I have been MIA for a while. Have you heard about the typhoon which recently left a huge damage in our country, particularly in our place in Metro Manila? It's called Ondoy here but the international name is Typhoon Ketsana. Here's a link from CNN http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/10/02/week.in.irpt/index.html The picture being shown there is Pasig City which is where we live. Here's another link http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/09/28/philippines.flood.irpt/index.html
I have been having problems with 4shared since last week. I was supposed to upload your kits but there are a lot of invalid links in my account that I need to re-upload. I noticed that if my files in 4shared reach more than 50% of the allotted 5 GB, many links will be invalid. To think that I have paid subscription at 4shared early this year. Yes, mine is not the free stuff.
Anyway, I was supposed to upload everything last Saturday (Sept 26). I know there's a storm/typhoon but it was only signal #1 in Metro Manila. In our country, typhoons are very common especially from June to November. The name of the typhoon is Ondoy. Since, it starts with letter "O", that means it's the 15th typhoon that hit the country since January 2009. Typhoon is very common and expected during this season. Life goes on for us for signal #1 storm, there are still offices and classes for college students. We're so used with heavy rainfall and a "little" flood.
Last Saturday, Mike and I woke up late (well, it's normal for us to wake up between 9-10 am as we also sleep late). We had a great sleep, it rained overnight. Mike loves it when it rains. On Saturday morning, we noticed as we stepped on the floor that it's wet. We lived on the second floor and we've been used on having those water on our floor that sipped through the walls when there's a heavy downpour. But this time, the water nearly filled our pail. I was a little bit complaining since we haven't had our breakfast yet and there we were attending to our wet floor.
I turned on the computer and told my husband that I will upload files the whole day. I prepared breakfast and continued my ramblings until my husband unfurled the curtains and saw that the water in our neighbors' place (from the other subdivision) was already up to my knees based on our estimate. It still didn't bother me as I thought, when the rain stop in the afternoon, it will subside. Before, we had our breakfast, I tried to connect to the internet so that there's an uploading going on while we're eating but it always failed. So, we just had our breakfast. I told my husband to just hibernate the computer as I will try to connect at the internet after we had our breakfast. When I went back, I still can't connect at the internet, so I just decided to call our clubhouse bistro to order our food for lunch but I thought the line is being cut, so I asked my husband to check our telephone line and it's so funny, he said: "Honey, there's no dial tone, didn't you notice? That's the reason you cannot connect with the internet" LOL, I really didn't notice, my mind is still conditioned that everything was doing fine that day.
So, first it was the telephone, then, the electricity was next and then, there's no water supply. It went on from Saturday to Wednesday. But our landline has only been resumed only this morning (Friday). There's still a lot of things that happened during that time but our internet connection is being disconnected every 5 minutes, so I'll tell the other stories some other time.
Just to give you an idea on what our vicinity looked like last Sunday morning, my husband and I took a lot of pictures and here are some of them.
(you can click the picture to enlarge it) This was taken at around 6:00-6:30 am, Sunday morning. Mike and I went to the rooftop (at the fifth floor--we lived in a mid-rise condominium to see how our neighborhood looked like. The water was brown because there was a landslide in the nearby towns of Antipolo and Morong (that's the mountainous side) and it was filled with mud. There were vehicles on the street which you cannot see in this picture because they were submerged in water.
(you can click the picture to enlarge it) There were also a lot of people who stayed overnight on the roof, especially those who didn't have a second floor. Our unit was on the second floor so except for the "little" water on the floor (compared to this) that I used to complain about plus the "no water, landline, electricity and food thingy", we're still so blessed. We were supposed to have our weekly grocery that day and I'm not really into processed foods that's why we starved a little since we didn't have any canned goods. But all in all, we're still doing great compared to our neighbors.
(you can click the picture to enlarge it)
This photo says it all. Have you noticed the cabinet? The clothes are still neatly folded. We have friends in this area and until now, they are still submerged in knee-deep water.
OK, let's go back to you kits, one of the kits that I was supposed to upload last Saturday was very ironic to my situation as it is called "Summer Sweeties" hahaha, you read that right. I know most of you are from the West and you just had your summer and I'm sure you have a lot of photos on the beach to scrap. That's why I decided to make a summer/beach kit. So while we are experiencing heavy rain and flood in this part of the world, you're still savoring the memories you had during your summer, LOL. You will laugh with the other with the other kit for the month of September because it also depicts a situation that was very contradictory to our condition during that time, LOL.
I still don't know when will the kits be up as the internet connection is not doing well at this time. I just want to assure you that your kits are safe from the floods. I will post as soon as I can. I have tons of emails to answer and a lot of things to clean up. So please, just be patient. Thank you so much for your understanding. There's another typhoon coming this Saturday, Typhoon Peping, so if I were not able to post again, please be assured that I'll give your kits as soon as I can. Kindly bear with me a little bit more.