I don’t know if it was the junk food dinner or my depleting memory cells but I simply don’t remember a premonition. Is this the result of a wild imagination or is this an influence of Sandra Bullock’s Premonition remake? Oh no wait—could I blame this to Filipino belief that every tragedy that happens in our lives is forewarned by a premonition? Well, my mother did share her dream:

“We were on the house, you, Leanne and Tovi (mysiblings) and there was a tsunami. We went to the roof to be saved but I wasn’t quick enough that the wave caught me and I kept calling you but you couldn’t hear coz I was already dead.”

Yep. She countlessly shared that dream/premonition on long distance phone calls. Of course, the premonition of the event I’m referring to is the life changing Typhoon Sendong. Probably one of the angriest typhoons Mother Earth could send the region. And the ugliest name too. Ugh, Sendong.

AN EERILY RAINY AND NORMAL DECEMBER 16, 2011

I was running very late for school. It was a particularly balmy morning with signs of an upcoming rain. My classmate-slash-neighbor Christine Olalo picked me up at my house for our 8:45AM Food Technology Laboratory class at that pesky Manresa location (Manresa is the farm of the school and is located uptown so we have to commute twice to get there and in our uniforms so it’s twice the uncomfy factor.) When we get there we find out that class was cancelled due to our teachers’ “emergency meeting.” Yeah, “emergency meeting.” Let’s emphasize that more, “emergency meeting.”

Because it was the last day of class before the Christmas break and we’re really good students we hesitated to visit the nearby SM and go straight ahead to our campus. BUT because we’re teenagers who rush to school without breakfast, a quick detour to Jollibee in front of the school was mandatory. Jollibee as you know is like the mecca for breakfast (except for Mcdo’s holy Egg McMuffin of course!)

So we chatted there for quite a stretch of time until our next class only to find out that it was unofficial so my BioSci assignment partner and I went to some garbage dump and took photos for the documentation. And oh, it was already raining VERY HARD that time and it was NON-STOP. We returned to school just in time to add the finishing touches for our paper when the rain didn’t sound like rain anymore. It was more of like a storm really and we were not informed that it was a storm! Rather, we were not informed that the storm would fuck us up in a few hours.

Like any normal young people, after class was spent on a quick discussion on whether to spend the time at home or a boozefest before departing but the latter was cancelled because the rain was billowing water and wind like it never billowed before. And I’m not even exaggerating! It really was.

So I go home and nap for a while and then wake up to the internet and a rerun of my favorite TV series on DVD. I was enjoying the opening sequence when out of the blue… BROWNOUT. Little did I know it was a BLACKOUT.

The storm was being a bitch but my perseverance kept me up to wait for electricity to come back when I hear the sloshing of water outside the house. Like, outside the gate. And there was a jeepney and several cars rushing and the sloshing was even more intense and the sound of rain hitting on every surface was getting extremely loud.

I didn’t mind it really, I don’t panic THAT easily. So I went back to the couch and surprisingly didn’t touch my iPod while waiting because I thought I shouldn’t abuse Rico Blanco’s Your Universe any longer. But I did keep clicking the lock/unlock button on my phone for its light.

I’M NOT SURE IF IT WAS ALREADY DECEMBER 17, 2011 AND WHY THE HECK SHOULD IT MATTER ANYWAY

FAINT, INAUDIBLE SCREAMING. STORM. SLOSHING OF WATER.

What the hell is that racket? I check from the window and get a terrifying suspicion that it might be a house ablaze. I instantly turned the ‘planka’ off and returned to the couch.

STILL A FAINT INAUDIBLE SCREAM BUT NOW HYSTERICAL. STORM. SLOSHING OF WATER.

Okay now I’m freaking out. What the fuck is that all about? I get up and open the door to find out that outside our gate was a heart wrenching-panic inducing flood. I quickly texted my sister to demand that she be home from her Christmas party. No reply.

I was really quite afraid by then but I returned to the couch somehow to lie down when I hear a chorus of lunatic screaming and that’s when I got up and upon looking at the door, literally, saw water crawling maniacally fast on our hardwood tiled floor.

I couldn’t believe it. It was the first time water from the outside came in our house. And I could tell that the color was dark even in the dark. In fits of panic your eyes become sharper to water color I guess. So I secured everything so the water wouldn’t touch it but then it reached my ankles (in a split second I tell you) and that’s when I grabbed everything like a crazed grocery shopper and placed them on elevated things like tables and the couch. But the water just kept rising and rising and rising and I wasn’t even aware of what I felt that time and I’m always about the feelings. All I knew was that I had to save the appliances and shit.

I became an instant Hulk without the green coloring and Schwarzengger muscles lifting heavy stuff to every high surface imaginable. There was the unliftable CPU that its wires and cables I had to unforgivably rip like grass, the television that was impossibly heavy, the speakers that were VERY essential to my daily music ritual, the DVD player with the disc of my fave TV show still on it, EVERYTHING. But the water was quicker than I was as it reached my hips no longer than 4 seconds. I really couldn’t save everything and just writing about it makes my blood rush and my heart contract. Like, I can’t even believe it.

The house was a pond. And there was no time left to even think about the damages because as I was looking around the house for something to be saved, and I couldn’t really see anything literally because of the darkness and the panic, that’s when I hear my neighbors scream for my name telling me to get out of the house.

On how they know I was in the house I will never be certain because I go home late and they wouldn’t have noticed me getting home because, ugh whatever, but it’s a no brainer so… It was the only time that it came across my mind that I had to get out of the house because then I’d die drowning and I never pictured that happening. My death would be painless I’d always premeditate.

Everything in the house was floating and I couldn’t really move because the furniture blocked my way to the exit and the current was pushing me inside the house. No joke. The sound of the current didn’t help as it increased my fear but I got over that because my instincts direly told me to get over it. I tried the door but it wouldn’t open. I exactly tried turning the doorknob innumerable times but it wouldn’t open because it was stuck.

STILL DECEMBER 17, 2011 BUT THE PLOT THICKENS (AND SO DOES THE MUD)

I screamed for help. And I never scream for help because it sounds cheesy. In fact, while screaming I still had a hesitation and that icky feeling towards myself for being cheesy but this was my life man! I had to scream.

My neighbors kept navigating me like I was blindfolded playing that blindfold game that I should try the backdoor and I did with all the energy of running in water that’s already on my shoulders. Still, like in the movies, the floating distractions were hindering me to get there but when did get to the back door I find out that it was impossible to push the door open when the current was merely stronger than me. HEY! I did try my very best but it wouldn’t budge.

I screamed my lungs out again and this time saying that I couldn’t open the door. The neighbors suggested a lot of exits that were nonviable and borderline absurd that I had to gather my wits forcibly (yeah, I did force my wits) because all I could think about was that scene on Titanic where Rose was looking for Jack amidst the cold flood and buoyant furniture and also scenes from various TV Patrol news bits about people being unable to survive and my ignorant comments “They could’ve made it if…”

You know that moment when you’re kind of wondering if this is IT, like, your death and you become surprisingly religious? That sort of epiphany happened that it led me to my sister’s altar and grab the crucifix of a glow in the dark Jesus Christ. I tried the front door again and, MIRACLES DO HAPPEN, it opened! I’m not kidding.

The only obstacle now was the gate on our door. Yep, me mum’s a safety freak. We have this grill gate on the door that was, again, impossibly hard to push. I screamed again. I couldn’t do it. I was gonna die. My neighbors scream back that I really had to try because they couldn’t come to my aid. And I did try. It wouldn’t open. I was THIS close to giving up. My arms and hands hurt, my feet kept slipping under the muddy water, my body was freezing cold. I couldn’t do it any longer.

And then a thought came to me. Will I be one of the survivors or the one that was trapped inside the house—dead? I didn’t want to be the latter. EVER! What the heck? I might as well prove to TV Patrol victims that Joulo Visabella CAN MAKE IT!

PUUUUUUUUUUUUUSH! PUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSH! PUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSH!

A round of applause everybody, the stickly Joulo Visabella has opened the door by himself! My neighbors, heh, the reaction was astounding, ya know! Standing ovation. Uh-huh, oh yeah! Now all I had to accomplish was fight the current and extend my limbs like I’ve never stretched them before to climb the roof. Easy-peasy.

NOT.

It was friggin’ painful to spread my legs from point A to point B, I’m not a female pornstar you know. Keeping my body balanced was no easy feat either. I had to keep myself upright whilst doing a Tom Cruise circa Mission Impossible 2 mountain climbing scene and holding a crucifix. The neighborly support was very helpful though because they kept yelling for me to urgently reach the roof while updating me on the status of the deathly water current.

Success! Mission Get-My-Ass-On-The-Rooftop has been accomplished. I made it with a few scratches and bruises but without an injured or –God-forbid— fractured body parts.

PARTING WORDS, LAST WORDS (EVEN THE SUB-TITLE HINTS DEATH, GEEZ)

Over all the experience was exceptional and people should try it sometime. Life really is a box chocolates, you never know what you’ll get. Mindless school stuff by day, intense action star with clichéd plot by night. Awesome. And the fact that I almost died sounds funny. Seriously. I KNOOOW that I almost died and all that but it sounds really cheesy.

*Title with the same name of another Sandra Bullock movie that’s probably getting an Oscar nod, critics say. And yes, I’m a christened Bullock fan.