You get used to a lot of strange things when you live in the
The whole city is flooded with poisoned liquid, which was actually raging like a malignant river. Hundreds are stranded; some, like me, refused to be. I was slogging happily, like Gene Kelly in Singin’ In The Rain, but without the umbrella, much less the dance moves. But that was peanuts to what happened, as I found out later, to the entire Metro Manila.
The LRT 1 closed operation, and I was glad they re-opened by late afternoon. I rode to Pedro Gil to get to a friend’s house in the Paco area, near
I returned to my room the next day, and saw that everything I owned were marinated, like chicken wings in soy sauce with calamansi lemons, the entire night. From the marks on the wall, the water level went just a couple of feet shy of the roof. Almost a thousand books and magazines and files – including the only copy of my first novel’s original manuscript – transformed into a mountainous yucky soggy decaying Jabba the Hut. I’m starting all over again, and I’m not the only one.
Thousands of my country men died and lost all they had, but as TV host Boy Abunda memorably said: We have different stories, but they all lead to a single refrain – “Thank God we’re still alive.”
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