Entry by Kuh Del Rosario
10 Oct 2018

When I pour from my water jug, the spout makes a twitter sound like a call of a small bird. I’ve never paid much attention, but today I listened.

When I first arrived here, I used rainwater collected from the cement tanks built into the structure of the house for bathing and cleaning. For drinking, I would buy water from the grocery store a couple of hours away until I figured out something better.

Now, the house is hooked up to the town water system which pipes filtered water from the mountains from 6am-6pm on weekdays. During evenings and weekends, we use water reserves kept in a stain- less steel tank that sits on the roof.

These days, I get my drinking water from the water station a few minutes drive from the house. Most of the time the station has one operator; some days, there are two. There have been a few times when the person was asleep in the back, and I had to call into the sliding window several times to wake him up. It takes about 15 minutes to fill all six of my 5-gallon containers and costs twenty pesos each. I used to go by myself, and now my housekeeper comes along. We load the containers to the back of the car as they get filled. Once home, we would work together to unload the jugs from the trunk to the back of the house where they are stored until they get used up again, which would be in about two weeks’ time.

I slice one calamansi and squeeze its contents into the glass of water from the jug I keep in the fridge. I drink a bit of it, but leave the rest on the counter. I will probably forget about my water glass until it is no longer cold. Next time I pass the kitchen, I will be reminded of my water. Condensation would have pooled at the bottom of the glass, and by then I would have lost interest in the water altogether.

I’ve been told I don’t drink enough water, and I can’t disagree. Perhaps I should listen to the birds more often.