When August Starts

It’s cold and wet. It’s August afterall. The rain stopped early this morning and I was able to visit the garden for a while. I love the raindrops clinging to the leaves of some of my plants. They look like silver jewels. My Kamuning has that lovely scent which I could smell from the garage.

I am on my 105th book this year. 69% of what I promised myself to finish reading by December. I found so many lovely books at ReadEra, all e-books of course. As usual I still prefer historical books. I always love reading about what life was like in the 15th to 19th century. I am reminded of our very own kalesa more than 50 years ago. Kalesa is a two-wheel horse-drawn carriage used in the Philippines more than half a century ago. It was a primary mode of public and private transportation during the Spanish colonial era. Now, they largely only survive as tourists attraction. They are still used today in the commercial district of chinatown and in the province of Ilocos where historical landmarks abound.

How’s your day? Stay safe everyone.

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Here We Go

Gosh, the past few days, all my afternoons were spent reading. Recently, I read paranormal and historical books, a bit of romance and now I am presently reading an epistolary novel about Alaska. I don’t know why every time I find a book about Alaska, I am always tempted to read it. I can’t remember now but a few years ago, I watched a film featuring the place and I was overjoyed to see those places I only read in books.

Can you believe, a study showed that the Philippines ranked second to the last among 53 countries in terms of pandemic resilience. Pathetic isn’t it? I don’t know what happened to the billions of pesos this administration borrowed supposedly for Covid. To think that private companies who purchased the vaccines are required to give 50% to the government. Hay!!!

It rains every day now, mostly thunderstorms in the afternoon. I am spared from watering the garden. I dread the times though when heavy rains arrive during the months of August and September. I am afraid of floods.

I hope I could write a post more than once a week. Sometimes though, I feel so lazy.

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The Scent And Sound Of The Morning

That gentle kiss on your cheeks brought by the early morning breeze, what a wonderful feeling.

Our weather bureau said we’ll be having monsoon rains until Sunday. There’s a drizzle, that kind that stays too long and you won’t see the sun because the dark clouds are obscuring it.

Faintly, I heard the croak of the frogs last night. I read somewhere that only male frogs can croak. Maybe it is their way of telling the female ones that it’s time to play among the empty fields filled with rain water.  Early this morning, a little sparrow sang from my open window. How nice to wake up and listen to the sweet melody.

You know what I always love about the morning after a heavy rain? It’s the raindrops. They cling to the leaves of the plants, they look like silver jewels hanging on our clothes line.  I am always enamored taking shots of raindrops.

They’re like clear mirrors that reflect the nearby plants and leaves in the garden.

I love the gentle patter of rain outside. May it just stay that way, no flooding, no thunderstorms, just enough to wet the grass and the plants in the garden.

I planted some Adenium seeds early this morning. Finally, one of the seed pods that I was waiting for from my lone Adenium pot fell to the ground. I had it tied loosely before so the seeds won’t scatter. I hope, they would grow, fingers crossed.

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Saturday Night

Not really inclined to read nor blog but I have to do something before I go to sleep. So tired fixing things when we went back home this morning. We had to transfer the car to a higher place and elevate  those things that we feared would be caught by the flood.

I told you in my blog yesterday that I hate it when it rains non-stop. True enough, flood waters reached our garage. We  left the house at about 7 pm and spent the night with  our neighbors’ house together with Mom, Josef and Jovy and Oreo of course. Since typhoon Ondoy left  Metro Manila flooded for days back in 2009, I have become afraid of floods.  It used to be when this place was just rice field all around when we had the house built in 1995 but today, it is filled with buildings and houses some of which even have third floors.

Metro Manila and surrounding provinces got flooded again, some even reaching their rooftops.  Some families are still in evacuation centers especially Marikina residents which got the most flooded areas in the metropolis.

Saw this evacuation center in Marikina on Facebook. a wonderful change from the usual crowded places of basketball courts and classrooms  with not so much amenities for the evacuees.

I asked Josef not to report to work tomorrow if this rain continues which PAGASA says until  Tuesday.  It is really alarming when the rain comes. Report says that yesterday poured a half-month amount of rain in the metropolis.  So many  people were stranded. Some malls were open so the shoppers could use their parking spaces and the malls to pass the night.

That fearsome feeling,  watching the night while the flood subsides. I am grateful though that it did not enter our house.

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Friday Blues

I haven’t seen the sun’s face for almost a week.

It keeps hiding behind  the thick dark clouds  which are threatening rain again. We are still experiencing monsoon rains and maybe this will last until the weekend.

I  miss the summer days.  I miss the early morning sunrise, I miss those mornings at the garden with a hot cup of coffee while watching the  traffic and the students pass by.

My thoughts wander….beyond.  Time seems to go too slow or maybe because I always wake up early and the morning chores are done in a jiffy.

I am  presently reading The 3rd Victim by Sydney  Bauer, a  thriller. Murder, a  dead baby, IVF  (In Vitro Fertilization) , court scenes and a criminal lawyer trying his best to know the truth and defend  someone who everybody thinks is the guilty one.  When you are in the middle of reading something, you have your own conjectures on who is the criminal and you form an opinion but will get  disappointed because you do not expect what happens next.  I slept late last night trying to reach the end of the story  but it’s all of 528 pages and I am just halfway through.

Sydney Bauer is an Australian author and this is the first time I encountered her work.

 

 

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Rainy, Rainy Saturday

Blank and pristine white pages, sharpened pencils, colored pens – I had this sudden longing to write by hand and not depend on my PC to compose something. But then on second thoughts, it is even harder to copy a hand-written piece  from a notebook or journal and type it on your PC. It is easier to correct words, spellings and grammar when you are typing.

It is still raining outside and it rained the whole day. The southwest monsoons are being pushed by tropical storm Domeng bringing sometimes heavy to moderate rains in Metro Manila. As of the latest weather update, we are in a yellow rainfall warning.

Josef and Jovy drove me to the satellite clinic of The Medical City for check-up then went on their way to visit Jovy’s aunt and grandma in Quezon City. It rained hard after they left and I got worried about mom being alone in the house.  I went home  soon after I got the result of my lab test  and my internist prescribed antibiotics that I have to take for a week.  I went back out again when the rain subsided to buy medicines.

I really don’t like it when it rains hard and everything at the garden is saturated. I know, I won’t have to water them maybe for about two or three days but I have to clean our small pond of rain water and debris from our Arius tree. What a hassle!

The cold weather is welcome though sans the downpour. The state weather bureau  PAGASA has officially declared the start of the rainy season yesterday. Five days of rain generating a total amount of at least 25 millimeters (mm) of rainfall is required for them to declare it officially  and these five days must also include 3 straight days of at least 1 mm of rainfall.

…but my rain lilies are blooming.

Today makes me remember that old, old nursery rhyme, “rain, rain go away, come again another day”.

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These Rains

The sky is dotted with grey clouds. I can’t understand this kind of weather. It’s been raining on and off since the start of December. There are times when one o’clock  in the afternoon looks like six in the  evening. That’s how dark it goes sometimes.

It’s been raining since noon today, that kind that stays for a few hours and you won’t want to get out of the house. Nursing your coffee mug, trying to start another  suspense thriller on your tab.  One feels a little lazy  and lethargic.

Three days ago, I found a copy of Paula Hawkins’s second book called Into The Water.  Goodreads  Choice Award 2017 winner under the mystery and thriller category. Back in 2015, her first book The Girl On the Train also won in the same group. I can’t help but compare  her second book to the first one. I actually gave them both three-stars but I like the first one better.  I got confused at first while reading the first few chapters of Into The Water. So many characters,   it’s a compelling read though – mysterious, eerie and full of suspense. I didn’t expect the ending.  I just started on the  Missing Child by Patricia  MacDonald. It’s my first book of this particular author, another suspense and  mystery thriller. The first few chapters are fast-paced, that kind that you would want to pick up again after setting it aside for an hour or two.  It is my 199th read on Goodreads this year. I finished my 150-book challenge  2017 the last week of October and continued on. So many books, so many stories to read, so many talented authors to discover. I guess this is the year that I  found so many authors but they were  not in my bucket list.  Mary Oliver’s poems come in handy when I am feeling low. I always find her works so uplifting.  I wish I could find some of her books here. I think National Book Store does not carry this author. I do read some of her works online though.

Books are the easiest companions you can ever have, they don’t complain, they don’t get mad, they just wait in a corner until you  have the time to hold them again.

What have you been reading lately?

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Glad To See The Sun Again

Tropical storm Maring brought havoc to Central and  Southern Luzon and now on its way out of the country.  It had a  maximum sustained winds of 75 km/hour near the center and gustiness of up to 90 km/hour.  Metro Manila was not spared of flash floods and heavy rains.

I watched  the news the whole day yesterday and was wary of the heavy rains. I am afraid of flash floods but we were luckier than those places which experienced rising flood waters that entered their homes and caused tremendous traffic jams.  One subdivision in our town was submerged in water yesterday.

Our country experiences  an average of 15 to  18 typhoons every year with those coming in December or thereabouts the strongest. Since typhoon Ondoy back in September 2009, I got so afraid of typhoons, tropical storms and monsoon rains. We had the house renovated back then because most of our cabinets were destroyed and some of our furniture and appliances got flooded.  I will always remember that helpless feeling, the rising waters up to my neck when we left the house to seek refuge from  our neighbor’s house.

I see the sun shining again. Good day everyone.

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Morning Thoughts

Oh  my, July is almost gone.

It’s been raining since yesterday. We have these habagat rains again because of typhoon Gorio. Gorio is enhancing the monsoon rains all over Metro Manila and nearby provinces. One thing that I don’t like about rainy days is I have to clean our small pond afterwards. We used to have Koi fish  but one rainy morning, they were all gone flashed by heavy rains that saturated the garden.

The lazy day makes me  remember those days when my eldest brother and I were in grade school. Every rainy season, we would stay with my aunt  ( my mom’s older sister) the whole five days that there were classes. My mom was afraid  that we couldn’t go to school on time when it rained hard. We lived in an upper place from the town proper and we used to cross the river  through a wooden bridge wide enough for our feet to step on. When the water is high, the bridge sometimes disappears and we would use a raft made of bamboo poles. I was always afraid to stand and balance myself while crossing.  My aunt’s place was a bit near the school  and we just walked  to and from it.  We have a concrete bridge nowadays  where vehicles could pass through.

During summer months,  we go home every lunch break and we would have a run at the bridge most of the time. We would go home together with my  cousins, neighbors’ kids and some other relatives  and go back in the afternoon  for our classes. We learned to balance ourselves on the wooden bridge  when crossing.  Those were the days, part of our grade school life years ago.

When we started high school, Mom and dad decided to transfer us to Manila and we enrolled at the University of Santo Tomas where I finished college too. I had a hard time then adjusting to high school life in the city although we spent summer vacations with dad when we were young.  Bus and jeepney rides became a necessity. I could not imagine myself now riding on buses or jeepneys.  It was so different back then, pollution was not that heavy and commuters had easy access to public vehicles. Nowadays, LTFRB is so hot on the Grab and Uber rides unmindful of those colorum buses, jeepneys  and taxis on the streets of Metro Manila.  LTFRB is requiring those private vehicles affiliated to Uber and Grab to get similar franchise but they sat on those applications for a year. I must admit, riding a Uber or Grab is the most convenient way to travel aside of course from bringing your car to work.  Most traditional taxi drivers here are arrogant and  choose riders and places. It’s not practical to ride on jeepneys on longer routes because of pollution.

The rain has stopped finally and I am here…reminiscing.

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Cloudy Tuesday

I’ve been waiting for the sun to show its face today. It’s a no go. It’s been like this since Saturday afternoon. We’ve been experiencing thunderstorms regularly now since the last two weeks of June. Well, I guess that is just to be expected since the rainy season has set in. Last night, we had the worse thunderstorm, with loud claps of thunder  and flashes of lightning.  Our dog Noki is afraid of loud  and sharp noise so we let him  stay under the dining table the whole time it was raining.  I had several loads of bed sheets  and bathroom towels yesterday afternoon  and they’re drying now without the heat of the sun.  Though we have  a spinner, they still need further drying.

We had dinner at Zark’s Burgers Saturday night. Never mind the calories and the greasy feel of it all.  It’s just once in a while.  I enjoyed their onion rings,  its way, way better than the onion rings they serve at Burgoo’s.  The food is good, after all you won’t expect fine dining when you are eating in a small resto. Waiting for at least 10 minutes for you to be seated and another 15 minutes for the food preparation maybe a no, no for some but at least the food is hot when it is served on your table.  I’ve shunned eating burgers since I read the book Toxin by Robin Cook years and years ago.  It’s once in a blue moon so maybe it’s okay ‘no?

Some people are not happy that boxer Manny Pacquiao lost to Horn in their fight last Sunday. The former is getting on in years and he has been there for so many years. You can’t be successful in two undertakings well at the same time.  I guess it is about time he goes back to the  Senate and really work. As a senator, our taxes are paying for him.  I used to admire the guy but as time goes  by, success has gone to his head. In all the years that he was in Congress and now at the Senate, he has passed only one law to his name. The law is titled, “An Act establishing a regular district office of the Land Transportation Office in the province of Sarangani and appropriating funds.” He is from Sarangani province. He co-authored three more  and it’s all about expanding coverage of incentives to national athletes and promoting entrepreneurship and financial literacy program to Filipino youth.  My take is, if he is really sincere in helping, he can just concentrate on helping young Filipino athletes without having to be a senator which I think even if he is qualified, he lacks experience and education to be there.  He is a rich man after all. He is one of the most absentee congressmen when he was in Congress. I take it he has dreams of being president in the near future. Oh my, what an ambition. I don’t know what will happen to the Philippines if he becomes one. Some people vote because of popularity and some candidates win because of popular votes.

I’ve made this unconsciously long. Happy 4th of July to all my blogger friends here in the US.

 

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