Aftermath of the Tropical Storm

This is one of the rare moments that I tune in to the news channel on TV. For once, I want to be updated with the current event that was the typhoon that passed. That's how much of an impact Typhoon Ketsana is right now. Everywhere I turn, I hear about the typhoon and the affects it brought with it; whether news came from the internet, TV or radio.

What may be more difficult to grasp is the fact that this typhoon has made itself known to not only my girlfriend Kai and her family, but also to a number of my previous teachers from grade school and high school. DDDDD8

The escalating number of cases I hear right and left about the state of things our country, especially of people I know, is such an eye-opener. A tropical storm this intense... to cause a flood so high.... to take so many lives... to displace so many families... to cause so much disarray... is something I didn't think I'd see in my lifetime.

To not experience the flood in the house during the worst is a blessing.

To not be stranded in a place that's not your home during the worst is a blessing.

To basically live through the worst is a blessing.

Be grateful for any casualties that you've avoided through the weekend.

So... truly... my greatest sympathies to the victims. My prayers go out to those who died during the storm... to those who are homeless... and to my friends who are going through hardships because of Ondoy. You are all in my prayers.

Typhoon Ketsana

Bagyong Ondoy is the local name. Typhoon Ketsana is the international name. Take your pick, either way it was a devastating experience for the people of the Philippines yesterday, September 26, 2009.

The only thing I can say about it: Absolutely catastrophic. Never once did I think I would bear witness to such a natural calamity such as floods, let alone be right under it. The heaviest rainfall in history in the span of six hours here in the Philippines. @_______@

Lemme share my own personal experience. So at around 10:20 in the morning, I went out under the storm to head to Katipunan to hand over some documents I printed out for Kai for her Marketing class the night before. The rain was coming down hard, yet I found myself driving smack dab in the midst of it all. Luckily I didn't meet much traffic until just before Katipunan. I was stuck in slow moving traffic for an hour, and already both Kai and my mom had told me to head back home. So I wasn't one to complain.

The rain was, to say the least, unforgiving. Not only were there strong winds, the heavy rain was coming down non-stop. I admit, it was such a challenge braving the little flooded areas heading to UP - where I passed - and went to Fine Arts to pick up my sister. A lot of areas around UP Diliman campus was flooded, so we had to go around to find a less flooded road to travel through.

One of my sister's classmates hitched a ride with us, and she became a key part in our journey to brave the traffic and heavy rains to get to Commonwealth. The car - my dad's -'s aircon was on the fritz one reason or another, and it was getting quite foggy inside the car. As we were driving through UP all of us were literally wiping the accumulated fog from the windshields and windows to at least have some visibility to the side mirrors. Even my sister's friend pitched in, wiping the back.

We found our way out of UP after failed attempts at trying to see if the gate at Ylanan Road was open. Sadly it wasn't. Finally, we got out at Balara and chartered the way all the way to Tandang Sora. In the slow moving traffic of Balara, I received calls from my parents, asking us how things were, and texts from Kai, who was worried about how things were above her own situation stranded in school. D8

It was past 1 in the afternoon when I bothered to check the time as we were in Balara. We even got into a little casualty. Because of the rain and fog, my sister didn't see that the right front tire had hit a small rock (and I say rock because it's quite big), leaving us stuck for a little bit. After a bit of debate of what to do, me and my sister's friend got out of the car and tried to move the stuff and helped the car move back enough to get past the small obstacle.

After constant wiping of the fog and the back defogger making slow progress, we finally reached Commonwealth and to our surprise, saw it as open as the it ever was. The final hurdle, as I called it. We dropped my sister's friend down at one of the pedestrian overpasses and made the last few kilometers into our subdivision.

During our drive and I had already drenched both sleeves of my long shirt with fog, my sister and I talked about how lucky we were that we were together, otherwise we'd have already met an accident if we were alone. That being the case, it was when my sister finally sounded the horn outside our house did we scream out 'FINALLY!!!' to each other, touched down in our garage at quarter to 3 in the afternoon.

The latter events that followed - the blackout for 4 hours at our subdivision - was unimportant. I feel very strongly to all the victims of this Typhoon, especially those in the areas of Marikina, Cainta and Pasig. This was the first that I've bothered to pay attention to the news channels and be updated with this natural disaster, hoping against hope that everybody is fighting to stay alive and surviving amidst this catastrophe.

I'm grateful that my family and I did not see any floods collect here around our house, but I worry still for my friends and relatives who may have been greatly or even partially affected by this disaster.

Kai's family, especially, has been greatly affected by it. And to me that's something to very much worried about. But I'm happy to report that her mother and grandmother, who were left stranded on the rooftop of their house most of the day yesterday, have been attended to by Kai's uncles and will be making trips back to their house in the coming days to see what they can salvage of their belongings. R.I.P. to Kai's lovebirds who died during the Typhoon. )8 You four will be missed.

My thoughts go out to all other victims. To all the students who were stranded in their respective schools, I hope you all have been cared for. Let's all do our part to help restore our country. I send a prayer to all those who did not make it through the night, people and animal alike.

In short, STOP CUTTING DOWN THE TREES!!!!! DDDDDD8

Reminiscing a year and summer spent

Last September 11 was the JSP Week Culminating Activity day. Oh how that brought back memories. ^__^ Practically a year before, (on September 5, 2008, to be exact), I vividly recall hosting the activity with Kim, Hansel and Yuiko. It was such a fun way to spend my freshman year by involving myself in something like this. ^__^b

L-R: Hansel, me, Kim & Yuiko

This was a picture taken by one of Hansel's friends during the event last year. You gotta love Hansel's costume. ^___^b Planning it and going through the actual activity was just pure fun.

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And summer was just another thing to enjoy. Since I needed to take a foreign language class, I decided to take up Japanese. Upon my blockmate Lev's suggestion, I enrolled into the same class with her and out other blockmate Tiff under Ian-sensei. Section E was a great class to be in. The atmosphere was great and everybody there was so warming and fun altogether. It got my motivated to go to class everyday! ^o^/

JSP1 Section E, Summer '09

Above is a picture of most of the class and Ian-sensei during the last day of JSP1 from Tiff's camera. We watched the videos the three groups made applying everything we learned throughout the course, and it's been nothing but a laughfest. xDD The last day is always the most memorable day.

L-R: Lev, Ian-sensei, me & Tiff

And who wouldn't want to have a memorable picture with the great teacher himself?! xD To commemorate the occasion, Lev, Tiff and I had a picture with Ian-sensei~ A memorabilia to take with us as we leave behind JSP and move on to harder things.

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Finally, we go to the near present. Kim and I went to pass by the Culminating Activity at the ever-familiar MVP Roofdeck where we saw Hansel, who dropped by to help out/attended the festive event. (Note: Kim was in Ian-sensei's earlier class over the summer) By chance, we were able to see Ian-sensei and get a picture with him (taken by Hansel with my camera below) before he left for Japan the following Monday. We miss you, Ian-sensei!

L-R: Kim, Ian-sensei & me

iTunes

As it's been a week since my last entry to his blog, I think it's about time I write another entry. ^____^

The topic at hand for this entry is about iTunes. If, like me, you own an iPod (not the black and white version, mind you), you sometimes have to worry yourself over the album art, proper compilations and lyrics (for some) so you have easier browsing time when you're on-the-go. Unfortunately, even more so if you're a little bit obsessive-compulsive (OC) like me. xDD

So you allot some of your time doing just that if you didn't do it gradually when you acquire new music and stuff it into your library of songs. It's not always easy finding an album art for a particular song, especially if you don't even know the album name to begin with. The lyrics, of course, can come later. You'd be satisfied with seeing something on your screen instead of that paired eighth note, right? Right.

It's not all bad, though. In fact, sometimes it becomes a little addicting to do in the long run. But yeah, that's probably just me. ^____^;;;

Fuuma no Kojirou

So yesterday I finished watching the 13 episodes of the live-action drama of the anime Fuuma no Kojirou. It was something that my girlfriend got into since one of our favored Tenimyu actors Furukawa Yuuta was portraying one of the characters there. I had to admit, the story was pretty awesome and the ninja genre was taken to a whole new level for me, despite it being an old-school anime (you should see the anime version; the animation resembles Sailor Moon).

Playing Bridge

Being part of a block who has nothing better to do during their breaks besides coming together in groups of four to play card games is one great block to be in. A quartet of players, regardless who they may be, would often gather in a particular area to play one of the following games: Pusoy-Dos, Bridge or Hearts. For this entry, I'll be focusing on the game of Bridge; in particular, Mystery Bridge.

Here's a simple explanation of how the game is played. With four players, the card deck of 52 is divided equally amongst them (13 per player). Bridge is a team game, and pairs (often across one another) try to work together to gather a pile of cards enough to win the game, dependent on the bid. In Mystery Bridge, whoever wins the bid will choose a card. Whoever has that card is their partner.

For us, the bidding starts with whoever dealt the cards. To bid means to technically assign a particular suit as a 'trump', deemed highest among all other suits. On some occasions, there can be no trump, meaning that all suits are equal in value so to speak. The bidding level is alphabetical, with Clubs being the lowest, then Diamonds, then Hearts, then Spades. The highest one is No Trump.

The number of piles of cards needed by each pair is determined by the number. Normally, a bid would be "1 (insert desired suit here)". The number tends to increase until all other three players pass. If nobody made a bid, the trump would immediately be 1 No Trump.

If the bid was 1, then there will be a race to 7 piles for each pair.

If 2, the winning team needs to get 8 piles, while the other pair, 6.

If 3, the winning team needs to get 9 piles, while the other pair, 5.

If 4, the winning team needs to get 10 piles, while the other pair, 4.

If 5, the winning team needs to get 11 piles, while the other pair, 3.

Rarely does the bid go up to 5 unless the hand of a player is really good.

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Now that I've explained the game as best as I can, I'll move on to a particular game I had with my blockmates Tiff, Neil and Gie over lunch to end my blog entry. So it was our last game before we headed off to Math class. In my hand, I recall having the following cards: A, K, Q, 9, 8 and 7 of clubs and A, K and Q of diamonds among my 13 cards. I raised the bid to 3 No Trump where everybody passed. Since it was a game of Mystery Bridge, I declared that my partner would be whoever had the Ace of Spades, to which I believe I only had about one or two. So since it was a no trump game, I was the first to make a move.

And wouldn't you know it, by the end of the game, I on my own won with the mentioned cards. I exhausted the clubs and played the three highest Diamond cards and got the 9 piles all by myself. ^____________________________^v

Epic win, epic win.

My New Gadgets

It won't be very often, but there'll be times when you'll be seeing my face on my own blog posts. Such of course, would be for this occasion, when I introduce you all to my two new gadgets: Daisuke and Yuu. I actually already introduced you all to my phone Daisuke in my previous post, but might as well, give you guys a visual. So yes, my blue sliding Nokia 2680. :3 And then of course there's Yuu, my blue iPod Nano 4th Gen Chromatic 8GB. This was something I wanted to purchase with the money I acquired from my grandfather, so I'm glad my dad was able to find a reasonable price and get it. ^________________^v

Also, I got a haircut as well. Personally, I'm seeing my old Kyouya look, so I'll have time to grow my silly bedhair back to get that Tezuka/Daisuke look. xD

New Phone

Old news for some, new news for others, but I lost my Nokia 6120 Classic phone during my commute to Petron, Katipunan last September 2, 2009, a Wednesday. So I was without a phone for a school day. My mom got me a replacement sim for my number since it's a post-paid plan, so the number's still the same.

Yesterday, my parents, sister and I went to Trinoma - since plans of going to Manila Ocean Park was cancelled. In the process, we brought my new phone: a blue Nokia 2680. It's a sliding phone. :3 The shade of blue is just awesome. ^___________^v

We ended up watching Year One starring Jack Black and Michael Cera. :3

The Lucky Shirt

L-R: Izza and Neil

This was a picture taken about two weeks ago before Physics class began. Shirts say so much, and this was the particular week when the CompSAt Geek Shirt Sale was ongoing. Here's two of my blockmates. Izza, on the left, is wearing one of said geek shirts, but the printing press made a mistake on the shirt if you notice. I mean, who reads <3 upside down? >>

Oh well. Neil's shirt, however, is just full of epic win. His Google shirt is just for the win. Especially the back, which Izza points out. ^_____^b Yes, Izza. Don't we all feel lucky?