7am. Today is a work day, and my deal with work was that I’d be working-from-Philippines, not bunking-off-to-do-disasters, so I’ll only be popping in and out of the chats and here from now.
Jean Cailton from VISOV (French VOST) has popped up overnight: many VOSTies are online working under the flags of other groups, which is kinda normal for mappers. Someone asks for rainfall data: the image a couple of days ago was based on TRMM data, so I wonder if NASA has daily updates to share (I already have scraper code for this from another project, and I remember that Lea Shanley is working on communities there now): Maning points out that the data is updated 3-hourly; is good. SBTF data is going to be posted on the Rappler map. And ACAPS puts out their first briefing note: volunteers are working with them, gathering secondary data (news, data etc) for the notes. Teams have all settled down into a rhythm, so I don’t feel too bad about having to drop out of helping for the day.
11am. Eat breakfast, with triple espressos all round (twice). Stock up on boko juice (coconut water) and head back to work. Typhoon is winding down: it’s now rated as a severe tropical storm (yawn worthy in this land of 20 typhoons a year), Borongan airport is open to receive disaster response teams and relief; Guiuan airport is being cleared, and “national roads affected by #RubyPH are now passable” (DWPH). Rappler people are reporting from some of the typhoon-hit areas (Dagami Leyte, Calarbazon, Camarines Sur) and connected to SBTF team. Investigate flights to Dumaguete tomorrow, to catch up with some old friends (and work from local coffeeshop).
Do dayjob work today. Spend lunchtime being massaged: hunch over laptop 20/7 for a week has left me with two shoulder knots so big that I’ve given them names. Try to book flight to Dumaguete: tomorrow’s flights get switched from airline to an online reseller whilst I’m trying to book, and the reseller’s site is down. *sigh*. Book flight for Wednesday – I haven’t come all this way *not* to check in on friends here. It rains – drizzles – all day; at 5pm the sky is dark enough to need lighting on indoors, but there’s nothing more than a little light rain and wind going on outside. Skypechats are now silent, save for the occasional person coming in to start volunteering. Turning up 3 days later isn’t cool dudes: the volunteer help is usually needed as a disaster hits, not afterwards.
9pm. Ruby isn’t quite done with me yet: find myself in another Skypechat, this time the one for helping ACAPS gather the background data needed for future event reports. Will be doing a bit each day on that for a couple of weeks, hopefully alongside lots of filipino volunteers too. It’s still raining a bit here in Manila, but if we didn’t know a typhoon <del><del>tropical storm was passing overhead, we really wouldn’t notice it.