Election Time!

so D-day has finally come. all registered voters in the philippines are supposed to have voted by this time for their president, vice president, senators and local government officials. (as per the news on tv right now, Aquino is ahead with 5M votes or 40 something percent while for Vice president, its Binay with 5M or 40 percent of the total votes counted...its still a long way for the Comelec to go, counting the votes that is)

I almost gave up on my rights as a voter earlier because the process was really a huge test of one's patience. I don't want to say its also a test of one's nationalism because i would hardly label myself as a nationalist. Days ahead, I already checked my precinct and baranggay number so I wouldn't have a hard time finding the classroom assigned as my voting place. Finding the classroom was easy enough, what followed next was the the difficult part. For starters, things were not organized. There were no clear instructions on what the flow should be. It turns out the room assigned to me and about 600 other people is just a holding room. At the time that I voted, there were about a hundred or so people crammed into a classroom that can accommodate about 40-50 students. Add to this, the sweltering heat that is the norm nowadays in the Philippines and you won't see a person with a dry shirt in the room. so from the holding room, we were supposed to get a number. From there, from lowest to highest, we move to the voting room and get our ballot sheet and marker. The waiting part took me more than two hours but the voting part only took me like 5 minutes. Since this is the first time that we are having the automated elections, I kinda expected the machine to break down at some point. fortunately, the machine assigned to us did not while i was there. My cousin who was voting in another room was not as lucky. Her machine broke down as she was about to insert her ballot (talk about bad luck, although eventually her machine was fixed). during the wait, i was this close to walking out but i thought, i'm there, might as well get it over with.

To reward myself, I treated myself and my friend Kim (who's visiting from Singapore) to a buffet lunch at the Sofitel Philippine Plaza.

So was it worth it?

Yes, I'd say the lunch was definitely worth it hehehehe

i've been soaping my finger clean but the ink just won't go away...at least now its really indelible