BAD TRIP 17: Sloshed

My landlord is a drunk. A serial drunk. He usually stays drunk for two straight weeks, sometimes more. While at it, he doesn't bathe and stinks like hell. I wonder if he gets to eat at all in his drunken stupor.

He is a bachelor in his mid-30s but looks much older, and stays alone on the ground floor of the ancestral house he inherited from his parents. We, his boarders, occupy single rooms on the second floor. The rent he collects is his only source of income. Right now, we're down to two, at one thousand pesos apiece. I wonder how he survives on two thousand pesos a month.

I've stopped speculating on why he throws his life away like this. Perhaps it is his way of coping with loneliness and hopelessness, albeit temporarily. At the end of the two weeks, he shuts himself in his room and emerges a few days later, sober and meek as a lamb.

But in the meantime, I have to put up with his knocking on my door in the morning -- totally wasted and reeking of urine and puke -- asking for 20 pesos to buy cheap gin to get him through another day of self-induced coma.

One week down, one week to go.

(sigh)

HAPPY TRIP 13: Aftermath

The sun is out today in Eastern Samar, after weeks of heavy rains. Yehey! My room leaked, my things got soaked. I’ve got no shoes to wear, all of them soaking wet. The damp is killing me, made worse by the smell of decay.

But I have no right to complain; they’re just a minor irritation. A lot more people are worse off – their homes washed out by the floods, their livelihoods destroyed. People are getting sick from contaminated water. They don’t have food to eat, their crops gone. They get crumbs from handouts – two kilos of rice, one can of sardines, two packs of noodles – not even enough for one day. What about the months to come?

Still, people are resilient. Today, all of them are out, hanging clothes to dry, fixing their houses, sweeping away the debris. All done with a smile, thanking the Lord that the sun is out today.