Surviving uncertainty like shrew-this-girl’s cat

Surviving uncertainty:

A freelancer’s typhoon Odette experience in Cebu

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I was supposed to publish a newsletter edition Dec 17, 2021, Friday. But I haven’t. Dec 16, Thursday night, was when super typhoon Odette (international name: Rai) struck Cebu City and many others in the Visayas and Mindanao, Philippines. Clearly, it was an experience you’d wish you’d get over with the soonest. And yet, I’m still here, stuck in the middle of the consequences of this tragedy.

In fact, I was literally stuck. In the midst of a city with no electricity, no water, and only intermittent network coverage, I was literally helplessly groping.

How come you were able to publish this now?

Well, it’s already Dec 24, and it’s quite a story before today.

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Some misplaced confidence

Thursday all day (Dec 16) I’ve already been receiving a lot of text blasts from NDRRMC (National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council). Orange rainfall, red rainfall, signal #3, signal #4—Cebu City’s been warned without fail.

Unfortunately, I and my sister Blessy thought it was all cool. The skies seemed fine, after all. I mean, they looked normal. As if we had nothing to worry about, we remained chill and went about our day as we usually would.

But…

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Trouble started to brew when the internet signal went intermittent.

Of all things, Karen, of all things?!

Yeah, of all things, I was worried about the internet. You can’t blame me though. I rely on it for work.

I was also having a co-working session with B1 Ana for our respective video projects that Thursday afternoon. We were having a Discord video call when internet problems interrupted our conversation. Sadly, we had to cut our meeting short.

We continued chatting… until we couldn’t.

Power soon went through a sine wave—up and down, up and down. We had low voltage supply.

I quickly chose to save my phone’s and laptop’s batteries.

Soon, power was fully out.

Rain started to pour. Light were the showers at first—they grew a little heavier next.

Winds blew. Trees swayed by their whistling sounds.

And then the whistles went ominous.

A little deeper into the hours of the night, the downpour became torrential.

And the winds! They banged louder and stronger on our glass window.

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It was becoming worrisome.

Fourth floor! Fourth floor!

We heard a man’s voice. He was shouting from the top of his lungs.

Blessy turned to me with an anxious look.

Already the whistling sounds of the wind had troubled her thoughts. But the man’s voice—it brought the alarm closer home.

We were staying on the fourth floor.

Okay ra mo diha? (Are you okay in there?)

Ang uban kay nangalangkat na ilang atop. (The other neighbors’ rooftops have already been torn off.)

Bakwit ta sa first floor—mas septi didto. (Let’s take refuge on the first floor—it’s safer there.)

Immediately we rushed to do a final packing of our most important stuff.

I had initially been placing our laptops, tech gadgets, wallets, IDs, and most important documents inside two separate laptop bags.

Blessy only needed to add her essentials and then Yuki, her innocent-most-of-the-time and quite-handsome cat—he had to go inside his bag, too.?

We hurried down to the first floor. We had to take the stairs—the elevator left us no other option since the blackout.

About three to four goodly neighbors welcomed us inside a vacant unit.

Quick background: the whole building is a low-rise, low-end condo. It’s one of the many buildings in our community. This community is reminiscent of a more subdivision-like vibe rather than a luxurious condo-ish atmosphere.

So, we stayed inside the empty studio.

The wind continued to send us chills as it pounded by and by on the window.

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Our thoughts were torn between thoughts.

What might be happening in the highest floor? (The fourth floor)

Will our glass windows break?

Will the raging winds rip off our roof, too?

I mummed myself for a bit.

Then I sent the following less-than-a-minute-crafted poem to B1 Ana via text.

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Ang ihip ng hangin

Tila may galit

Sumisigaw

At ubod ng sungit

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Roughly translated just now:

The blowing of the wind

It’s got rage, it seems

Shouting, yelling

Wrath strong and full, it brings

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I couldn’t get stable mobile internet anymore.

The banging on the windows grew louder.

I thought to myself as many others did…

Odette was clearly one angry woman.

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A few moments of looking around, and I’ve seen eyes that craved sleep.

But their hearts—their troubled spirits just wouldn’t let them.

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It was one long night.

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I sat on the floor.

The empty unit gave me no chair.

Yuki the cat was restless. He had food and water but eat he would not.

The winds and noise of clashing iron roofing materials disturbed his highly sensitive ears.

I could only nap and nod a few. My half-alive-alert-not-so-enthusiastic brain was running on low.

Like I normally would when faced with inconvenience, I kept my stillness, squatting.

I held on to the hope that this, too, shall pass.

The next few days I lived by grace.

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We ate what we had left in the fridge.

Dec 18 came, and we were running out of supplies.

When power had gone out, so went the water supply away.

Tap water had to be pumped to reach our units. It required electricity, which had already gone out since Thursday late afternoon.

By the time we realized we needed to buy drinking water, neighbors had already bought all bottles.

People flocked to refilling stations only to get stuck in long lines and hours of waiting for their turn.

Some made the effort to get the generator running. They would succeed for a while, but the problematic machine would turn off in seconds.

Others were desperate enough to fetch a pail from a muddy shallow pool of stagnant rainwater. They said they’d use it to at least flush their toilets.

At last, a neighbor tipped us about some water stored under one of the building’s drainage systems. They said it was clean enough. We couldn’t help but trust them.

Blessy and I filled out one of our two blue PET bottles. We reserved the other bottle for distilled drinking water. We were hoping we could get some, somewhere, somehow.

Thank goodness, my more choleric sister had the initiative to communicate with a few of our friends.

Ada and Jaekuh—the newlywed couple we had the privilege of assisting in their wedding program just weeks earlier—had arrived in Cebu City a few days before Odette had her rampage.

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They invited us to their place until they could go back to CDO.

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The dormitory-apartelle-ish place they were renting in Mandaue City had a generator. They also had water supply.

To be honest, I didn’t want to go.

I thought our presence would be a hassle. I didn’t want to bother anyone.

And yet, realizing we would be helpless still if we didn’t accept their invitation, we pushed through.

We could at least charge our phones and power banks.

We could at least cook some decent meal for the evening and then go by no-cook food for the rest of the week. Yeah, we planned to stay only for the night.

But even just getting to Mandaue City from Cebu City was already a challenge.

Dec 18 was a day when people from around Cebu City were flocking to supermarkets, gasoline stations, automated teller machines (ATMs), and water refilling stations.

The lines were endless.

Taxis were scarce.

Jeepneys were rare.

The traffic was super heavy with private vehicles.

There were plenty of motorcyclists ready to offer rides, but we had a lot of things.

We had bought groceries to hopefully last us a week. The stuff we brought won’t fit on a motorcycle.

So, we had to wait and wait until every filled taxi has already passed by. Other passengers also needed to take their turn first.

After almost 2 hours of waiting, a security guard was finally able to secure us a ride.

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For the next 5 days, I lived with undeserved provisions.

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Dec 19, 20, 21, 22, 23.

It was all grace. It was all undeserved provisions.

Instead of having us only for a single night, our friends took the initiative to drive us to our place and fetch the rest of our things and clothes, plus Yuki the cat. Vicky, Ada’s trusted driver and assistant, also suggested we go with them to Cagayan de Oro (CDO) instead of dealing with the inconveniences in Cebu. The tough situation could extend for two weeks to a month.

We were only speechless.

They have provided everything for us—food, water (both for drinking and for everything else), electricity, accommodation, and even transportation. They had brought their own vehicle from CDO.

So, their coming to Cebu City seemed perfect for us, albeit apparently “imperfect” for them who had planned to stay in the Queen City of the South to celebrate the holidays.

Depending on how they’d look at it, Ada and Jaekuh might agree their stay served a different purpose. In seeking to be blessed, they were made a blessing. And I—I was on the receiving end.

I also told my potential clients about my current situation. It took me days before I could because of the intermittent network signal. I could hardly send a text message let alone check emails, WhatsApp Business messages, or load Facebook.

But I was more than blessed. They all responded with sympathy and understanding. Plus, a promise to stay in touch and reconnect when all's well.

After Odette’s devastating rampage, I found myself floating.

That is…

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I found myself floating above an ocean of uncertainty.

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Ever heard of the uncertainty principle in Quantum Physics?

In (hopefully) simple terms, it says you can’t be certain about a particle’s true position if you’re sure about its velocity. The reverse is also true. You also can’t be certain about a particle’s true velocity if you’re sure about its position at a given time.

In other words, there’s only one thing you can be sure about. The rest would be uncertain.

You see, once you’ve successfully measured and determined where a particle is sitting at a given moment, you would’ve also “disturbed” it. Your act of observing and measuring certain parameters about it have already changed the rest of the situation concerning the particle.

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In many ways, I’ve felt like a quantum particle these days.

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I feel like I’m certain only about where I am at today. And then I’m already uncertain about how fast I’m going and moving forward toward my goals.

It’s Dec 24. And once again as I’m typing these lines, I’m literally sitting on the floor. At least there are no more whistling winds. And I’m already charging my laptop.

There are lights. There are lines.

But people are more hopeful.

In fact, we’re all going.

We’re going to a place called Bantayan Island.

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And now we’re going to be islanders.

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A quickie bit: so, I’ve been writing this whole thing cumulatively in Microsoft Word whenever I could.

Yeah, offline.

At this point, along these lines, I’m already in Santa Fe, Bantayan.

It was about 4am in Dec 24 when we finally arrived at the place we were going to rent for about a month.

Another friend and fellow freelancer, Ni?o, was able to book for us the place ahead of time.

Again, I couldn’t be more thankful. If he hadn’t secured the stay earlier, we would’ve found it challenging to find a lodge. So many passengers were with us at the ferry. People were either flocking to Bantayan because they had a situation quite like ours, or they were meaning to spend their Christmas in the island.

And speaking of Christmas—today’s already Dec 24. One more sleep and it’s going to be the day.

Who would’ve thought we could spend the holidays in Bantayan?

Who would’ve thought we would end 2021 and welcome 2022 is this beautiful island?

Three years staying in Cebu, and we still haven’t gotten the chance to visit the renowned tourist spot—until now.

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Well, uncertainties.

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Since the middle of October, my usually orderly self apparently embraced a new personality. Well, it’s still me, just with the order of my cognitive preferences turned upside-down because of stress.

In the third quarter of 2021, my regular paying client had halted our project. Since then, I could only rely on occasional writing gigs. I opened myself to experimentation. Today, I’m still experimenting.

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I’m operating like Schrodinger’s cat.

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Odette was like a shrew. She was a bad-tempered girl.

It felt like I was shrew-this-girl’s cat.

Since Odette put me into a box with more uncertainties than I already had, I've been quite like Schrodinger’s cat-in-a-box personified.

You won’t be sure about my current state unless you open the box.

Is it bad?

Nah, it is exciting.

This whole experience all the more showed me the beauty of living by grace one day at a time.

Should this mean I won’t think ahead anymore and plan for my future?

Nay—far from it. In fact, I’m already planning to not work from mid Nov 2022 to mid Jan 2023.

That means I’ll be starting off my 2022 with a renewed focus. I’m going to be a linchpin for the clients I will be serving.

I'm embracing a new identity, and it’s going to be amazing.

#KCLThoughtsontheRoad

#ZerotoCEO #Roadmap

#OdettePH #Odette #OdetteCebu

#BangonCebu

#Freelancing #Uncertainty #UncertaintyPrinciple

#Physics #QuantumPhysics #QuantumParticle

#SchrodingersCat