*headdesk* Now I realize I've been neglecting this blog, although I've been keeping up Simpleng Kaligayahan because of, well, Teaser Tuesdays. LOL. I guess it's been because this blog was supposed to be about politics and culture and I was, well, hesitant to write something that I hadn't researched much about or couldn't discuss fully. Add in a laptop that decided to act up after one year and a half, and a wonky Internet connection (I'm looking at you, Globe Visibility / Tattoo), and well... Child of Earth doesn't get updated in three weeks! Mea culpa, mea culpa.

Also, I didn't get to do anything much about Typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng except for, well, buying and donating relief goods. And that was only because I found a spare couple of hundred in the pocket of my pants as I was about to wash it. I was pretty broke during those times, because all I had left was supposedly my allowance for fares going to work and meals until payday. Then the office got flooded, and we didn't know when exactly it would be fit for normal operations. But we had to keep the office websites going, so we logged on as much as we were able. Fortunately all but one of the sites had been transferred to commercial servers a few days before Ondoy!

Suddenly my biggest expense was keeping my internet connection going so I'd know what was happening outside. That was the time I wished fervently that I had a postpaid connection or a DSL, because then I wouldn't have to worry about whether I had enough to pay for load, or that I wouldn't have enough credits left to finish uploading and editing articles, each time the connection dropped or disconnected even without reaching a 15-minute increment. (I'm looking at you again, Globe.) It was all I could do to fight the tears of frustration each time I looked at the flat line on the statistics tab, with only five minutes after I'd reconnected. I don't know how much I spent on internet load from September 26, when Ondoy hit, to October 7, when we could finally return to the office. Since I was spending a minimum of five hours a day online, not including the time I spent on Plurk, Twitter and Facebook and the weather sites monitoring the latest updates, and Globe Visibility doesn't have a log, I can't say for sure. Perhaps 800 pesos at the minimum.

It was raining off and on during those days, but thankfully the water in the street outside the house was only knee deep. That made it hard to go out, though, and go to my favorite internet cafe in the next block. The two or three times that I was able to, the internet connection also kept disconnecting at the oddest times... the only good thing about that was paying only 10 pesos an hour if I stayed for five hours, no matter how frequently I got disconnected.

Thankfully, we live on the third floor, so we didn't get flooded. However, we found out how essential it is to waterproof cement when you live in a place that gets a lot of storms... the afternoon that Ondoy hit, my roommate, who had been doing her week's laundry, thought she'd change her clothes, only to realize that they were all wet. Apparently, water had still leaked through the walls and ceiling and pooled on the floor under the beds, where we kept our clothes in traveling bags. We spent the next three days laundering everything and hoping they'd dry. Still, we were very fortunate to have sustained so little damage, when people in other parts of the metro were losing all that they had and sitting on their roofs in the rain.

And all that I was able to do was pack up some spare clothes and canned goods and drop them off at the nearest place that accepted relief goods. I was happy to find the two hundred because that let me buy some mineral water, bread, and more canned goods, as well as some soap, at Puregold and make another trip to drop off donations. I still feel guilty for not doing more. :(