::. I LEFT MY LONGGANISA IN VIGAN: THE JOURNEY .::

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I say, I am just too lazy to churn out words to narrate my Vigan experience last May with my friends Abbie, Tin, Charo & Jako.

We left Manila via the 11:30PM Partas bus trip last May 15. Arrived at Vigan 9 hours after on May 16 and immediately checked in at the oh-so-vintage Grandpa's Inn. Went to Chavit's Baluarte, ate the overrated bagnet at Cafe Leona, rode the charming calesa to the famous Bantay Bell Tower (which we climbed) at St. Augustine Church, dropped by Villa Angela, checked out Hidden Garden, ate dinner at Cafe Uno (yummy chicharon dipped in dinuguan!), had a night stroll through Calle Crisologo, chilled out at Sitio Bar, ate Vigan longganisa for breakfast at Grandpa's Inn, went to the Syquia Mansion (I'll never forget you lolo tarush!), ate Vigan empanada at the town plaza, shopped for souvenirs at Calle Crisologo, visited the Vigan Cathedral, bought Vigan longganisa at the palengke, tripped out on this el cheapo jukebox at the carinderia beside Partas bus station. Took the 9pm Partas bus out of Vigan on May 17. Got stranded somewhere in uhh I don't know where (pangasinan? tarlac? who knows where the hell we were?! it was pitch black outside... no electricity!) due to the terrible typhoon Cosme. Got to Manila around 2:30pm of May 18 after 17 freaking hours of stop and go travel. Ate a super late lunch at Yoshinoya Park Square Makati. Rode yet another bus (at that point, we HATED being inside buses) to San Pedro. Got home around 5ish pm.

Such a swell time. Long live the PPG! I love you gang! That was quite an adventure for the books! The forces of nature jinx is still alive hehe :p

Here are the visuals to tell the story of our trip...

::. PLANNING SESSION @ TAGAYTAY .::

foggy tagaytay highlands


Me and my officemates held our annual planning session at Tagaytay Highlands wherein we were cooped up at the Texas room of Highlander Steakhouse the entire day of Feb 21 and the morning of Feb 22. It was cold weather to begin with in Tagaytay and way up at Highlands, it was super super windy, foggy and cold. I remembered Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day! Sulit the jacket and the muffler I was wearing but I did wish I wore rubber shoes with warm socks instead of sandals. I was like "oh gee, watch my toe nails turn pale purple in the cold!"...

We had a hearty lunch of a 10 oz. rib eye steak which is so so huge that I only managed to eat 3/4 of it and I lessened my intake of baked potato and veggie sidings to accommodate more steak since it's such a waste not to finish the juicy yummy steak.

After the day's meeting, we proceeded to The Boutique Bed and Breakfast near Day's Inn. The four of us split into two rooms: I Escape and I Dream. It is more oriented towards couples hieing off to Tagaytay for a getaway -- this we realized after having a long laugh over discovering that our room's had umm sexy CRs. Our room, I Dream (its immaculate white bed pictured below), had a completely see-through glass panel beside the shower wherein one can be seen in all his/her bathing glory from the private terrace and also by the rest of the Taal people down below. I called it "The Pornstar CR"! The other room, I Escape, had a see through glass panel with a view of the garden and also a glass door for the CR such that one can see you doing number one or two on the toilet seat! Not a comforting thought! And so they had the glass door covered with a piece of cloth. Actually, I Dream's CR had a piece of cloth as well which you can hang like a curtain on hooks installed on the glass panel's frame.

our pornstar toilet & bath :)



The hotel's room rate includes a complimentary 10-min. cold stone facial massage, choice of bath soap, shampoo & conditioner (I loved the Lavender scents we chose!) and room scent, and hot chocolate & churros served before you go to sleep. The hotel had an in-house Hawaiian restaurant. We just had salad & spicy chicken wings for dinner since we were still full from the steak we had during lunch. I had swedish massage in our room using a Jasmine Rose scented oil. It was a little bit hard to fall asleep though coz it was very windy outside and I could hear the terrace glass door vibrating and whathaveyous banging around due to the strong winds.

more pictures at: http://lilacstardust.multiply.com/photos/album/32

::. DINNER WITH MY MIRANDA COUSINS .::

My cousin Cholo who resides in US is here in the Philippines for his wedding with Vanessa (who is also fr the US). His brother Nino and wife Marjorie also flew in from the States for the big family event. Being so, us Miranda cousins had a dinner get-together at Sentro (Greenbelt) last Tuesday Feb 19 :-) Missing in action were: Kuya Bernie, Kuya Arnold (who's in uhhh I forgot which Arab country he's in now...), Che Che, Maricar (uber busy with taking up Med at UST), Harmon & Jay. In attendance were: Me and my Ate Chinkee, Ate Christine, sisters Rin Rin & Maan, brothers Nino & Cholo with their wives Marjorie & Vanessa respectively.

Sentro's famous sinigang na corned beef disappointed me this time. I first got to taste it back in, hmm, 2005 I think... and that was super good. However, last Tuesday's sinigang na corned beef was blah. The sizzling tofu appetizer was delicious though.

Ate Christine and I went home ahead of the rest after dinner. The rest of my cousins went to a comedy bar in QC to cap the night.

::. V-DINNER WITH FAMILY .::

Went to San Miguel by the Bay (beside Mall of Asia) last Friday to celebrate Valentine's Day with my family :-) We stumbled upon a branch of G-Squared, the same
"palutuan" that cooks yummy tempura at Dampa Macapagal. We were so hungry at around 8:30pm that we devoured the tempura (the first dish to arrive at our table) before I could take a picture hehe. After having late dinner there, we proceeded to Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf at MOA for some cheesecakes and coffee.

more photos at: http://lilacstardust.multiply.com/photos/album/30

::. CELEBRATING MOM'S BDAY .::

I loved the food the first time I've been to Dampa Macapagal so I suggested that we eat there for my mom's birthday (Her birthday was last Jan 7). It's great that my sis is back from New York now so our family was complete when we celebrated yesterday =)



Mom was mainly the one who shopped for seafood in the wet market since I really had no palengke shopping aptitude hehe :p We had our seafood cooked at G Squared (same place where Jako brought me, Charo & Abbie the first time). We had an oh-so-yummy feast of buttered garlic shrimp, tempura, salt & pepper crab, steamed alupihang dagat and some eggplant, tomatoes & onions. Mom enjoyed eating since she didn't have to cook the food herself ;-) More photos here.

::. CATCHING UP WITH OLD FRIENDS .::

The last time I spent time with Rose & She (my college friends) was our big trip in CDO-Camiguin last year. And so I'm glad we were able to get together again for a Friday night dinner :-)


I picked the resto in Glorietta -- Italianni's. The Italianni's branch in Glorietta was quite cramped and I like the roomy Greenbelt branch better but hey, the food's great so we even had ourselves listed on the waitlist before we got our table.

As usual, my only request was for us to order my favorite in the menu -- the chicken sicilian salad. There. I MEMORIZED the name of the salad this time! Everytime I'm in Italianni's I would always just say that we order the salad with chicken, mangoes and grapes... never got around to remembering the name until now.


Twas so wonderful to touch base with them again as I haven't been much in communication with them especially She. Coz at least, with Rose, I "see" her over at Multiply! However, She remains to be free from the slavery of online social networks -- no Friendster, no Multiply, no MySpace, no Facebook!


We talked and talked so much... I think we were there in Italianni's from hmmm, around 7:30 til 10:30pm. It's comforting to know that I am not alone with my hopes and fears. I discovered that we still had similar views, dreams, goals, fears in life. Another wonderful discovery is that they are also keen on doing charity work (Sheryl has been looking at kids with cancer. I've been wanting to have something to do with kids -- like orphans -- but haven't been able to go around actually doing it.) We were talking about having a sense of purpose at this age (especially with us turning 30 soon!) and so I brought up my wanting to do some sort of charity work. Also picked up some interests from them like travelling as much as possible and going back to school even just to study some short-term marketing module. I'm excited to travel with them again =)


After talking to them, I now have this renewed will to save up some moooore so I will be able to do more of the things we aspire (aside from paying our insurance!)

::. NIGHT OUT WITH THE GIRLS .::

Last Dec 19, I had dinner with my Forces of Nature gals (friends from high school). It was to welcome our friend Mitzi who has been living in the States and has come back to visit the Philippines for the first time after she left 4 years ago. It was so wonderful to see Mitzi again after all these years that we've been only communicating via email, blog and YM! It's amazing that she can still speak great Tagalog without that American twang ;-) The only giveaway is her "oh yeah"s ;-) She treated us to dinner at Masas where we ate yummy Filipino food which she has been missing. (Oh by the way, while I was waiting to meet up with the girls, I decided to get a long-overdue haircut! Since the bob is back, I decided to give it a go again.... I used to have this same haircut when I was in highschool and college. I only started growing my hair long when I was already working. So basically, I chopped off my mid-back length hair into a shoulder length bob).

dinner @masas

mitzi's pasalubongs!

After dinner, Mitzi gave us her pasalubongs :-) After much picture-taking (yeah, all of us had our own digicams), we proceeded to head south wherein Tin treated us to coffee at Starbucks SLEX. 'Can't believe they weren't open 24hours or even til 2pm! When we got there around 12:oomn, they were about to close up. We managed to squeeze in our orders though after making pakiusap to the staff. We had another round of gift-giving, picture-taking and endless chatting as we drank our coffee.

coffee @ starbucks
more photos on my multiply: http://lilacstardust.multiply.com/photos/album/24/._NIGHT_OUT_WITH_THE_GIRLSWELCOME_HOME_MITZI_.

~* AJINOMOTO HIGH BY DAMPA *~

Another obscure fact about me is that I've never eaten in the so-called "Dampa" places (I think the original one is in uhh, Parañaque?) wherein you literally shop around for your own seafood desire in a wet market and then have a restaurant cook them according to your fancy. My friends Abbie, Charo and Jako found out about this weeks ago, as we dined at Pancake House after watching the Aga-Maricel-Angelika movie "A Love Story". They hatched a plan to take me in one of those places (there's also a version in Macapagal Ave. and in Ortigas) so I can finally have that so-called Dampa experience. They have been teasing me about the wet market thing coz I am known to be very squeamish :p

tinimbang ka, ngunit kulang!(pero may smart buddy pa rin! uy, abbie's happy!)
Finally, we pushed through with dinner at Dampa Macapagal Ave. last Saturday. Charo, Jako and I arrived there ahead of Abbie so we were the ones who shopped for seafood at the wet market. I think I gulped the first time I saw the wet market scene. Now don't get me wrong, when I was a kid, I actually accompanied my mom in the town palengke/talipapa which was literally sitting on muddy grounds... by the time we got home, I always had mud all over my feet and some more splattered on my legs. So actually, I knew how it was inside a typical wet market. The one in Macapagal had concrete floors, still unavoidably wet but at least no mud splattering around :-) Of course there was that distinct fishy smell but it's no big deal. The gulp was just because I haven't been inside a wet market for such a long time so I was quite overwhelmed. I told Charo "Sige, carry ko toh!" :-) And then I just realized an important thought: "So who among us knew how to choose the best seafood, judge its freshness and make the so-called 'tawad' sa tindera?" Don't look at me! I only came here to eat, haha! Charo also didn't know how to shop for seafood so good ol' Jako chose & haggled for us :-)


uber-fresh seafood galore!
After purchasing loads of shrimps, maya-maya and bading crabs, we proceeded to G-Squared to have them cooked. Abbie arrived at G-Squared just in time for the sumptuous feast of tempura, shrimp in garlic butter sauce, sinigang sa miso na maya-maya and crabs in oyster sauce w/ onion leeks.

After downing all that yummy seafood, I think I got a bit dizzy with all that MSG. When I asked them if they thought what we ate had MSG, Charo said Jako was a bit dizzy too!:p When I told my mom about it, she said it was probably the MSG and the fat (alige?) of the crab that made us so.

By the way, the entire Dampa experience was Abbie's oh-so-late birthday treat to us. Thanks Abs! :-)

After dinner, Charo and Abbie were lured by the inexpensive DVDs nearby. After DVD-shopping, we struck a pose amidst the wet market :-)

On the way home, we hung out and had coffee at Seattle's Best Caltex at SLEX :-) Talked about memorable episodes of Friends and spoilers of Grey's Anatomy while Jako perused the gadget magazines inside the cafe (hindi maka-relate sa 'min eh! hehe!).



dinner shots inside G-Squared and wet market "glamour" shots :p
way too happy to finally experience eating @ dampa...... or maybe it was the MSG high :p

~* WHILE I WAS iTUNING... *~

I have been sooo remiss with my blogging duties... So here goes one big update!


I GOT MYSELF AN iPOD NANO. Yeah so basically this is the reason why I've been neglecting my blog. I was supposed to buy a Sony Ericsson Walkman fone W850i but got turned off when I examined an actual unit in the store so I ended up buying a pink iPod Nano instead. I have been OC'ing over putting album artworks and fixing the ID3 tags on my 2,999 mp3s worth 11.5GB. And I am still not freaking done. I haven't even organized the genre tags. Arghhh. And about a hundred mp3s still don't have their respective album artwork. OCness does give you carpal tunnel syndrome. Ouch.


I LOVE THE HOLIDAY! Saw this movie with Abbie & Charo last V-day. I love this movie! Jude Law and those dreamy eyes *sigh* I didn't feel any chemistry between Cameron Diaz (Amanda) and Jude Law (Graham) but I liked the pairing of Jack Black (Miles) and Kate Winslet (Iris). It's refreshing to see Kate act goofy and to see Jack as a romantic male lead. The lines in this movie are such quotable quotes, I love it... especially the lines of Kate's character. Here are some of my favorites:

Amanda: You know Graham, I just broke up with someone and considering you just showed up and you're insanely good-looking and probably won't remember me anyway... I'm thinking we should have sex... If you want.
Graham: Is that a trick question?

******
Iris: You're supposed to be the leading lady in your own life, for God's sake!

******
Iris: I like corny. I'm looking for corny in my life.

******

Iris: ... And then, there's another kind of love: the cruelest kind. The one that almost kills its victims. Its called unrequited love. Of that I am an expert. Most love stories are about people who fall in love with each other. But what about the rest of us? What about our stories, those of us who fall in love alone? We are the victims of the one sided affair. We are the cursed of the loved ones. We are the unloved ones, the walking wounded. The handicapped without the advantage of a great parking space! Yes, you are looking at one such individual. And I have willingly loved that man for over three miserable years! The absolute worst years of my life! The worst Christmas', the worst Birthday's, New Years Eve's brought in by tears and valium. These years that I have been in love have been the darkest days of my life. All because I've been cursed by being in love with a man who does not and will not love me back. Oh god, just the sight of him! Heart pounding! Throat thickening! Absolutely can't swallow! All the usual symptoms.

******

Iris: It doesn't matter how many new haircuts you get, or gyms you join, or how many glasses of chardonnay you drink with your girlfriends... you still go to bed every night going over every detail and wonder what you did wrong or how you could have misunderstood. and how in the hell for that brief moment you could think that you were that happy. And sometimes you can even convince yourself that he'll see the light and show up at your door. And after all that, however long all that may be, you'll go somewhere new. and you'll meet people who make you feel worthwhile again. And little peices of your soul will finally come back. And all that fuzzy stuff, those years of your life that you wasted, that will eventually begin to fade.

******
Hannah: My god, I've just noticed how pathetic you are.
Iris: Really? I'm *sooo* aware of it.

******


WE HAD A YUMMY FAMILY LUNCH AT KAMAYAN SA PALAISDAAN. My Tito Boyet from the States was in town for a short visit so we treated him and my Lola Pura out for lunch at Bay, Los Baños (Laguna) last Saturday. I love the ambiance of the place... the type where you can have a very relaxed lunch and just enjoy the "countryside" appeal of the place. {more pictures on my Multiply}






WE WATCHED AN URBANDUB & DICTA LICENSE GIG. Another Sonic Boom event was held in San Mig, ATC last Saturday so Tin and I grabbed this chance to see Urbandub and Dicta License perform live. Typecast, The Ambassadors and Airport Drama also played. Hilera wasn't able to come coz they were still in Fairview. Got a little bitin on the Urbandub set coz they didn't do an encore :( Gabby looked pretty tired already. But they did a kick-ass set anyway so it's all good. Pochoy (Dicta License) looked *hot* as usual. He is just *so* cute in white shirt (ooh, a new version of the Faspitch shirt in white!). Dicta License played last so the crowd pretty much thinned out when it was time for them to play. Good for me though coz I managed to stay right beside the stage on Boogie's side. Really -- this band is so damn good looking (pogi rock alert!)... every single band member is cute in their own way. But that's not to underestimate the intensity of their songs. Pochoy sings with so much passion about socially-relevant themes that is meant to wake up the youth of today. Now THAT's extra pogi points ;-)

~* HAPPY B-DAY MOM! *~

Twas my mom's birthday Jan 7th so we treated her out for a nice yummy dinner at Seafood Island (Market Market - The Fort) last Saturday night. Haven't eaten crabs for a long time so I pigged out on the Salt & Pepper Crab... in fact, that was all I ate (okay, and some oyster rockefeller. Mmm!)

with the bday celebrant

yum yum boodle feast et al. and the *very* nice lights on one corner of the resto