A Day After "THE DAY"

A day after the Philippine National Election, I'm still in awe. My voting experience is actually bitter sweet. At 9am, Sweets and I drove his mom to her precint, hoping to finish early, but it turned out that 9am is a tad too late. Her precint was located on the third level of a HS building, but upon arriving, the line already reached ground floor! The reason for this? A PCOS machine malfunctioned. After nearly an hour of waiting in the open grounds, with the sun shining mercilessly, we decided to leave. BF's mom has hypertension and already suffered from stroke 3 years ago, and the situation was just too risky for her. In fact, two men were brought down from the precints in stretchers, probably passed out because of the heat! Scary sight.

After lunch, I drove home to fetch mom and to vote (I saw Cavite police and some politician's private army exchange fires in the highway!), but with the earlier ordeal, I decided to sleep first and just vote late in the afternoon. And that was the best decision ever. We arrived at our precint at 6:20 pm, no more lines, and though the public school classrooms were still very humid, at least we were spared from the killer afternoon heat and from claustrophobia.

The voting procedures were fairly easy, and I'm done in less than 10 minutes! But what really surprised me is that I already saw unofficial tallies that same night! Before I went to bed, they are already at 59%! It's a HUGE HUGE improvement from the manual elections where you have to wait for weeks and even months to see the results --thus, giving more time and opportunities for cheating, and worse, for violence.

We are nearing 100% as I type this, and though my presidential and vice-presidential bets didn't make it, I'm just too glad to have exercised my right, and became part of this historical moment. And though there are technical glitches here and there (hey, it's our first!), let's admit it, automation made a LOT OF WONDERFUL DIFFERENCE. Voting is one important step, but our plates are full in the coming days, not only for the president-to-be, but for each Juans and Marias (Filipinos). God Bless our land in the next six years!

Oh BTW, hot momma Shobe of LittleBeautyBag is holding an Anniv/Mom's Day Giveaway, do check her blog for details, okay? And start reading her posts, I'm sure you'll love her as much as I do! Goodluck! See the pretty things she prepared below. =)

Much Much Love,

Dang