The Things That Pour When It Rains

As much as I was homesick, worried about my family back home and friends in affected areas, I cannot deny that I did enjoy our three and a half days stay at Gel's house. Tisa and I were really scheduled to stay for the night after the Happy Mondays event, but given the amount of rain pouring and the floods in Manila, it became quite impossible for us to leave the following morning. Cab companies wouldn't pick us up and frankly, our parents were more comfortable with us staying put rather than braving the perilous streets.

It was like a refuge camp at Gel's. Aside from her and her brother, three of her cousins were also staying, plus me and Tisa, and Gel's brother's friend. So yes, we did sort of had a blast. Especially during the third day when we all were starting to get bored out of our wits and decided to walk under the rain, into the flood, shop at the nearest Mini Stop, eat Korean ice cream, and go home with bags (and, okay, a box) of chips and cup noodles. I have lost count of how many movies I watched. And on the last night, we even managed to start a marathon of a Korean romantic-comedy series, Secret Garden. We weren't able to finish the entire series, but we did manage to get to half (I don't know why this matters). But wow. Korean movies/series never fail. There were a lot of gasps and giggles and kicking and hitting each other out of laughter and mostly kilig (thoughtless giddiness).

Gel's brother is a visual artist. I've seem him featured on TV for his paintings and projects in UP Diliman. On the third day, when we noticed the flood rising outside (and because of some erroneous text blast), we opted to bring all the important stuff in the first floor up to the second. The very first things that were rescued--Ralph's paintings. And why shouldn't they be. They're beautiful. I got to take pictures of some of it. I started taking pictures of them when I noticed a peculiar, totally adorable thing peeking at me from outside Gel's door. Look!

This one would have to be my favorite. This painting of a girl underwater. The strokes of light hitting the water is amazing. It puts me in a trance just looking at it. As if the water truly is moving, creating ripples and movement on the girl's dress. Beautiful. My favorite detail though--I'm sorry I have no closer photo to show--is the girl's lips. I've always been fascinated on how to draw/paint lips without the actual creation of an outline but merely through shadowing. I've always had trouble with that. But Ralph's seems almost real and without effort. I wish I could learn that.