So anyway, Thursday AM it was. By 11 it started raining hard, followed by whistling winds. By noon or so it was a full blown flying junkyard outside the house. I spent the later half of the morning plugging broken windows (broken by sheer wind power, mind you) with old towels. I couldn't find duct tape to seal the windows with, so I had to use something else. Also, I WD-40'd like crazy all the window hinges that wouldn't move. At one point, as I was tying window handles down (they kept budging open with every gust of wind), I saw a piece of corrugated metal sheet, about 3 X 4 ft, fly away from our next door neighbor's roof and it landed right smack in the street. I rushed downstairs to check if anybody got hurt outside. Crazy! Nobody got hurt alright, but right smack in the middle of our driveway, outside our door, on the street was a bigger piece of metal sheet, about 7 feet, It dragged electric wires down along with it and it even knocked down the lamppost in front of the house.
Nearby, a large tree branch was threatening to fall on the neighborhood Burger Machine cart. Malakas ang fighting spirit ng Burger Machine guy... they were open at the height of the storm. Speaking of trees... I really, really felt sad for all the uprooted trees. I have nothing but contempt for all those fallen billboards... but the trees... :(
Anyway, Thursday and Friday were pretty boring days as we were without electricity. People who still had enough battery life left in the mobile phones were telling me that "Nababato na ako!!!" (Andrew... ask Jovs for a translation! hehehe). Thursday night, my mother and I went with my eldest kuya to look for any open restaurants. SM Mall of Asia was closed at 7:30 PM. Was wondering what it looked like post-typhoon, since it's just beside the bay. My other brother told me that he was in the mall earlier that day and they saw that the Le Pavillion, a tent-type of building for wedding receptions and other functions, was no more. Only the facade remained. Oh well. So from SM we drove down EDSA, where most of the billboards were damaged. There was a fire somewhere in Magallanes. No power almost everywhere (except for some motels!). One flyover was closed down. No stoplights, it was crazy.
We drove to Glorietta.... there was only one open restaurant there, A Venetto. It was standing room outside. We thought of driving to Makati Shang... but there were droves of cars lined up going to the hotel (probably to check in). We headed next to the Old Swiss Inn along Makati Ave, which was miraculously open and running on generators. Service was slow, but nobody was complaining. There were just 3 waiters and tables and tables of hungry diners. Even the chef was taking orders and serving food. Anyway, after an hour, the electricity supposedly came on, because more lights were suddenly on and they turned on more airconditioners. People applauded (but not me). The joy was short-lived because after a few minutes, the electricity went out and didn't come back on for the remainder of my dinner. Woe to the diners who didn't carry enough cash because their credit cards couldn't be swiped. As people left, the waiters didn't clear the tables anymore. Good thing nobody was coming anymore... they were too pooped.
After 2 days if taking a bath with only a half-pail of water... electricity in our house came on yesterday afternoon. Wahoo! Interestingly, electricity in Binondo supposedly was restored after just one day. Lucky singkits!
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Jeff and I aren't food writers but we do eat together a lot on my Makati days and love to document what we eat! We should've put up this blog a long time ago but we always procastinated. Ironically, the first post isn't about a Makati resto.
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