I am back! - Elysian Fields

Hi all! I am officially back and uh... I guess this thread is a few days late

Anyway, it would be nice to catch up with you all!

So, what happened during the 3 months that I have been gone? Well, as you might have heard on the news, last September 26, our country was struck by a huge storm called "Ketsana" - locally, "Ondoy". This is what happened. Our house was literally flooded up to the second floor.

This may sound strange for you guys, but flooding has been a somewhat natural occurrence in our neighborhood (due to the low land area) during the rainy seasons however, never have we been flooded up to he second floor! Normally (kinda strange to say it), the highest the water would go was mid thigh inside our house. Which was why (as you can see from the pictures) that the living area and kitchen were raised to a split-level. At around 9am water started entering our garage. My father and brother automatically took our car to higher ground where we usually place it during floods. The water rose at a very quick rate and we weren't able to save most of our stuffs. Another bad thing about it was, we were having our second floor renovated due to termites as well as it being an old house so most of my and my brother's stuff and clothes were stored downstairs. Good thing I remembered my laptop that was left inside my dad's office and was able to save it in the nick of time.

Our stuff wasn't the only problem we had. My grandmother, who's living in the house adjacent to ours, was bedridden due to Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's. At around almost 10am, the private nurse shouted that my grandmother was already floating. Water inside was already almost waist level. My mother and I rushed to my grandmother's house and since the water was already too high outside, the only thing we could do was bring her to my aunt's house opposite ours (Yes, that's right. 3 houses in 1 compound.

It's probably a big lot for 1 house but for 3, it's snug.

). From that point on, me, my mother, grandmother, nurse, and my aunt's household help was stranded on the second floor of my aunt's house leaving my brother, father, and the carpenter in our house.

By mid afternoon, our neighbor called to us wanting to seek refuge with us since their house was lower than ours. They had to cross our rickety, old garage roof just to get to where we are and in an hour or two after that, my father, brother, and carpenter followed suite. With no food or water, we were stranded on the second floor for hours until around 2am, my cousin, who was brave enough to swim through filthy flood waters brought us rations just to tide us over.

At around 4am of September 27, the water finally subsided and the wreck it brought to our house was unimaginable. Then we found out that the place where we usually place our cars during floods was completely submerged as well. Needless to say, there was huge work waiting for us and major repairs to be done.

Of course, being an unnatural occurrence (again, kind of weird

) for us, there were a lot of questions. What actually happened was due to the incompetence of our government. It was completely hushed up after the whole incident however, during the storm, it was in the radio that 3 dams that were reaching it's peak water level was in danger of having an overflow that could result in the dams breaking. So what they did was they released the water all at the same time which resulted into the huge flood. The stupid thing they did here was that prior to this, there were already storm warnings but they ignored it. By knowing that there is the possibility of floods, they could have at least released the water little by little days before it happened. Their incompetence resulted in the lives of so many people. Ugh... just thinking about it infuriates me.

So what's our status now? Well, we're still not finished; even after 2 months. Repairs aren't finished and lots of things still needs to be cleaned and with me doing my thesis at the same time, it's been a little busy. >.< So how come I'm here posting this long rant? Well, I do need a break every now and then right?