Monday, 18 November

Word of advice: It is not a good idea to have a big night out when you will be spending most of the next day hungover at airports.

I hid behind sunglasses at the Siargao airport. It was unbearably hot.

The Mactan airport was cold. I ate unnecessarily even if my stomach was queasy.

The plane took some time to be cleared for take off and landing due to air traffic congestion in Manila. By the time I arrived in the city, I launched straght into Friday night rush hour traffic.

STRONG SUGGESTION: Anyone with a smartphone who ever has to deal with city traffic should get the free app, Waze, and use it. Waze shows the best routes available and calculates the time to your destination based on user info. I don’t drive but I take a lot of taxis and, on a bad day of traffic, I would normally choose to take EDSA because, no matter how bad it gets, it will always move, even if at a snail’s pace; whereas, on C5, it is possible to get caught in a standstill and not move for hours. On this night, it’s a good thing I checked Waze which showed me that C5 was all clear and, after we had extricated ourselves from the mess towards EDSA, we made it to my house in 20 minutes.

I am now a Waze addict and report traffic jams and closed roads, etc.

Tuesday, 19 November

I spent the whole morning working on my visa to Myanmar.

On my way home, I checked my Facebook posts and one of them was calling for volunteers to repack goods for typhoon victims from 3 to 8 PM. It was almost 3 PM. I called the number on the post, gave my information, and then redirected the cab driver to take me to the very oddly named VAG Building along Ortigas Ave.

It was hot, sweaty and chaotic. But everyone was enthusiastic and we finished repacking by 5 PM.

On my way home, I realized I didn’t know who supplied the goods or where they were headed.

Wednesday, 20 November

Earlier in the week, a friend of mine, Lilo Gutierrez, sent me a message that her friend, Mariko Jacinto, had volunteered to feed the evacuees arriving at Villamor Air Base on November 21. Would I like to donate anything? I told her that not only would I donate, I would also like to help in whatever way I could. She told me to be at Mariko’s place by 5 o’clock on Thursday morning.

So I took it easy today and stayed at home.

Thursday, 21 November

I tossed and turned the whole night and, before the alarm went off at 4 AM, I was wide awake.

I checked Facebook. Writer, Teddy Montelibano, posted all over my wall the news that evacuues from typhoon-ravaged provinces were going to be rerouted from Villamor to Camp Aguinaldo. I sent a message to Lilo and she said we would still go ahead as scheduled, so I went to her boyfriend, Odel Perez’s place and we all went together to Mariko’s.

When we got there, Mariko was alone, packing rice, adobo and a slice of tomato in banana leaves. Nobody else had shown up. As soon as we started packing, we realized that there was no way the four of us could finish 800 banana leaf-packs by lunch time. I sent out an SOS on Facebook. While I packed, I thought – whom could I call? My hands were oily from the adobo so I asked Lilo to send a message to Chiqui Mabanta, owner of the vegetarian resto Corner Tree Cafe, who lived nearby. In a few hours, Chiqui texted back: “I just woke up. Is it okay if I get there at 8:30?” We asked her to bring more help.

Since the process of wrapping food in banana leaves was taking too long, much as we wanted to be environment friendly, we knew that the only way to speed things up was to pack things in styrofoam containers. We sent Mariko’s Man Friday, Ramon, out to buy supplies. But since he knew that none of us knew how to cook rice, he was hesitant to leave. Mariko assured him, “I’ll take care of it.” Sure enough, we burned the rice.

Later on, Mariko’s former high school classmate, Cora, showed up. She had a small business aking rice cakes which meant that she was quite the expert at banana leaf wrapping.

I took over the styrofoam operations, while Cora and Mariko continued with the banana leaves. Odel sorted out the boxes for packing up the meals and Lilo sliced tomatoes. Just as Odel had to leave for work, Chiqui showed up with some brawn (- her helpers’ son or something), Elmar, who was awesome. He carried what needed to be carried, restocked our containers with adobo and rice as needed. And then more help arrived. Chiqui reposted my SOS and two other people responded.

We were happy and upbeat. And then as Chiqui and the others had to go, I noticed the still untouched bundles of styrofoam boxes.

“How many boxes did we buy?”

“600.”

“Well, I see more than 200, almost 300 boxes that still need to be done.”

“But we alsol have the banana leaf ones.”

“Yeah, I would say that we have about 200 of those, which would leave us 200 short.”

By this time, MArkus Shmidt, owner of Firma accessories, had arrived with his van to transport the boxes to Camp Aguinaldo. We had run out of rice and we had run out of boxes to put the food in. And it was almost 11 PM. We were late for lunch time.

I told them to go with what we had and that Cora and I would just follow. They packed up and left.

Apart from Cora, two maids were helping us and another volunteer. I instructed them to halt with the banana leaves and work with the styrofoam boxes instead so that we could gauge how far along we had to go. I scrounged around for containers to put the food in and packed. In the meantime, Ramon and Mariko’s neighbors were cooking rice. When it looked like we had too much rice and not enough adobo, we found a pan of adobo on one of the counters. (Mariko, Lilo and another of their friends cooked adobo so, earlier, we had adobo in different containers all over the place.) We worked until everything ran out and, in the end, we still had a little over 100 containers left but there wasn’t anything we could do about it. So we took Mariko’s car, Ramon drove and I navigated with Waze.

We arrived at Camp Aguinaldo maybe 10 to 15 minutes after the van did, thanks to Waze.

Once we got there, there were no evacuees. We were infomred that the government agencies had still not gotten organized and unless they were, Villamor would not send over the evacuues. There were Smart and Sun tents out and we were told that we could have tables under one of the tents and give out the food there.

None of it seemed right to me. And i was ready to back out and leave. it’s a good thing Mariko was insistent on getting the food to the evacuues. The DSWD loaded the food onto their van and Mariko and the rest followed in her car. i went home.

• Carlo’s birthday salubong

22 November

• Gelato tasting, Bono, SM Aura
• ICanServe fundraising dinner: Around the Philippines in Small Plates, with Rosan and Teddy
• Black Market/Finders Keepers, with Rosan

23 November

• “The Producers”, with Rosan, Malu, Rajo, Nix, MiaTams
• Dinner at Plaza Cafe, drinks at Exit

24 November

• Lunch with Stephen at the Legaspi Market
• Coffee at Dennis’ place
• Bought meat at Kitayama

25 November

• Got visa from Myanmar embassy
• Dinner at Aida’s, with Chris, Teddy, Dedet, Rosan, Jason, Vanessa, Katrina, Cyrene
• Dessert at Stockton Place

26 November

• Packing

27 November

• Check-in at Clipper
• Fundraising dinner for Project Wheelchair, Dedet’s place
• Nicolas arrived

28 Nov – 9 Dec. Myanmar/Thailand

10 December

• Lunch with folks and Jay, Green Pastrues
• Depart for Cebu

11 December

• Lunch, Red Kimono
• Massage, Spa in Cebu
• Groceries
• Dinner at home, ham and eggs

12 December

• Nicolas played golf
• Got meds for Apollo
• Lunch with Michel, Tymad
• Waxing, pedicure, hair treatment
• Dinner with the Frachous, Japanese restaurant on AS Fortuna