After Ondoy
The cleanup has started. Three days after Ondoy struck, signs of life from the local government has been detected in the form of a water tanker and hose held by the barangay street sweepers as they attempted to clear mud and debris from our streets. This is more than I can say for some places in Cainta, San Mateo, Pateros and Marikina, still inundated by flood.
Water was chest deep inside our house, which meant it was neck deep in the street right outside the house, and consequently way deeper than that in the area that one must pass in order to enter the area. This is where most of the informal settlers have two-storey houses. They know about the floods that visit the area. The second floor is not so much as an extension of the house as it is an evacuation area when the floods hit.
My husband and I decided to leave the house when the water was chest high inside, in order to bring our daughter and our helper to the covered court by the barangay hall which was on higher ground. The flood started at around 9am, and was highest at half past 1 in the afternoon. When the water was obviously subsiding around 4pm we decided to bring Maia and Bebing back to the house. There was one bed that was more or less dry. We retrieved whatever was usable from our furniture that had been floating about for more than three hours, had the earliest dinner we recall and was asleep before 7pm.
When Bebing and I woke the next day at around 4am the water had subsided, but most of the furniture had been rendered useless. Most of our tables were made of wooden pulp, the kind that didn’t take kindly to inundations.
But we are luckier than most. We still have the house and most of our appliances have been found working after two days of drying out. We are all healthy, none of us have been adversely affected by standing and wading in the flood for several hours. We received several calls from Cris’s brother Masons, and text messages from my photography group the D60KREW. We are fortunate that people care for us, and have been praying for our safety. We thank them from the bottom of our hearts.
Ghosts of practices past
I remember my aunt’s old house had asbestos ceilings. They were supposed to be fire retardant and would help greatly should the house catch fire and we happened to be in it. This was from almost forty years ago, and back then I had no idea that asbestos exposure could cause mesothelioma.
Wikipedia says that most people who develop mesothelioma have worked on jobs where they inhaled asbestos particles, or they have been exposed to asbestos dust and fiber in other ways. It has also been suggested that washing the clothes of a family member who worked with asbestos can put a person at risk for developing mesothelioma. I imagine all the workmen who installed the ceilings in that house and their wives and family members who may have washed their clothes, and I am thankful that none of the houses I have lived in since have asbestos ceilings.
Can’t be less than perfect
Certain acne products claim to clear pimples overnight. But what do you do when overnight is not fast enough? You post process. There’s lots of software, both commercial and free that will allow you to do this.
The photo above is of my friend Evangeline. We fondly call her Bangge. On the day that I took this photo of her, she had a blemish on the right side of her face. But one of the most important things to remember about portraiture is that a photographer must never show his model as less than perfect. So out went the blemish with my healing brush.
Waiting for the sun to come out
Waiting for the sun to come out these days is like waiting for Vicky Belo to sell truck accessories. You think it will never happen. I can’t remember the last time the sun was out from morning till sunset. It’s always a little hope of sun in the morning and then next thing you know you have thunder and lightning and rain. It’s especially annoying on working days, because if you leave the house with the sun shining you don’t think of bringing an umbrella or rain gear. Thirty minutes into your trip it starts to rain. Conversely if you don’t bring any rain gear there’s a 99.9% chance that it will rain when you are a hundred meters away from your office building.
About Me
