An eight-hour brownout hit a portion of Los Angeles last Monday and the Vagabond Inn, where we stayed, was not spared from the power outage.
Luckily, we?re used to this situation.
Solar vice president for operations Ralph Roy and I shared Room 228 at the Inn which is a stone?s throw away from the Wild Card Boxing Club gym on Vine street. Two-time world boxing champion Manny Pacquiao used to stay in Room 120. He moved out after signing a two-year contract to be managed by Shelly Finkel a few weeks ago.
The brownout struck at about 8 p.m. as I was in the middle of writing stories on my laptop for The STAR. The lights didn?t go out but the cable TV connection was gone and the phone line went dead.
When I finished writing, I wondered how to email my stories to The STAR. There was no wireless server or hotspot in the air and my option was to dial up to connect to sbcglobal. My nephew Gerry Marcial assigned one of his sbcglobal links to me so I could dial up using a local number anywhere in the US to connect to the service provider.
Gerry sent sbcglobal?s CD installer from his San Mateo home via express mail and fortunately, it arrived the day before I left Manila for this trip so Joven Villaroman of Villman could plug it in my laptop.
In Denver, Solar Interactive president Mikey Garcia helped me to set up my laptop for a wireless connection. It worked because the Residence Inn, where we stayed our first two nights, was a hotspot. But when we transferred to the Marriott, the charge was $9.95 for an internet connection. Because of Gerry?s sbcglobal access, I dialed up only for $1 to connect.
The brownout was a bummer because the phone line was out of commission. I walked out of the Vagabond Inn to check if I could use the phone line in the nearby Thai restaurant which our Solar group patronized. Alas, there was no power in the block.
I used my Smart roaming cell phone to contact Manny?s Filipino trainer Buboy Fernandez. I was desperate.
Manny, Buboy, Winchell Campos, Gerry Balagbagan and conditioning coach Justine Fortune live in a two-bedroom condominium unit on Sunset and Vine about four blocks away from the Vagabond Inn.
I asked Buboy if the phone line was live in Manny?s unit. Yes, it was, he said. Buboy offered to pick me up and bring me to the condo so I could use the phone line.
Joe Ramos, who once played in the Philippine Basketball League, fetched me in his car with Buboy.
It was around 9:30 p.m. and Manny was already asleep. I gingerly walked in the condo to avoid waking Manny and quietly dialed up. In a matter of seconds, my stories were emailed to The STAR.
A steady downpour caused the brownout. I learned the next day that a section of the Hollywood Freeway was shut down for several hours because of flooding. A mudslide ripped into the bedroom of a home in San Fernando Valley, a Los Angeles suburb, killing a man and burying him under four feet of dirt.
Daisy Nguyen of the Associated Press said consecutive days of rain have triggered mudslides in southern California. The state highway patrol said more than 300 collisions in a 14-hour period in the Los Angeles area were reported, compared to 50 to 70 accidents on a normal, dry day.
The brownout came on our first night here from Denver.
The day after, we watched Manny spar in the afternoon. He faced three separate sparmates?Maikito Martinez, Sugar Ray Beltran and Justin Juuko.
I spoke to Martinez and Beltran after the sparring sessions and they both agreed Manny will knock out Erik Morales on March 19. I also talked to someone in the crowd ? former world champion Bobby Chacon whom you could hardly understand because of his slurred speech.
A fighter whom I interviewed in the gym that day was trainer Freddie Roach?s flyweight contender Brian Viloria.
I waited for Manny to pack up at around 3 p.m. before I had a late lunch at a neighborhood Taco Bell. I devoured three soft tacos then went back to our hotel room for more writing. The phone line was fine that night and I connected at a cost of only 75 cents for the local call.
We left the US for home on a Cathay Pacific flight Wednesday night.
