Hard Year to Forget.

I have been losing much of my inspiration lately. This acute cough shames me on public places. Yet I still go to work because I honestly feel that I don’t do anything else better.

Adding this historic cough to the equation, this is going to be a hard year to forget.

The historic flood claimed many lives and possessions. It brought out our hidden heroes within, as well as our hidden monsters.

Mud-filled mansions, chairs and tables hanging in electric cables – these are images from Provident Village when the flood subsided.

A stranger bought me a Smart sim card after hearing me curse that I need a signal very badly and Globe network doesn’t work.

I remember being in Pinagbuhatan, Pasig when a mob of hungry flood victims almost attacked our truck for relief goods.

I remember riding a boat in Paete, Laguna while we film houses fully submerged in Laguna lake months after Ondoy. People living in their roofs.

They all smiled differently. Some only a managed a faint smile, some managed to laugh; but they all smiled. It made me proud how my countrymen could carry such smiles amidst a difficulty of great scale.

I am Filipino, yet I find it mind-boggling.

Then there was the nightmare of the Ampatuan mass killings, like a scene out of a sickening movie. It was hard to believe. It was hard to calculate why such monstrosity was needed to secure political seats.

Waiting for justice feels like forever. And you know that even if there is justice in the afterlife, even hell might not be hot enough. You really wish they burn.

And now I live in a country where being a journalist is the deadliest profession.

This is not a good year to be a journalist. This is not a good year to be Filipino. And I am both.

It’s going to be election next year; another circus with gorillas, puppets, fake magicians, vote riggers and past presidents.

And I’ll be there to witness it with media eyes again, because I do nothing else better.