“Did Ayala Malls and SM Corp have a major disagreement, and that’s why they closed their bridgeway?” I asked myself in disbelief as I confronted the wall of steel blocking my way through the glass doors to Glorietta. I had just enjoyed a quick (and late) lunch at McDonald’s in SM Makati and was supposed to wend my way through Glorietta and Greenbelt before crossing Ayala Avenue on my way to the Living Asia office. I shrugged my shoulders and took an escalator down, hoping to enter Glorietta at the ground level.

As I started to exit SM, I noticed a whole lot of people just standing in front of Glorietta’s entrance. The mall’s interiors were dimly lit and the establishments inside looked closed. My stomach churned as I started to catch whispers of explosions and bombs.

Because the establishments on the perimeter of Glorietta were open, I stepped inside a Mercury Drug and asked the guard why the mall was closed. “May sumabog sa loob (Something exploded inside [the mall]),” he explained. “May patay (Someone died).”

“Kailan nangyari? (When did it happen?)” I asked, feeling my lunch start to rise into my throat.

“Mga 1:30 (At 1:30),” he informed me.

I walked toward Glorietta Park where several small groups of people had gathered into their own small circles gazing up at the mall’s facade. I took out my cellphone and found my parents and sister had gone nuts texting and calling me asking me to avoid Glorietta because a bomb had gone off there. And boy, did I know it. Between taking their calls and sending text messages back, I took some photos and video of the organized chaos in front of Glorietta and noted the helicopter making repeated runs in the airspace overhead.

As I walked down Ayala Avenue and crossed toward the Makati Stock Exchange, I was walking with a group of people that included a young couple and their daughter. The father was carrying the little girl and the couple tried their best to be calm around her. Then, as we reached the Stock Exchange, the father passed their daughter into the mother’s arms as he walked inside a bank. The little girl asked the mother something, to which she replied, “E diba may sumabog sa Glorietta? Hindi ba katabi natin yun? (Didn’t something explode in Glorietta? Weren’t we standing next to it?)” I took a closer look at them. They were carrying hardly anything, and the daughter was sock-footed and holding her sole shoe in her hand.

I had arrived at SM some time around 2:20pm. An MMDA truck and the ever-vigilant media (represented by ABS-CBN News) already were parked out front. The SOCO police van arrived just as I was walking away from the scene, continuing on my way. They — and I — had only missed the explosion by an hour.

I’d been delayed in my trip to Makati because of a traffic jam at Ortigas when I dropped my sister off at her meeting in Megamall, unaware that a 3-day sale had commenced today. Then, I had chosen to park in Shangri-La Mall and took the MRT from Shaw Station to Ayala Station, which connected into SM Makati. I had been so overcome by hunger that I chose to eat first before continuing into Glorietta. So I couldn’t help feeling like I’d been saved by the skin of my teeth from peril, however remote it now felt. Thank God!

UPDATE 4pm: It was a bomb, according to the police.

I’ll have photos and video up when I get home. I’m posting this from a computer workstation at the Fitness First in Makati.

UPDATE 7pm: Photos are now up. And MLQ3 has referenced this post, as well as my friend Joanne’s Multiply blog post.

Tags: Glorietta Bombing

I didn’t want to write about this before it had come to its conclusion, superstitiously thinking that I might jinx myself. Well, there’s no chance of that happening now.

After three weeks, I am now out of the running to be the next RX 93.1 Radio Idol. I recorded my audition reel on September 25. It was aired on October 2, and the next day someone from RX texted me telling me I had gone through to the next round.

Of course I was excited, but had no idea what to expect. Considering I only started listening regularly to the radio a few months ago, I hadn’t really paid attention to the whole flow of the Radio Idol contest. Basically, people who want to become DJs for the radio station try to avoid getting knocked out in the earlier rounds by competing in batches through a series of challenges. This week was the second round and I faced off against three other people: Ellen, Randy, and Luis.

So last night I sat in a booth with the other three “DJ wannabes” and Rico and Danielle, the Radio Idol hosts. After we all introduced ourselves over the air, we each had to pull a topic out of a box labeled “J.Lo’s” (weird, I know) and talk for 30 seconds about the random topic.

My co-competitors were nice; we all kind of bonded in the hour before our show was due to start and we spent the time talking about random stuff, like Spongebob Squarepants. Just before the show started, I had told my companions that OPM was my weakest suit in music. Unfortunately, that was the genre I pulled out of the box. “Rivermaya”, the piece of paper read.

All I knew, every witty remark I had in my brain — it felt like someone had taken my head, unscrewed the top off it, and emptied its contents into a wastebasket. I felt like Patrick Star when asked if he wanted fries with his Krabby Patty (i.e., “DUUUUUUUH” was the only thing sounding in my head).

So, in short, I embarrassed myself on national radio before the ears of thousands of listeners. Right then I already knew I’d have the “Not Worthy” stinger played after my name at show’s end.

But guess what? I’m more broken up about sounding like a fool than about losing the contest. I didn’t want it as much as the two “Worthy” contestants Ellen and Randy did. But Luis has been trying for nine years to get into RX, and this is his second time on Radio Idol.

It’s probably not my time, nor God’s will for me to go into radio this way. As Gelli texted me after the show, there are other opportunities, other openings. While there’s the Wildcard entry that may still be open to me in Radio Idol, I’m not really counting on it. Like I told Randy last night, I’m just interested in seeing where I fit in, where I can excel. I learn that through both being accepted and being rejected.

Tag: Embarrassing Situation, Radio