203: Daphne's Load Bearing Surf Beam
Daphne Mitra
FEATURED WORDS:
Daphne's synonyms to self: Frangipani (n.), laughing (v.), sensitive (adj.)
Daphne's words: Likes: alma (n.; soul) Dislikes: exotic (adj.)
Wish's synonyms for Daphne: doll (n.), exploring (v.), buoyant (adj.)
Essential word from this episode: healing (n.)
EPISODE SUMMARY:
"You can't really understand what to expect when you've never experienced something like that before." - Daphne.
Some people can wear many hats and make the most out of them at each opportunity. That's Daphne. In this episode, she is finally ready to recount and share her near-death experience with her loved ones that occurred a few months ago. This conversation made me cry on record (not a hot mess moment, though!), which I must allow myself to do. Join the eavesdropping.
MAIN TOPICS:
00:00 - Episode intro
03:15 - Daphne's intro
04:23 - The beginning: from the present to the past
08:00 - The beginning of the disaster
28:56 - I can't hold it in.
30:25 - Reflections of the disaster
31:44 - The aftermath: applications to a second chance in life
36:01 - The luxury homestay
38:31 - To rebuild or not to rebuild?
43:05 - Regenerations
44:09 - Daphne's important word to share
47:31 - Wish's important words from this episode
49:29 - Outro
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
QUOTABLE QUOTES
"I think I've never ever before this day have I ever felt so certain that I was going to die. And it's a really strange feeling, because you won't be able to control it."
"But then the days following the typhoon were like being in an episode or a few episodes of The Walking Dead."
"It's important to maintain strong relationships with people because life is so fleeting. It's so important to maintain that line of connection with the people that are important in your life. Because you never know."
"So apart from us rebuilding our place, nature itself is also rebuilding."
"And I think in life, whatever it is that happens to you or that happens in your life, there is nothing that happens to you that you can't resolve or move from. I mean, it's never the end of your story yet, unless you die or you end up in prison. I guess."
”To heal is to touch with love that which we previously touched with fear.” - Stephen Levine
REFERENCES FROM TODAY'S CONVERSATION
Large detailed map of the Philippines
News Links from Super Typhoon Odette: (WARNING: DISTRESSING SCENES FOR SOME VIEWERS)
After the Storm: Survivors of Super Typhoon Odette Tell Their Gripping Stories from Ground Zero
Mass evacuations as super Typhoon Rai slams into Philippines
Daphne & Borja's guest interviewed on CNN with his own video featured
The difference between Super Typhoon and Hurricanes via NatGeo
The Walking Dead IMDB
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Wish 00:00:02
Human Thesaurus is an intersection between a vast lexicon that best describes our human nature. It's my conversation to highlight people like you and me doing what they do best while equating them them to their own synonyms.
Wish 00:00:02
Hello, dear humanity. Welcome to the second season of Human Thesaurus. I'm your host-slash-sentimental wish Wish Ronquillo Peacocke.
Wish 00:00:02
Daphne is described as a jill of all trades. Having tried on so many different hats. And I've seen a lot of them: from being a radio DJ in the Philippines and events emcee and host, restaurant manager in the beautiful Boracay Island Island, English teacher in Spain, Admin work for a scrap metal company, A manager of a Pilates studio, door bitch for a private club, Events organiser for a club. Et cetera. Et cetera. Et cetera. She tried it all. She now is very happy to concentrate on being a businesswoman and being her own boss, which she has been doing since 2017. She was born in Davao City in the Philippines down south, but lived most of her life in Metro Manila. Daphne presently calls the island of Siargao in Mindanao, Philippines, as her home. She and her husband Borja are rebuilding their home, along with all their hopes and dreams after the recent super typhoon Odette practically snatched and drowned almost everything away that they own. I met Daphne through our common friend Lily. She was my guest from my season's first final episode. Lily just told me, oh, I have got this friend, she's also a DJ, Daphne. She's very sweet and she just broke up with this very long-term relationship and I'm trying to get her out in the world again. And since I'm taken, you should be the one who can show her the ropes and bring her out of her shell again and let her know herself and introduce her to our party scene. So there I came, I met Daphne, and I could see she's broken-hearted and she's so sweet, and we just clicked. We became really close friends up to the point that I had to push her to her now husband. They lived happily ever after. So we also became a roommate in Manila at some point, and we've seen each other's dramas in our 20s, really, as part of growing up, being who we are, as we are now. My synonyms for Daphne are doll as a noun, exploring as a verb, and buoyant as an adjective. Within this conversation, you'll further understand why I describe her as such. So here she is. Daphne Mitra!
Daphne 00:03:15
Hi. My name is Daphne. Same as the words Frangipani as a noun, laughing as a verb, sensitive as an adjective. I like the word alma, meaning soul, and I dislike the word exotic.
Wish 00:03:34
Thank you very much for that. That definitely makes a lot of sense, how you described yourself. So, yeah, how are you? I mean, you're always doing a lot of very multi-dimensional things in your life.
Daphne 00:03:50
In a nutshell, at the moment, I'm okay. I'm more than okay, I guess, after two years of building and then opening for six months and then having, as you mentioned earlier, my hopes and dreams shattered by a super typhoon in December last year. But we are alive. I'm alive. And so I'm great in that context. I'm very much okay.
Wish 00:04:21
That's good to hear.
Daphne 00:04:23
Apart from that, we are again rebuilding. So that's what's taking up most of my time these days. We have to go back to pre-opening, which is throwing in cement, buying furniture, painting certain things, building a room for ourselves somewhere else in the property, because I don't think I can live in the same room that I had before after the typhoon, and knowing that water can actually come into the house, which actually made the place beautiful. But it also was what made it dangerous when the typhoon happened. That's the main activity that is consuming my thoughts and my time these days. Apart from that, 2022 is for me about health, physical health and mental health. I think a lot of trauma happened in the last two years, especially with combining the pandemic, the horror of the problems that we had during construction itself. It wasn't so much we were quite happy when the business opened, actually, because it was doing well despite the fact that the Pandemic was still ongoing. But then we ended the year in a really bad note with a super typhoon, which we didn't expect to be that strong. When you think of a typhoon, you think lots of rain, lots of wind, right? But you would never from I guess you would say that I lived in the city most of my life and now I'm living on an island. This is not the first time I've lived in an island, but this is the first time that I've lived in an island and I've experienced such force of nature. Like, even in Manila. Manila is prone to having typhoons, but I lived there a total of 21 years and I've never experienced anything of that kind of strength. I don't know about you, you've lived in Manila longer, in Cavite, in Manila, and I don't know if you've ever experienced anything so strong. I think it was over 300 kilometres an hour of wind, and not stronger than what happened in 2012 and later. But it was there. And the house is made of cement. And if it was just the wind, I think we would have been fine. But because it pushed the water inland, it was going over the house. Over the house.
Wish 00:07:00
Oh my gosh.
Daphne 00:07:02
We have cement seats on top of the roof and those got moved. I found them on the other side of the house. They got uprooted, they're attached to the floor with rebar and they got moved to the other side of the house.
Wish 00:07:02
Wow.
Daphne 00:07:02
I wish I could explain to everyone how crazy that is. The cement, it's so heavy. You can't push this bench. You need five, six guys to push this bench if you wanted to move it, but definitely not carry. It's so crazy. It's so crazy. And so that's why I'm thinking that mental health this year is so important. Being able to talk about the experience, talking to others who had the same experience on the island, and just being able to talk and connect with other people in general, this year is so important. After that experience with all of that.
Wish 00:08:00
You were saying that 2022 and because of these past two years, you're really reflecting on that a lot. Can we just go back to the beginning first? Before we move on, can you tell me a little bit more about what happened that day? If you're okay to share that at least, whatever you can.
Daphne 00:08:21
Yes. Now we can talk about it. Definitely. It's not a problem. We're talking about the day of the super typhoon, right?
Wish 00:08:31
Yes. Can you pull us in? What happened that day for us to better understand where you're coming from at present?
Daphne 00:08:40
Yeah. So it's a very unforgettable day. It happened on the 16 December 2021. Even before the typhoon came, we already knew that there was a low-pressure area. It wasn't a typhoon yet, so it was still far away. And they were telling us something is heading directly for Siargao. Maybe a week before or five days before. Even three days before, we were still like, oh yeah, all the other typhoons that come, it normally heads up north, further up north, and hit more the Visayas area, like or even further up, like the Bicol region. But on the day before the typhoon, they were still saying that it was heading straight for Siargao. Now it was intensifying a little bit. Anyway, the day before the typhoon itself, we boarded up the room, our bedroom, meaning we put like plywood over the windows, all the windows in our room. But we had guests. And we had some guests that actually checked in because they wanted to see the typhoon from our place. So we had these two rooms that were occupied. And then a friend who also contacted us on the last minute that he said he was going to be alone in his building where he was staying, and that he didn't want to be there alone because everyone had gone to a different town. And he said if he could stay with us, we definitely said yes, definitely come over. So he stayed the night before, and everything was still calm. It was a normal day. No strong wind, not even raining. It was not even raining. So we went to bed at maybe 11:00 p.m. Most days we woke up early because we're so used to it, because we don't have curtains in our room. So we wake up with the sun normally. So on this day, though, it was not very funny, but because we're used to waking up at this time, it was maybe around five in the morning. And Borja, my husband, he checked on a YouTube channel of this American guy who does weather reports in this area in Asia or in the Philippines in general. So he mentioned that the typhoon had gone from a low pressure to a category one, which brings rain and wind, but it's not very strong, right? I mean, that's something we've probably all experienced before. Especially if you lived in Manila or lived in the Philippines, you've probably experienced that before, so that's not something unusual. But around 6:30am, he watched for an update again, and this time the guy had said that it had gone from Category one to Category three. And then soon after that, it was category five.
Wish 00:11:36
Oh, my goodness.
Daphne 00:11:37
So we're like category five. We couldn't even wrap our head around it. You can't really understand what to expect when you've never experienced something like that before. So you're like, I will be fine. The house is cement. We'll just stay on the ground floor. So if we need to go anywhere, we can leave right away. And then all of a sudden, our friends came. In total, we were 14 people. We had some friends arrived from other towns and they said that, can we just hang out here during the typhoon? Because your house is cement and we think it's going to be safe. And we're like, sure. At some point, I started getting really nervous and I said to Borja, look, we haven't prepared an emergency bag just in case if we need to evacuate, we have absolutely nothing. So I said, I'm just going to go up to the room really fast. And I threw in some clothes in the bag, his clothes, my clothes. I grabbed some important documents, like passports and other things that I thought you might need, like our marriage licence. And then I put the leash on the dogs and then I grabbed their dog food and I just put them in one corner of the living room. And most of our friends, they stayed with us in the living room area. And then around 10.30 in the morning, we all started getting hungry because we hadn't eaten anything. Everyone's a little nervous and we hadn't really thought of food. We're a little hungry. It's almost lunch. Let's prepare something. Borja and I went into the kitchen. And in our kitchen, we have a pretty high ceiling. It's just over three metres high from floor to ceiling, just closer to the ceiling itself. We have these windows in the kitchen, but we closed all of them. The day before or the day of the typhoon, we had closed these windows, but you can still see outside. So I had my back turned to the window. But Borja was looking at the window, and just as he was looking at the window, while he was about to slice, I think, onions or something like this something when Dang as we were hungry, we were going to cook lunch, he looks out the window and he sees a wave, not a splash of water through the window. He saw a wave of water, like a body of water, past the front of the window. And he was like, what? What do you mean? Wave just passed. To give you a bit of context, our house is on a cliff, so the water is actually about six or seven metres below us. And we're not exactly on the edge of the cliff. So from the cliff edge we are like 30 metres in. So there's a bit of a distance and a bit of a height. And the house has three floors and maybe about nine metres high all in all, anyways, in the ground floor. So this wave passes by and he was like, no, that can't be. So we exit the kitchen and we run into the living room. Just as we were entering the living room, we could see this body of water going over the edge of the cliff from the cliff, going towards house. But it didn't smash any of the sliding doors or the windows, but it flattened all the greenery in front of the house so we could see the water. And it was crazy. The water was so high as the cliff. Basically the cliff was already the beach, the water had risen to that level and we were like, oh no, this is not even the typhoon yet. Because they said that the typhoon was arriving around eleven, so the wind started picking up. But it's not crazy yet. But because of that, we've all decided that this is the moment. Like it's now and ever. If we decide to leave, we need to leave now. Because if we don't leave now, I don't know if we will be able to do it later on because that wave was crazy. And that was just the first one, actually. Our guests would stay upstairs in their room. They were out one of them was out in the balcony shooting the waves from the balcony of his room. And there's a video and it came out on CNN.
Wish 00:11:37
Oh my goodness
Daphne 00:11:37
There's video.
Wish 00:15:53
Oh gosh.
Daphne 00:15:54
And you could see the waves hitting the rock and then the rock in front of the house. And then you would see little rocks flying into their room from the force of the wave just smashing on the rock and breaking it into little pieces. And then it flew into the room and you can see them run. And then the video goes like a little crazy. And then Borja decided, oh, let's evacuate. So then everyone got a little excited around this moment and we were like, okay, what are we going to do? So we collectively decided that we were going to evacuate the house. So Bora went upstairs and called her guests. We grabbed our bags, grabbed the dogs, and then grabbed the food and we left. We didn't go far. We have this walkway from behind the house, which is elevated from the floor, about maybe two meters high. And we were walking on that walkway to inland towards the highway on higher ground, because our garage is there and we could already see that from the walkway, that there was a bit of water building up. Yeah. So from the walkway itself, you could see there was water was rising in this area, which is inland after the house. It wasn't very high yet up the cliff. Yeah, we're guessing it's from there. That's how much water came in. So we moved to the garage and then we decided, oh, maybe we need some food, we're a little hungry because everyone was really hungry at this time. And so we decided to go back to the house calmly, a few of us, to grab some food from the kitchen, like pieces of bread and tuna or something like this, but something we could eat. And then we locked ourselves in the garage. So in the garage we have some motorbikes in there and it's mostly empty spaces. We have like a work table and a few other tables and some benches. And we were pretty relaxed in there. And because our place runs on solar, so we still had electricity. I don't know how soon the electricity got cut off in the rest of the island, but we turned off the connection from the garage to the house. So before we left the house, we turned off all the connections, so there was no electricity running in the house, but in the garage when the typhoon started and the wind started picking up and you have windows in the garage and you're looking outside now and you're like, wow, this is crazy. You can see all the coconut trees when their leaves all their leaves were pointing towards one direction wherever the wind was blowing, and it was just like it was crazy. And you're looking at it and you're like, oh my God, am I going to survive this? And you start really getting really scared. And so at first we were all scattered around the space of the garage. And then when we realised that it was really getting strong, we started sitting together and we wore helmets because we didn't know what was going to happen. We didn't want if there were things that were going to be flying or things like this, we wanted to protect our heads or if things were going to be falling, at least we were wearing a helmet or something to protect ourselves. It was okay for a while until the wind just sucked the window out, literally. And then the window was gone. And from then on, everything was crazy. There was rain coming in because the wind was blowing so strong and the wind was coming in, and then you could see the ceiling. And this building is not made of cement. This is a prefabricated building. So it's a steel structure inside with flexiboards, right? Or they call them gypsum boards. I mean, they're pretty strong. But we were worried. We were like, okay, we don't know what's going to happen now when the window blew off. But then we could see the ceiling started peeling from how strong the wind was and it was taking away the plexiboards and was flying like pieces of it, like chunks. And then we were like, if that's what's happening, then the rest of the building is just going to slowly disappear, right?
Wish 00:20:12
Yeah.
Daphne 00:20:13
You look at this thing and it and then the direction of the wind was changing. So it was like coming from the north and from the west. And then it was coming from the east and then it came from the south. So from all the directions, it was changing. It was strong when it was coming from the east. That's what sucked the window out. And then the force of the wind itself you know what roll-up doors are? The metal doors. You pull down and you pull up. The wind destroyed that. The force of the wind, it couldn't withstand the wind. And then it broke the door and it just started over there by the end of the garage. So noisy. And all you could hear was the sound of the wind. And watch this white wall of wind pass in front of you because it was sucking in all the rain and it appeared like a white wall of just flying past. And you're staring at this. You're huddled under a table behind a wall with your helmet, holding your pets, with your friends and your family here. And you're looking at this and you're praying that the wall does not give way. Because if it does, like, Lord, please make this wall hold. Please keep it attached to the floor of the garage because if it flies, that's it. I will have nowhere to hide and I will be impaled by something flying in the wind. And that's it, I'm going to die. And you can feel the wall straining from the force of the wind. Straining. This lasted for 6 hours. And it was just there looking, staring. And at one point I asked my friend, because I felt like it was going on forever, I told her, look, please tell me what time it is. And she's like, It's 2:55 p.m. I'm like, oh, this should be over soon. And then maybe a few minutes later, because it was so noisy, another person asked, hey, can you please tell me what time it is? And I felt that hours had passed since I asked her what time it was. And she replies, It's 03:00 PM. And I'm like, what?
Wish 00:22:24
Oh my God.
Daphne 00:22:26
5 minutes have gone by I can't explain to you. I think I've never ever before this day have I ever felt so certain that I was going to die. And it's a really strange feeling, because you won't be able to control it. You're scared and you're trying to hold it together because you're looking at the others and you can also see how scared they are. And if one of us just started crying, maybe all of us would just, like, break down there. And then we needed to hold it together. So there were other things that happened in between that whole thing. We tried to move to a different room, and then when we jumped out of the window, we realised that the ground was electrified.
Wish 00:23:16
Oh, it's live.
Daphne 00:23:17
It wasn't a strong hit. You could feel the electricity running a bit through your feet, in your hand. And I was holding the dog and I'm surprised the dog didn't scream or anything. We have three dogs. Borja was holding another dog and then one of our guests was holding our other dog. And then some of us were divided into two groups. Some of us stayed in the garage and others ran to the security guard house.
Wish 00:23:45
Right.
Daphne 00:23:48
If you can imagine, it's made of coconut lumber and it has a tin roof. And the tin roof has flew like this. But I tell you, the structure actually withstood the typhoon,
Wish 00:23:48
No way
Daphne 00:23:48
because it's attached. The only thing that flew from that guard house is the roof. And it's the same with our garage. It's the ceiling inside the garage that got destroyed. But our roof stayed on. Maybe the way the roof was built and our solar panels, we could hear things like being ripped, like loud bangs from the ceiling. We were sure that all the solar panels were destroyed or were being ripped away by the wind, which wouldn't be surprising. But that didn't happen after the storm. After the storm, we couldn't go back to the house because the water reached all the way to the garage. There was water, there were waves. One of our friends jumped out of the window that got sucked by the wind. He jumped out of that window and he got hit by a wave.
Wish 00:24:56
Oh, my gosh.
Daphne 00:24:58
And the sea is about 250 metres away from this garage. And if I remember the elevations that we needed to get before we started building in this area, the garage is about 12, 13 or maybe 15 metres high, above sea level and 250 metres inland. The seawater was there. Like, the only thing you would see of the coconut trees were the leaves. You couldn't see the trunk of the coconut trees.
Wish 00:25:30
Oh, my God.
Daphne 00:25:31
The walkway that we walked on was underwater. And we were sure the house where we used to live was also, at one point, underwater. It was so crazy. And the next day, when at sunrise and it was such a beautiful sunrise after the storm, I woke up at around six and Borja had already walked to the house. He was already on his way back to the garage. I met him and we were crying. The both of us were crying because he had seen what happened to the house. And he wasn't crying about the fact that the house was destroyed. He was crying about the fact that we survived it, we all survived it, that none of us got hurt in the process. We didn't have any wounds or cuts. The worst thing that we had was maybe got a little bit electrocuted, but we were all alive. And thank God for that. But then the days following the typhoon were like being in an episode or a few episodes of The Walking Dead. The roads were all blocked. There were so many trees on the road, so you couldn't drive your car or your motorbike. You had to walk everywhere. And then because, say, we had 1000 trees before the typhoon, we were left with less than 200 trees, maybe even less. After the typhoon, you used to not be able to see the house from the road. Now you can see it from a few turns down the road. People would drive by now and they'd be like, oh, there's a house there.
Wish 00:27:08
Right. It was hidden before.
Daphne 00:27:11
Yeah, they didn't know. I mean, maybe they had an idea, but they didn't know where it was exactly, because you really couldn't see it, even with the lights. We don't have neighbours, that's the thing. And there's a reason why we chose this property, but well, there the days after that, we all moved to a house with our friends and we were all sleeping in the house. They still had some running water because they had a tank, so we could still shower and cook. But there was no electricity, no signal, no way to let anyone know that we were alive. And we were all expecting to find so many dead people, but there were none.
Wish 00:27:55
Yeah.
Daphne 00:27:55
Thank God no one really died from the typhoon itself. I mean, there were a few people, I think majority, if there were deaths were happening after the typhoon itself because they didn't have access to clean food and water.
Wish 00:28:13
The repercussions of a disaster, pretty much.
Daphne 00:28:16
Yeah. Now it doesn't sound I don't know if I have enough words to describe to anyone how crazy that typhoon was. The only thing I can say now is that it has scared me so much, the fact that the waves could go over the house and do that much damage. That I used to sleep in one of the rooms in the house, that I am not going to be sleeping there anymore.
Wish 00:28:50
I understand. Yeah. I understand.
Daphne 00:28:54
Yeah. I just can't.
Wish 00:28:56
Well, thank you for sharing that with me. I'm actually a little bit crying. Oh, my gosh. I really can't help it. I'm just happy that you're alive and I can't imagine what you've been through, even when you're describing it. But thank you for sharing that, because I knew with the minimal words that you and Borja has been announcing on Instagram, I felt that it has way more than that. And I know that at some point that we would be able to sit down and kind of rehash that. So thank you for sharing that with me because I could only feel the trauma of close to the edge of death in that way. But on a positive note, I'm so happy that both of you are alive and you're here and you're moving on and you're more resilient than I could ever imagine. Thank you for being alive and thank you for having a structural integrity with your construction, in a way. And also, I'm sure there's a grace out there that really held you where you were, regardless of the fear. You know there's something, right? I mean, there's something that's protecting you.
Daphne 00:30:25
Yes, I definitely agree with that. Statistically, it sounds almost impossible to have survived that without being injured or the way it just happened. It happened during the daytime, so we saw the waves, the waves that made us decide to leave the house had it happened during the night and we would be falsely thinking that we were safe inside our house. I don't know how we would have been able to evacuate anymore if the waves were already on the house with the dogs, with the things that you need to bring, even if it was just a backpack. I don't know. I'm trying to find a silver lining in all of these things that it happened during the daytime, that we actually knew that there was a storm coming and most of the people that are in the towns that are sea level, they had been evacuated. Some got injuries, but no one died. So at the end of the day, everyone walked away with their life. I think that the most precious thing there. You know, you only have one of it and hopefully all of us that lived through that will make better use of it after that experience.
Wish 00:31:44
Yeah, because that kind of answers what I'm pretty curious about, because now, few months in the aftermath of that super typhoon, looking back with that experience, what are your key reflections that you're now applying in your life? That's why you're able to pick up and move on from it.
Daphne 00:32:10
One thing that we really wanted more than anything after that typhoon and that we realised that really helped was having the community, because we didn't have our families there, but we had a community of friends and we had that support. We were all in the same boat. And I think that experience made us want even more. I mean, we were already very close before the typhoon happened, but now we know that we have each other's backs. We can depend on each other, we can lean on each other and the others weep and crying then others are there to comfort and to listen and to be strong. Take away from all of that. It's important to have to maintain very strong relationships with people because life is so fleeting. It's so important to maintain that line of connection with the people that are important in your life. Because you never know. Like before the typhoon, I had spoken to my mom maybe the day of the typhoon itself or the day before the typhoon. And I said, look, we might lose connection after the typhoon, but please don't worry, we'll be okay. I said that not knowing that the typhoon was going to be a category five typhoon. Right, right. They're maintaining those relationships and checking in on each other. Really, until this day, everyone from that group that we stayed together with after the typhoon, and we were like 20 something in total. We all left the island five days after the typhoon. We were all in different states of worry or fear in our own little hole of PTSD.
Wish 00:34:03
It's a shared trauma.
Daphne 00:34:05
It definitely was. Am I answering your question?
Wish 00:34:08
Yes, this is a conversation. It's all good, you're doing very well.
Daphne 00:34:15
Am I going off on a tangent here and not answering her question? But yeah. Okay. Sorry. To continue the importance of those relationships of your friends, of your family of course. First thing that Borja wanted to do was go home and see his family. Because during the Pandemic, he didn't see them.
Wish 00:34:34
They're in Madrid, right?
Daphne 00:34:36
Yeah. So they went home to see his family. We haven't seen them in over two years. And good timing. When we landed in Manila, we were in Manila for a few days, process papers and all these things, to be able to leave the country. Because it was still the Pandemic.
Wish 00:34:54
Yes.
Daphne 00:34:55
My mom was actually in Manila, too.
Wish 00:34:58
Good grief.
Daphne 00:34:59
So that was really good timing. So I was able to see my mom and stay with my youngest sister or the family, her husband, because that's where they live. And so we were able to see all of them, the parents-in-law, my sister, my sister, my nieces, her husband. So we were able to spend time with my family. And then we also got to spend time with Borja's family.
Wish 00:35:24
That's fantastic.
Daphne 00:35:25
And I think that was really important. We also needed that break that was like our breathing room. We were a little lost after the typhoon, to be honest. We didn't have the energy or the enthusiasm to rebuild. Because imagine, we had just opened our doors to business six months prior to this typhoon. After two years, almost two years of construction, we finally opened our doors for business in June of 2021. And then by December gone.
Wish 00:36:01
Right? I'm so sorry. Just to be clear, your business is a hotel. It's a boutique hotel, isn't it?
Daphne 00:36:09
You can say it's a little like a boutique Airbnb, more like it. Or like a boutique hotel. It's a five-bedroom place. And we also live on the property.
Wish 00:36:22
Yes.
Daphne 00:36:22
According to the government, if you live on the property or you live in the same building that you're renting out and it's actually like a homestay, so I describe it as a boutique homestay.
Wish 00:36:33
It is. It looks wonderful.
Daphne 00:36:36
Well, it was different from the other places that were normally in the north. We had heated water and air conditioner and we were running on solar. We saved rainwater, things like this, so we made our own electricity in our water source. We were in the woods, we had fireflies at night. And I say that in past tense because I don't know if they're still there. We have this beautiful tree behind the building and we had squirrels there. We had all different kinds of insects that you can think of because literally, we were living in the middle of the forest. For someone who wants to go on a vacation and have a bit of budget, so that was what we were offering. After the typhoon, we lost everything in the kitchen. All the fridges, ovens, gone. Plates, everything we had stored in the pantry, gone. What do you call this? Like an area, like our storage area. All gone. And all we found there were big blocks of cement from the floor in our restaurant that the water actually destroyed. And then those pieces of cement pushed it somehow underneath the stairs of the house and into the storage area. But all the shelves that we had there, gone. We had a mattress that we found in our neighbour's lot, a toilet bowl. Crazy. Crazy. You look at all of that and you're like, wow, six months wasn't enough for me or for Borja to completely forget the frustrations that we had during the actual building of the place.
Wish 00:38:26
Yes.
Daphne 00:38:26
And so now we have to go do the frustrations again. Second time?
Wish 00:38:31
Yes. So the last time I've spoken with Borja, I think during the time that you were both in Madrid, I asked him, So what's next? And then he said, at that time, I don't know if I want to rebuild. And then a few weeks after that, you've mentioned to me that you're rebuilding. What was the turning point? That both of you decided that, okay, we're going to rebuild this, we're going to do this for the second time, regardless of the pain in the arse doing it, but we're going to do this. What was your turning point?
Daphne 00:39:06
I guess it was just being away from like I said, we needed that space away from the island itself. So while being away, you slowly, slowly start to feel a little better and you don't see, because it's not in your face anymore, all the destruction that happened there. You have a general idea of how much mess is still there and how much need your attention and need to be fixed. And then you talk to your family and they're like, oh, you guys need to do something about it. What are your plans? And so they start asking you, right? And then you get all these encouraging messages also from people, and they realise, are you guys open? Are you guys planning to rebuild? Or you definitely need to rebuild, because that place was very special. We stayed there, we want to stay there. We've heard about your place. We really want to go there. And so you hear all of these things and all these words of encouragement from your family, from people that you don't know, from your friends, and you're like, yeah, I'm going to do it. Then you find the motivation because then you also think about how much time you actually spent building that place. And then you think, Do I really just want to throw that away?
Wish 00:40:31
Yeah, it's yours.
Daphne 00:40:32
You can't also just ignore it. You can't sell it.
Wish 00:40:32
Exactly.
Daphne 00:40:32
No one's going to buy it the way it is. You can't just leave it there to rot. It's still there, it's standing. Your option really, is to blow yourself in and just do it.
Wish 00:40:51
Right. So this time around, it's like a second chance, right? Or another chance in life. So what are you going to do in that beautiful space differently?
Daphne 00:41:03
A chance to yes, to do things differently in that place. First, I think, when you're doing something, and then later on, it's kind of like regret. Like, you see how certain things that you thought would be nice but didn't work out exactly the way you wanted it to work out. Or maybe there's a leak somewhere, or maybe you didn't do this as well as you thought you should do it. And so those are the things that we're fixing, apart from improving the place and making it working on the things that weren't working correctly the first time around. We are also living still on the property, but a different part of the property, because now there's seaview from everywhere.
Wish 00:41:46
Right, got it.
Daphne 00:41:49
Yeah. And maybe one of the few things that we might be changing is we might be moving the kitchen of the restaurant to closer to the road as well, so that if we do have something similar, or if the water rises higher than it did during the typhoon, that we don't lose everything in the kitchen. So we're building that on higher ground. Maybe changing from aluminium frames for the windows to maybe wood, get better waterproofing, and thinking if we're building more rooms. But what kind of rooms should they be? Rooms with AC or with fans? Those are things we haven't decided yet. Do we want to build a swimming pool? Maybe? But where things like this. After the typhoon and we left, we came back around mid-February on the island. So we've been here since mid-February and we've been working on reconstructing the place since then. One thing that I noticed that has changed. And I'm not only talking about for our place itself, but for the whole island. It's been raining so much lately. Everything again now looks so green. The island is so alive again.
Wish 00:43:05
Wow. It's regenerating, isn't it?
Daphne 00:43:08
Yeah, it's beautiful. It's so beautiful because immediately after the typhoon, everything was just grey and brown because everything got covered in salt. And so how salt dries everything up and just Mother Nature. Between February until now and today, we were driving down the road, heading back to General Luna from our town, where we have our place, which is in Burgos, which is up north. Today, I was looking at the trees and I'm like, wow, they really look more vibrant. And the non-coconut trees are like growing leaves, like really green leaves, and they're so leafy now. And I'm like, wow, it's amazing. So apart from us rebuilding our place, nature itself is also rebuilding. And it's nice to see. We need to do a lot more, though, in our place, so many trees fell, so we have to cut off those trees and pretty far and do a lot of landscaping. I don't know how to go about that. That's the part that I don't know.
Wish 00:44:09
How from having survived and seeing that the environment is healing together with both your souls and also for your beautiful spot and all of these things happening, it will be okay moving forward, you're already a few steps ahead of that path. In closing, what's the word that you can impart to our listeners? Word or a phrase that you can impart to our listeners and why?
Daphne 00:44:42
Wow, I have to think about that one. The word that comes to mind is grit. Grit is another way of saying encourage and resolve. Strength of character. I think going through whatever it is in life, it doesn't have to be a super typhoon. The super typhoon could be a metaphor.
Wish 00:45:03
Okay.
Daphne 00:45:03
Everyone goes through challenges in life. And I think the push that moves you forward, the motivation that moves you forward, is the resolve, the grit that you have to indeed move forward with whatever it is to decide to continue despite the circumstances or despite maybe you're not still 100% sure that you are, of how to go about it, but what you have is the beginning, that desire to move forward. And I think in life, whatever it is that happens to you or that happens in your life, there is nothing that happens to you that you can't resolve or move from. I mean, it's never the end of your story yet, unless you die or you end up in prison. I guess.
Wish 00:45:59
Even then there's more time to reflect there (waves of laughter). That's beautifully said. I really appreciate that. And I'm sure like what you said, focusing on your health and your mental health to keep yourself centred, but you're always very good at that all throughout. And just to let you know, I'm here to support you, to cheer you on, and I'm really happy to be your friends. I'm always proud of that and I'm very proud of you and Borja for pushing through and really surviving this.
Daphne 00:46:34
Thank you. I want to say thank you also for having me and for letting me share and talk about, normally what would be considered a horrible experience. But, I mean, these days it's good to be able to talk about it and I guess to talk about it with less fear but more unforgettable experience. I'm glad that we got to talk about it quite extensively today.
Wish 00:46:58
Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that and being open about it. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. It's really nice catching up with you. I really hope we can sit down face to face really soon because I do miss you.
Daphne 00:47:13
Yeah.
Wish 00:47:15
See you here in Singapore, right?
Daphne 00:47:17
When we go to Singapore, definitely. Which will be soon, I'll let you know.
Wish 00:47:17
Yay.
Wish 00:47:24
Love you.
Daphne 00:47:25
Love you.
Wish 00:47:31
From this episode, one of the most important words about life is healing. It is the cause to become sound or healthy again. It's similar to words alleviate medicinal ameliorate, relieve, help soften curative and make good. Stephen Levine, an American poet best known for his work on death and dying, quoted: "To heal is to touch with love that which we previously touched with fear." We all have traumas one way or another. It may be big to you, but small to me, and vice versa. But that does not cancel each other out. You can recognise them as your trauma. You embrace them and find some ways to ask for help to heal, regenerate and think about what would you like to do to address that trauma? As long as we're alive, we have this propensity to really fight for ourselves and really look within and also externally to see the silver linings of life. There's more to our trauma than what we're leading ourselves on. There's more to life, there's more to our love, there's more to the fear that we have that we can change - that we can evolve into something more positive for ourselves. Because ultimately, we have to fight for ourselves and the life that we're being given and blessed about. Find that path to heal.
Wish 00:47:31
Thank you for listening to Human Thesaurus please help me rate and subscribe because your support means a great deal. Join me again next week for another episode. And while waiting, why not listen to my past few episodes? You may find one of them fascinating. I'm your host, Wish Ronquillo Peacocke. Have a fantastic day and thanks for listening.
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