Two Weeks of Flash Floods: When "Suspended" Became the Word I Dreaded Most

A government worker's honest account of two weeks in Manila that tested patience, routine, and resolve.

There's a particular kind of tiredness that comes from getting ready for nothing.

More than once during these past two weeks, I woke up early, got dressed, prepared everything the way I always do, and made my way through Manila's streets to the office — only to have work suspended around 3 PM. By then, the rain had usually picked up again, the streets I'd just crossed that morning were turning into rivers, and I'd be heading back out into the very flooding I had carefully timed my whole morning to avoid.

The first time it happened, I understood completely. Manila floods fast, and when the water starts rising on streets I've walked for years, safety has to come first. No one can control the weather, and no one should be expected to. But when it happened a second time. And then a third. It stopped feeling like an isolated disruption and started feeling like a pattern I couldn't plan my life around.

The Disheartening Part Wasn't the Rain — It Was the Repetition

I think anyone who has worked through a stretch like this in this city knows the feeling: it's not any single suspended day that wears you down. It's the third one. The fourth one. The moment you realize you can't trust your own schedule anymore, and every morning becomes a gamble against the sky.

Each day came with the same quiet question before I even left the house: Will today actually happen, or will I be back out in this by mid-afternoon? There's a specific kind of fatigue in fully preparing for a full workday — mentally, physically, logistically — only to have it cut short, again, before you've even settled into a rhythm. Add to that the reality of getting home through Manila traffic and flooding at 3 PM instead of the usual hours, and the exhaustion compounds fast.

As a Senior Education Program Specialist at the Bureau of Learning Resources, my work depends on continuity — reviewing materials, coordinating with colleagues, keeping projects on track. Two weeks of stop-start days meant tasks kept getting pushed, picked back up for an hour or two, and pushed again. Nothing collapsed entirely, but very little moved forward the way it should have, and the mental load of constantly re-planning around uncertain hours was its own kind of exhausting.

What Kept Me Grounded

If there's one thing I've learned — both as a stroke survivor and as someone who's spent years at the chessboard — it's that you can't control every condition you're playing under. You can only control how you respond to them.

So I adjusted. I kept a running list of tasks I could tackle in short bursts, so a suspended afternoon wasn't automatically a wasted one. I checked in with colleagues more than usual just to stay coordinated even when we weren't all reachable at the same time. And on the days the suspension came, I tried to treat those unplanned hours as recovery time rather than lost time — something I've had to relearn since my stroke, when patience stopped being something I could take for granted.

Two Weeks Later

The rains have finally eased, the streets have cleared, and the office routine in Manila is holding steady again. But I don't think I'll forget how disheartening those repeated 3 PM suspensions felt — showing up fully ready, settling in, and then being sent back out into the same weather I'd just fought my way past that morning.

If anything, it was a reminder that resilience isn't really about the big, dramatic moments. It's about how you handle the small, repetitive ones — the mornings you get ready anyway, even when you're not sure the day will actually hold.

**References:** Recent government advisories and reports noted work suspensions, work-from-home arrangements, and disaster-response measures due to continuous heavy rains and flooding in several parts of the Philippines.