September 20, 2018. Another day for us mappers to help the world.

It’s our 8th session this time in PUP San Juan. From the beginning, we have accomplished so many things. But most of it was today, our chance to help in the Ompongph Mapping.

As we start today, we had a little problem with our equipment to be used. We finalized it first before we start. While waiting for the group assigned, our mentor which is Sir Erwin Olario, mentioned the Mapathon that will be held this coming Sunday. It will be about the mapping in some afffected areas made by the Typhoon Ompong in the Philippines. Some of us can be able to go but some are not.

Our objective for this session was to help in mapping the affected areas from the Typhoon Ompong. Little we know, it will be a “Typhoon Ompong PUPSJ Mini-mapathon” for today. So far, this is our first mini-mapathon because it is really urgent this time. We have 3 tasks to do from the HotOSM and we must all be able to map and validate some works. Our class was divided into two. The other half were the ones who needed to accomplish some missed tasks from the last session, while the other one were the ones who will help on the mapping from HotOSM. I was part of the second half who will just map on some affected areas in the Philippines.

As we work on HotOSM, I can see that Typhoon Ompong really hit a large area in the Northern part of the Philippines. There were large tasks to do and we needed them to split for other mappers can help us at the same time. I worked along Cagayan where buildings are needed. As a mapper this time, we used JOSM as our editor for this task. I’m not really used to JOSM but as needed, I explored it a lot this time to make my mapping session productive. I mapped some buildings on the selected task and I can really say that JOSM is more helpful and fast at the same time unlike any other editors we can use. The buildings I added were many but I didn’t accomplished the whole task because of the limited time we have.

While we were all mapping, I find us all at peace because none of us were talking to each other. We really focused on mapping today and I think that really helped a lot for the people needed it. We really used the time for us to map and ask questions to our mentor that will help us use the JOSM. When I was mapping in some parts of the task, I really find it difficult to map some areas that has their houses really compressed or too close to each other. I know that JOSM is really easy to use but when it comes to those situations, I find it really hard. But despite of that situation, I was able to map almost all of them and work on them.

The main highlight for me every session is to see the leader board for pupsjcwts! I’m really looking forward to it because I really want to be on top!! But at the same time, to map many areas that seems to be important. The ranking was shown and I’m happy because I’ll still be able to reach the person ahead of me and our professor congratulated me, same goes with the other mappers. In connection with the presentation that will be held next session, we picked a mapper from the bottom 10 of the leader board to be the one that will present some insights and highlights with our CWTS++ here in PUP San Juan. With a little twist, they played Rock Paper Scissors Game in front. It was really fun to watch not because it is just a game, but also all of them in front doesn’t like to present for the next session! One of them doesn’t want to play that game because it was really hard for her (and also for me). We were watching closely who’ll be selected for the presentation and it turns out to be the one who lose the game! In the end, one of them was selected and accepted the consequence.

That’s how we end the session for today. What I felt after the session was happy and satisfied for another productive day on mapping!