On "Milenyo", more work and paydays

This is how I am so un-updated with the things happening outside the office. Typhoon “Milenyo” (International name: Xangsane) hit the country, and I only actually knew all about it around 5:40 am yesterday morning, after I have finished getting ready to go to work. If my brother didn’t tell me that there might be no work yesterday, I wouldn’t have known until the winds knocked me over.

But there was still work for us yesterday, albeit half day. We got the go signal to go home after lunch, but since it was still quite stormy, we stayed there for a while. Robinson’s Galleria was damaged big time, so we couldn’t exactly go malling while I wait for my brother. Anne and I ended up talking as we looked for places to hang out. We got to go home around 4:00pm and thankfully, there wasn’t any traffic. It was flooded at our village’s entrance and we dropped Anne off at their street corner because we couldn’t try to get in her street anymore. It was probably the deepest flood I’ve ever seen in our village, and it was…well, scary to see so much unwanted water in one place. I haven’t seen something like that since first year college!

You know what? I should have taken pictures. Darn.

And as always, electricity was out yesterday so I hit the bed at around 6:00pm. I woke up at 6:00 am with a slight headache from all the sleeping. The sun was shining down the window, and I knew it was back to work again.

So I’m here at work. A lot of people didn’t go to work today because of power and water outage and to be honest, I don’t know if we have work to do today anyway. Email servers are down and I really don’t think there’s something else happening today, except probably for the restoration of cell sites which we don’t have anything to do with. And it’s just sad that I can’t access YouTube here and I’m running out of things to read. I need an eBook. Oh yeah, and the carpet in my area smells a lot like feet because it’s still wet. :-/

Oh yeah, and it’s my second payday today. Whopee.

I was talking to some officemates earlier when we were the only ones here and I realized how lucky I am to be where I am right now. To be living with my parents who still provide for me, to be single and unattached (yes, I’m serious with this), and to be able to snag a good job when I don’t really “need” it as much as the person who has a family does. The more I think of it, the thing I’m really in for this job is not the fact that I need money to be able to pay off bills and feed myself and someone else but because I’m getting tired of being a bum and I need to start my career somewhere, you know?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying I looked for a job for fun; I know that at some point, everyone of us has to start somewhere even if it’s not because of a “need”. I just felt really lucky to be where I am after our conversation this morning. One officemate had to pick the cheapest place to eat so she wouldn’t run out of money to go home later, while another one only has PHP 15.75 in his pocket. While me? I have about 400 bucks in my wallet, plus my two ATM accounts are far from zero. I think I mentioned this before, but the salary I get here is mostly for two things: (1) my monthly cellphone bill and (2) my luxuries. While they, on the other hand, have to scrimp and save on themselves so they would have money to spend on their children’s tuition fee, their groceries and their family’s food. I mean, I don’t even go out of the house with money less than Php50! You know?

Somehow this puts things into persepective. Sort of. I’m incredibly blessed to be where I am, and I should do something to share all these blessings instead of having them all to myself. And I shouldn’t take any of these things forgranted…because I’m blessed enough to be placed here, whereas some people would do everything to be where I am right now.

One thing that made me realize (and further affirm) this week that I am where I am supposed to be right now: I got my service sim the other day and after being told of the numbering conventions here in the office (the last four digits start with 03 for Product Development), I wished for 0317 because that’s my birthday. And what do you know? My service sim number ends with 0317! If that’s not enough of an affirmation, then I don’t know what is. :)

God is good. Absolutely no doubt about it. He never fails. ♥

One thought on “On "Milenyo", more work and paydays”

  1. My father told me that there’s still no electricity in most parts of Manila, including where we are living. That must have been really a very bad storm.

    Stay well!

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