Wrestling with the Wind (Part 1 of 3)

Pushed by boredom, illuminated by candle, wielding pen over paper, I write...

Milenyo (Xangsane to the rest of the world) was the strongest typhoon to hit Manila in 11 years, eh? I remember its predecessor, Rosing (Angela), punishing us with Signal no. 4 fury back in Bicol. My experience with Rosing all started with the late Ernie Baron showing us viewers of TV Patrol a satellite image of a menacing cloud spiral as large as the Philippines itself with winds of about 200 to 300 kph. He declared that this awful weather disturbance will hit Bicol head-on and possibly mess with the All Souls' Day rites of those places in its path, places which were under Storm Signal no. 3, bypassing the first two alert levels. Although used to annual storms, every Bicolano's heart sank. Still, the catastrophe was inevitable: within 24 hours and well throughout the night, the winds blew with destructive gusto and the rain inundated us in disease-laden floodwaters five feet deep. At around midnight, radio reports said that the typhoon just got stronger, and we were now under Signal no. 4. I barely knew the howler also hit Manila hard; because, we had no electricity for seven freakin' days!

In Bicol, tropical depressions, storms and typhoons were a yearly occurence that we practically grew up with them. My playmates and I had our childhood partly deprived due to uprooted fruit-bearing trees in our neighborhood. Later on, typhoons have ruined my planned swabe (smooth) moves, messing up my teenage love life big time (to the benefit of my main rival: he was stranded with the girl). Oftentimes, though, they are a welcome break from grade school grind up to college pressure, providing a source of excitement tempered by reaching out to those who have suffered.

Such regularity made me take such weather disturbances in stride. It also helped that I was still young and my parents took care of the logistics. Important tasks were ordered to older siblings, leaving me with ones like stay in the house, keep an eye on things, listen to the radio for news, do not disturb, and do not block the way. If there were floods, I'd also help in moving some of the things to the second floor. (There was one typhoon that flooded even the second floor. Feeling helpless, I slept that one out. Later I learned that the water never went higher during my slumber.) Even in my college dorm in Quezon City, we were taken care of by the maintenance staff. Better still, electricity, water, phone and even Internet concerns were capably handled.

My present life in Manila does not have much weather-related action in it. Newspaper columns in the wake of the Indian Ocean Tsunami, Katrina in New Orleans, and South Asian earthquakes has crowed on Manila's luck for not yet experiencing a natural disaster of similar scale (only man-made calamities). To my dismay, this lack of natural calamities and the general lack of interaction with nature have disabled my "nature-sense": I never had a clue of Milenyo's coming; because I never experienced the windy day that precedes a typhoon. What I experienced instead the night before the storm was gently-falling rain, the kind of rain that did not drive me into fits of melancholy. Oh, how deceitful the storm was for putting me under a false sense of complacency!

Sharing responsibility in the unit that we stay in generates new anxiety, much more when, in this instance, I was left home alone to fend the brunt of the typhoon. I was on my toes monitoring the leaks lest they turn out-of-control. I made sure the windows were shut, and for the windows with missing locks, I improvised with strings. I wrestled with the furious gust and rain just to close a window forced open by the wind. In some windows I won against the wind, in others I lost, with broken glass panels as proof of my failure.


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Summer 2006 Escapades (Part 5 of 5)

Rainy days have come. What better time to let the summer sun shine once again, at least in our minds.

-oOo-

Laiya, San Juan, Batangas

This was the outing that nearly failed to push through.

It was a tradition among the young ones in our IT department to have a summer outing as a bonding activity. In previous years, they had been to La Union and also to White Beach, Puerto Galera. Calls for organizing this outing came more than a month ahead of schedule so that we could mark it off our "busy" calendar. Consistent with our "workaholic" lifestyle though, we put the issue of organizing the outing at the back of our minds. Only later did it dawn upon us that we will have to reserve a venue in advance. Numerous suggestions have been thrown, but in the end they chose mine: Laiya Beach in San Juan, Batangas.

Obviously, I suggested this place since I had been there before--twice in fact--and both were bittersweet but predominantly happy memories nevertheless. On both occasions, I participated in my capacity as core group member in the year-end evaluation seminar of my beloved college organization, the Department of Student Welfare and Services (fondly called as DS). Ah, those were times of heightened emotions ranging from bored to solemn to reflective to cheerful to funny to sad to hopeful--all of these a testament to the friendship (or such) of a group that was formed between acquaintances and even strangers who were given tasks to fulfill in twelve months, and in the end will have to bid farewell to graduating members and give way to the next core group. Therefore, for me, this outing would also be a personal pilgrimage to relive those memories.

Alas, the year 2006 was out to prove itself as a rain-drenched year and it started early with its bid. There was a tropical storm in May, and it struck Batangas right during the weekend of our supposed outing. Thus, aside from the strange schedule for this spiraling cloud of bad weather, it had a quite unusual path (they usually pass by Bicol and Northern Luzon). We were forced to reschedule to June, even if we'd paid a 50% down payment, a transaction I personally handled through a dinner with my DS friend, Maan, whose family owns the place we will be lodging (perhaps the spilled glass of water in that dinner was an omen). Thank God, they're very accommodating, and our schedule was modified without much incidence.

The storm still dealt some damage to our plans. It, and its message that summer is over, drenched the enthusiasm of some of the dismal few who cared to join. From a measly 15 out of 40 potential attendees, our numbers dwindled down to six, with some, including me, still threatening to back out. I would lose face to my friend. From reserving two rooms, we would end up canceling it altogether. Even if it was not embarrassing (Maan says she understands), we would still lose the down payment (as she pointed out too). Attempting to salvage this outing, my officemates relied on their significant others. Still, this wouldn't obviously work for me, and, faced with the inevitable torture of watching lovebirds go mushy (among other things), my threat to back out remained. I changed my mind when one of them finally agreed on bringing her two kids along. At least the outing wouldn't be entirely a lover's trip. With the numbers assuring a critical mass of attendees, the outing pushed through, albeit with only one room this time.

The ten of us left one rainy Saturday morning aboard an old van that bravely moved along under the collective weight of our luggage. The clouds soon cleared when we have left the metropolis, and in no time we were rolling along the idyllic Batangas countryside. The trip itself was like traveling back in time. With the Eraserheads Anthology and Ultraelectromagnetic Jam CDs playing in the background, we were back in the 90's reliving school time fun. Yup, it was regression galore, making me wonder who the real kids are: the two girls silent/sleeping/bored at the front or the yuppies cracking up at any inanity that arose along the way. When the list of recent songs was exhausted, our time travel was pushed back further when we strangely agreed to play a digital preservation of an obscure artist of the Sixties. If we painted flowery patterns on the rickety old van and wore bell bottoms and oversized sunglasses (wait, this one's in style again), we'd be cruisin' along like the hippies of old. Peace mehhnn...

The trip was longer and farther than expected. In the first place, I, who reserved the venue, only have vague memories on how to go from Lipa to San Juan. Rakenrol! Thank God, one remembered a web site that gave directions to a neighboring resort and connected to it using his Nokia Communicator. Whaddya know, cutting edge technology did save the day. The last kilometer of the trip was a dirt road towards Laiya, the beach of white sand and fond memories.

The Filipino-style two-storey Casa Remo where I stayed for the two evaluation seminars still stood proudly. Upstairs, the sliding doors of the bedrooms were ajar. Downstairs the inhabitants were lounging by the sala, the same place where we held meetings and watched DVD movies. Others were playing cards by the long dining table. Beside it stood also the tamarind tree, decked with multi-colored lights that had dazzled us at night and a bamboo hammock that had lulled us to sleep as we whiled idle moments away. Ah, memories! This time, however, we would be staying in a two-storey concrete Casa Remo Apartelle beside the house. Built just two months ago, this would be for commercial use while the old house would be for exclusive family use.

We made the trip without aircon (lest the van overheats more frequently than what we experienced); thus, the air conditioned room was a welcome place of rest. We decided to let the hot afternoon pass first and focused on establishing territory. The room was actually designed for eight people, but with the kids being, well, small and the three couples having a propensity to stick close to each other, our group managed to fit in it nicely.

We joined the setting sun in taking a dip in the sea. The water was not as crystal-clear as in White Beach, but it sure appeared clean enough to be swim-able unlike that of Nasugbu. I smilingly remember how last year I filled a bottle with the white sand of this Laiya beach as a memento of that great evaluation seminar I attended. Indeed, the white sand makes Laiya similar to a Puerto Galera beach, and the resort owners here were making an effort to enhance that similarity. Multi-colored flags line a wide stretch of the beach and beach volleyball sites emerge from the sands. Moreover, there were boats offering transportation to snorkelling sites, and their docking and undocking also interfere with swimming. If the trend continues, perhaps rows and rows of seaside restaurants will be grilling seafood in the near future. But before that, perhaps it would be wise also to have a Bantay-Dagat to monitor the cleanliness of sand and sea. At the time of the outing, there was some trash being swept by the waves into shore. They might also want to do something about rocky portions in the beach. Lastly, the town of San Juan might have to expand the capacity of their plumbing system to handle the increasing numbers of resorts, since the large demand will reduce the flow of tap water to a trickle.

As expected, the couples swam as pairs like ... wait, what's the marine equivalent of lovebirds? I guess there's none so humans like these are setting an unprecedented marine behavior. As for the rest of us, the presence of the two kids was a constant and effective reminder that this was not exactly a lover's outing. Aside from their mother, we never thought their silence and lethargy during the trip actually meant they were merely preserving their energy. By the time the sun disappeared, the boundless energy they release made them so adorable that you'd want them to quit it. The younger one, in fact, reminds me of Taz of Looney Tunes. After the swim, we showered and dined, still the kids remained bouncy and zippy as ever. Even when we left them in the room for the perfunctory drinking session cum bonding activity, they continued playing on the two joined king-sized beds. Their rowdiness made me comment that they might be more drunk than we were. The couples contemplated the possibility of having similar lively offspring in the future.

In the end, I realized that this outing was not exactly the pilgrimage to the recent past that I wished it was. If I wanted that kind of pilgrimage, I should have done so with the friends I have shared this pleasant recent past with. Instead, the outing was an introduction to the possibilities of new friends, new loves and the fruits that these would bring.


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