typhoon milenyo whips manila!

I woke up with my body aching. Yesterday, September28, 2006, Thursday, super typhoon Milenyo (international name Xangse) showed the power of nature over our 21st century technology and uprooted trees, toppled billboards and plunged the entire island of Luzon into darkness. It is said that this is the strongest typhoon to hit Manila in 11 years! Classes in all levels were suspended and I wasn't able to go to work out of fear for my life. Our talisay tree lost most of its branches and fell all over our cable wires, though we hardly noticed as we didn't have electricity all day and maybe till Sunday! My father, brother and I spent the afternoon picking up dead branches and dumping them out of the way as many other trees had blocked our village's roads. We also went around the subdivision to check out the damage that Milenyo wrought on the rest of us. Our cousin and his ma played tug-of-war with their mango tree at the height of the storm and lost. It brought down part of their gate. Over my walkman's AM radio I heard that as many as 15 billboards had fallen between the Bicutan and Sucat service roads. It's a good thing we had a gas-powered stove or we might have ended up like some people in Quezon City who lined up outside restaurants just to eat as even some malls were closed yesterday. Hotels were said to be full capacity as some of them had to turn customers away as their generator would not be able to handle the load. Tita Chuchie, my ninang from Maryland who went home for our Lolo's death anniversary was at out Tita Cora's place and told my Pa that this visit was really a surreal experience. Her credit card was almost rejected because she went on a shopping spree at SM for her family and now a typhoon and power outage. Wow Philippines, indeed!
Meanwhile ,it was back to dark ages for us as we ate dinner by candlelight and all our cellphones started going out and all our plans of a DVD marathon went down the drain and by 10 pm it was bed time for all of us while we pondered how powerless we really are against the power of nature. I left our home this afternoon and I am happy to report that the malls are back in business.There was a big traffic jam going to Magallanes as a 4-sided billboard had been turned into a twisted mass of metal and had fallen on top of a bus! MMDA personnel were at the scene trying to untagle the mess.I am now at work charging all our cellphones and thankful that Tita Luday and her grils from Canada are just planing in tonight after the storm. It will be funny to see their reaction when they see the city looking like a warzone. I do hope that other low pressure area that threatens to turn into another storm doesn't ruin our vacation plans next week! We plan to go to Baguio and the beach and then a walking tour of Manila.