noble

Refuse to enlist in the evil of men

The bounty and harvest of the sea and the land

All will return by man’s hand.

Nature’s treasure and the human spirit

The joyous whispers of the birds and the trees

A chant of happiness played by the rays of the Sun

There is a new beginning in all the land,

And it all started with man’s hands.

(Special thanks to a friend who recited this poem over at Jam 88.3 last Saturday 9PM.)

After a terrible incident on Monday, I still feel shivers down my rickety spine. It’s already Wednesday; 2,880 agonizing minutes have already passed but paranoia continues to enjoy resting on my shoulders.

No I wasn’t held up, but I was once a victim of the circumstance – and my personal ignorance – while riding a jeep along pollution and petty thieves infested Recto.

The circumstance – I realized I was alone with 3 thieves on board. One was sticking out his fan knife at me like a laser pointer aimed at my face.

My Ignorance – Recto. Taking out your mobile phone.

The rest is a story of priceless historical idiocy. Ignorance of the laws of the universe excuses no one. Especially the ones who stick out their mobile phones in public places.

Last Monday, I fell victim yet again to another law of the universe – clear the hell out of the way of the President if you want to see your car again.

I wouldn’t have had this problem if our greedy landlord spared a parking slot for us. But that’s worth another story.

We park on the street and this Monday, the Grand Dame had to make a grand visit somewhere, and our car – along with the neighbors’ – were getting in the way of her public entrance.

Under threat of a 2,000 peso penalty, as well as the possible damage to the handbrake, I hurried my ass back home.

Upon arriving, the only car left on the street was – you guessed it – ours. So I climbed up a 100 steps to our floor, and ran back down skipping two steps at a time.

(Yes, there’s no working elevator. Our landlord wants to imbibe in the tenants and unit owners the value of exercise – even for those aged 60 and up. If there is a God, I’d like to ask one simple question, where is the equity in life?)

I opened the door to the driver’s seat, rammed the keys in, turned on the engine and stepped on the gas. I didn’t care if my heavy foot evaporated all the gas in the tank.

About ten minutes later, I find out that Madame President passed by. Just in the nick of time.

Now is that power or what? If someone can make you climb up a hundred steps without stopping to catch his breath, that’s power.

But it’s charm when you can climb up that many steps, go down to park your car, and then wait for the parade to pass by so you’d get to greet the personalities.

You get what you want both ways, but only one of them will make someone go the extra mile.

Thank God there’s an election.

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Favorite quote at the moment: our name is our virtue.

Been quite busy lately. I’ll resume posting, hopefully by this Friday. See ya.