Oh no...

I woke up annoyed at the incessant noise of what I thought must be a stuck ambulance near my window. Looked out and saw this instead.

A fire near Makati Med. I hope everyone's okay over there. 

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Philippine elections...

thank God cameras are allowed

So election day is finally here. I woke up at 5 am so I could vote early... well at least that was the original plan. Problem was I didn't know how to get to my polling place at the Bel-Air basketball court. Good thing my friend Wacks, who lives nearby, took pity on me and drove me there after lunch.

voters ready to vote

It took me more than 5 hours just to register last October so not voting is out of the question, even if I line up for another 5 hours to vote, I'd do it. Disenfranchisement is not for me. My friend Yumi waited more than 2 hours to vote in her Quezon City precinct, so I was ready with bottled water, sandwiches, candies just in case.

no lines at our cluster

When I got there at 1:30 pm though, there were still a lot of people queuing up, but in clustered group no. 51 where I was listed, they were much more efficient in checking the voters' identification, fingerprinting and feeding the ballot to the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machine. It just took us 5-15 minutes to do the whole thing.

great job, guys!

I was frankly shocked. Here I was, gearing up for a long wait and I was done in 15 minutes (I could have finished in 5 minutes but I just had to take pictures of the ballot, lol). Excuse me, is this the Philippines? Wow, kudos to the board of elections inspectors (BEI) of cluster 51--Supervisor Dean Co, Miss Grace, Janice and Peng--you rocked!

Bel-Air Basketball Court
Solar St. cor. Hydra St., Bel-Air Village Makati City
(take Paseo de Roxas, past Gil Puyat go straight, go inside Bel-Air Village down 2 streets and you're there)

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Why, oh why do we do this to ourselves?

I don't know what's gotten into me. I waited until the end of the registration period to haul my butt to get registered to vote. Predictably, fellow Pinoys also showed up in full force. It took me 5 hours lining up at the hot, dark corridors of the COMELEC office on the 2nd floor of the Makati Central Fire Station. Hungry, thirsty, stinky... I mentally kicked myself so many times I swear I have marks from it.


Doing stuff at the last minute is part of our culture. It's sad but we have come to expect that. Even if we know it would be much easier for everyone involved to have this done months ago still we insist on showing up just so.


One blessing we have though is no matter how long the line is or how packed the place is... We still keep our sense of humor. It's like a boisterous family reunion, with people posing for pictures. Sharing a common bond brought about by waiting hours upon hours. It would have taken just minutes if we only managed our schedules better but hey it's very Pinoy. For better or worse.

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