typhoon, earthquake & a coup attempt: all in a week's work

the past week (and the preceding one as well) has been very hectic, very toxic, and quite frankly, unbelievably busy.

since i arrived, i've covered a number of conferences: the 2nd international medical tourism conference; the 20th philippine advertising congress; the 6th asian network of major cities meeting; the first inter-parliamentary global meeting on hiv/aids; the launching of a unicef book on women and children displaced by armed conflict in the philippines, and a slew of others. whew.

also during the same period, i weathered a couple of typhoons, one super typhoon (which, thank god, made lihis. hahaha. anong english ng lihis?), an earthquake (i was at sofitel covering an event, the mayor of kuala lumpur was delivering a speech when the earth shook. i later learned that sofitel is on reclaimed land, that's why we really felt the quake. i immediately looked out (hello manila bay!) to see if a tsunami was on its way.

then last week, my friend antonio decided that he was tired of languishing in his jail. kinda. so he walked out of the makati court, asked people to join them and took over manila pen. wow. posh! couldn't he have chosen a lesser one? say city garden or best western? no. it had to be manila peninsula.

i tried to go, since i was just a few blocks away (we had a meeting, first on dela rosa, then by paseo de roxas) but the police has barricaded ayala and makati avenues.


one of our reporters made it early there, so she was able to get some nice shots while the whole she bang was going on. on the police's third attempt to ask the civilians, including the media men, to get the f*ck out of the place, she left, along with a handful of reporters and apparently, faeldon as well.

that was one of the reasons puno cited as he justified the "processing" and "arrest" of the reporters, they were asked to leave and they didn't, ergo, they were unwitting collaborators. my soon-to-be-lawyer friend that that is not possible. well.

the freaking peso is down, down, down. 41! we're back to the late 90s rate. shoot. my colleague who earns in dollars mockingly asked me to go back since every single time i go back to manila for the past three years or so, the peso would just drop. i'm beginning to believe him. when i arrived two weeks ago, it was at 43 something. last week, i had some dollars exchanged at 42.20. yesterday, it closed at 41 something. not happy.

not happy at all...