After a few weeks, I managed to tolerate the crappy apartment where we were suggested to take residence, at least for the first month. Looking at the bright side, it is somehow at a walking distance from where my first job was, the Makati Central Business District. I was impressed with this particular area in Makati. There, Filipinos manage to obey traffic rules and avoid excessive littering, unlike in the outskirts of Makati City and in most of Metro Manila.
Despite of the apartment being conveniently located near my workplace, it is not worth it. It sits along Buendia and our room is just on the third floor. So the traffic brings noise and pollution through our windows. There were little cockroaches everywhere and rats foraging food from the garbage that piled up near the stairs . The lady guard and her minions were as revolting as the pests. She ripped off money from us at every chance she got. I wished this place had burned down (with no one else hurt, except the pests, including that lady guard, of course) before I came here so that we would have been placed somewhere else more sanitary.
Then the fateful day came. We were preparing our packed lunch in the room of one of our neighbors when I heard girls shrieking. I thought they came from a neighboring room where the female occupants were screaming because they’ve spotted another resident cockroach(s) or rat(s) (or God knows whatever other type of rodent that inhabited that hole). But then the screaming became louder - and frightening. I went out of the room and voila! – a sight to behold: girls wearing their pants and only bras as tops (they were obviously in the middle of dressing up for work/school when this happened) were running along the hallway towards the lobby, screaming “Sunog!” as black smoke began to form behind them. I couldn’t believe this would happen.
After several minutes of confusion, I found myself with several other residents and our belongings right outside and in front of the building’s main entrance. I don’t remember seeing and being embarrassed by curious onlookers from the traffic along Buendia. But I’m sure there were. It was a business day. We were supposed to be at the office at that moment, resuming our Voice and Accent Training. So one of my colleagues called the trainer to inform that we would be a little bit late because there was this room that almost got entirely burned due to the resident(s)’ recklessness in using their gas stove - and so we were really shaken. But actually the fire really wasn’t that bad. God bless that man who bravely put it out with an extinguisher. It just burned the little area where the gas tank was – where it almost burst into hellfire. Still it produced this thick dark smoke that instantly drove most of us out.
Representatives (a woman and a man) from the HR Department of my beloved first-ever employer, Citi, came to pay as a visit in the still-standing apartment building. They told us that of course we wouldn't have to go to training that day. The dark smoke was almost gone but its stench was still in the air. The HR people noticed it, and so everything else horrible in the apartment. They were especially stunned to see that the fire extinguishers were expired and that the fire exit was not safe. The HR woman called someone from Citi and I overheard her saying something like this over her cell phone: “We must move them out first. This place has terrible living conditions.”
For two days after that momentous occasion, Citi paid for our stay (for three rooms) in this very nice hotel called Oxford Suites, while the HR looked for another place for us. They found us this new, clean, fire-safe and secured apartment building in Guadalupe Nuevo that has a great view of the Makati CBD buildings, especially at night. From then on, we knew we were and would be well taken care of.
So the Fire was a blessing in disguise after all.
