Typhoon Fengshen

Outer clouds from the typhoon ominously roll in.

While walking to El Galleon my landlord told me the typhoon was signal 2. What does that mean? At El Galleon, I talked to some people about the typhoon and found out that signal 2 was the strength of the typhoon on a scale of 5. Pete painted a grim picture of the typhoon by saying the last similar one ripped roofs off, took weeks for water to come back and months to get electricity back up an running. Oh great, am I going to be stuck in my room for days doing nothing? Should I ration up on water and food?

I decided to spend the day getting ready for the typhoon. The dive shop was closing after two dives and a lot of businesses were closing early. I bought six liters of water, filled up my “shower” bucket with water, charged batteries, and went on the Internet. On the Internet, I found out that the typhoon was upgraded in strength to a signal 3. Internet was down at El Galleon because their modem had water damage from the rains.

I went to lunch at Club Mabuhay because I wanted some hot Korean food; the perfect kind of food for a rainy day. I ate bulgogi, the soup, and all the side dishes. While eating, I saw my friend, “Bob”, name changed for privacy, walk in a staggered manner towards my direction. He didn’t look good—he was noticeably thinner, hasn’t shaved in a while, paler. I pretended I didn’t notice him because he didn’t look like he wanted me to notice him. He went past me, into a market, and then left with at least 6 beers. The last time I encountered him he had 6-8 beers in a bag too.

After lunch, I saw Maziar and told him to meet met later at the Full Moon bar to have a beer while the typhoon came in. It was scheduled to hit Puerto Galera at about 4 PM which was only a couple hours away. Maziar agreed to hang out after lunch. When I was taking pictures around Full Moon, Grace came up to me and agreed to hang out with me at Full Moon to witness the arrival of the typhoon. Jacob walked by and also joined us.

Moving the boats out to the other side of the island.

In the middle of the rain.

Between 3:45 and 4 PM, the weather turned bad very quickly; rain and wind intensified, and the sea was angry. Distant islands and mountains I used to see 15 minutes before became occluded by the thick layers of rain approaching us. When the thick rain fell on us, it was intense but not disastrous. Then, just as fast as it approached us, the rain and wind stopped. Was that it? Maybe that was just he outer ring of the typhoon. It was a little disappointing and only lasted two beers.

Fireworks celebration in Sabang.

Not much was happening at Full Moon so we all went to Point bar. There, I met a women from Denmark who’s been a dive instructor for less than a year. It was interesting talking with her about her first certifications and the growing pains. She definitely felt it was wise to do an internship after the IE. At the bar, people were saying that the recent heavy rain was just a prelude to the actual typhoon. I decided to leave the bar and go home before it was too late.

Shortly after I got home, it started raining again. For dinner, I cooked some rice with some canned corned beef. The corned beef looked awful. I’ve used the same brand, Argentine, and I don’t remember it looking and tasting that bad. It looked like beef that was dyed its red color. It was very disappointing. I got lazy and watched TV and then fell asleep.

- jason