Attempt #1

As promised, here's my documented first attempt at cooking. The dish, beef with brocolli.

Background first, in order to save, Jesse and I partnered up with Grace and Ivy for lunch meals. Each of us have to cook 1 dish for the week, and then we'll eat out once a week. So, after mass today, we went shopping for groceries at Tesco.

It was fun looking at meats, veggies and visualizing what you can do with them. The moment I saw the brocolli flowers, inspiration struck. What could be easier than stir-fry cooking right?

Back at the flat, I wasted no time slicing up the meat into thin strips. Then mixed it together with oyster sauce and some sweet soy sauce. I gotta tell you, there's something satisfying about mixing raw meat with your hands, hehe.

Then, chop up a bit of garlic, a bit of ginger, heat up the pan and add the garlic. Mmmm...garlic sizzling in oil always smells so good. Add the ginger, wait a few moments and then add the beef. Stir fry until cooked. Actually, I let mine simmer for a while in its own juices to make the flavor set in and the beef more tender.

Afterwards, add the brocolli, stir a few more times to make sure it's cooked.. and voila, beef with brocolli. :D

I gotta tell you, it tasted good. :) Hopefully, Jesse, Grace and Ivy will agree with me. ;) Bon Apetit!

Why is it that everytime I drink in Europe I end up getting tipsy?!

I really should learn how to pace myself... tsk tsk.

We celebrated Fe Ann (and Jesse's) birthday at Love and Louis' flat tonight. We had garden salad, chicken tandoori and carbonara, plus leche flan, fruit salad and a banana chocolate loaf from Yeye for dessert.

Afterwards, of course, there was the (obligatory) customary drinking. :D

When in Rome... do as the Romans do, and in this case, when in Bratislava, drink vodka. :D

I'm actually very partial to vodka, we chased ours with Sprite and raspberry flavoring. It was good for the first 6 or so rounds. After finishing the first bottle, they opened up a more expensive vodka. Curious about the difference, after a round with chasers, we decided to test how it was, straight up.

It's never a good idea to drink hard drinks one after the other. An even worse idea is to drink one straight up. But of course, it's easy to lose caution in mixed company. The shots were set, and then downed.

Almost immediately, I knew I drank too much, too fast. I should have learned my lesson, but I guess I felt I could take on vodka better than tequila. I felt the same way I felt when I was at Marta's last year.... heart racing, face and neck warming, with each movement making me dizzy. Although this time it was a more subtle reaction than last year's, it was still enough to make me swear off alcohol (again!).

Anyway, after a few missed rounds, and a couple of glasses of water later, I was feeling a lot better. But I was still really sleepy, I slept at 3am last night and woke up at 6 to get ready for a morning jog. Thankfully, Kyle and Miss Lau opted to leave early, so I took the opportunity to duck out.

The fifteen-minute walk back to the hotel did me a lot of good. Which is why I can come up with a coherent post. :) It's weird that my first actual post in Bratislava is how I almost got drunk, but, nothing much has happened yet for me to blog about.

Anyway, tomorrow we'll be hearing mass and do some grocery shopping.. and probably do some cooking of our own at Grace and Ivy's flat. :) I'll make a post about that tomorrow.

Right now I'm off to a warm bath and good night's sleep.. hopefully my body clock will finally be able to adjust. Goodnight!

Oh... and pics to follow. :)

A Week's Worth of Entries...

Feb 11, 2008
Tomorrow, Jeng will be turning 26. Ate ko na naman siya... hehe. Anyway, Jeng, Maitz and I celebrated her bday early at John and Yoko's, Greenbelt5. I totally enjoyed the food. We had Japaella, Oyster OVerload, Bacon wrapped Asparagus, Beef with Enoki and fruit shakes. Afterwards, we were too full to eat dessert so we just had hot chocolates at Max Brenner. :)
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Feb 12, 2008
Happy Birthday Jeng! :D

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Feb 13, 2008
Pre-valentines date? Not... Hehe. We finally pushed through with the dinner plans that never was. I had dinner at Recipes with Archie, Eric, Windel and Cy. It was... better than I anticipated. For some reason... I was really anxious about the dinner...but I survived, and even had a great time. Thanks to Chie for organizing the event, sa susunod ulit. :)

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Feb 14, 2008
Ah... love is in the air... and I... don't care. ;))
Happy hearts day everyone!
But I was not without a dinner date...my wonderful parents surprised me and my siblings with dinner at Casa Armas. :D We had the house specialties, 1/2 Cochinillo, Paella Valenciana, Baked Clams and Prawn Thermidor. We also had a pitcher of Sangria to finish off. Thanks Ma, thanks Pa! You're the best! :D Lablab! Mwah mwah!

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Feb 15, 2008
Okaaay...may rally na naman. Ewan ko ba. Masyado na nila ginagamit ang 'people power'. Trafik na naman sa Ayala. Oh well... we were allowed to go home early, because of it. Buti naman... I still need to pack. :D

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Feb 16, 2008
Aaaaah!!! I'm leaving in 12 hours and I'm still half-packed. Grr... how do you stay within luggage limits when you're packing for cold weather?!! Damn... hopefully the check in counter girl (or guy) will be lenient... and she (or he) won't charge me for excess baggage. :( Grr..I'm at 26 kilos pa rin. If only I were booked on an SQ flight :(

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Feb 17,2008
Bratislava, Slovakia.

I'm back! I think the trip went very smoothly... But it was really frustrating when we checked in. First of all... ang haba ng pila...we stayed for about an hour as the queue inched forward...only to find out there was a separate queue for online checkin. *rolls eyes* The line was soo long you wouldn't have known there was a separate counter for that...plus, hinatid pa ako sa pila nung isang mama from the Xray post, so I assumed it was just that line.

Anyway... we switched lines as soon as I realized there was a different counter, but, as expected I had excess baggage. I was half waiting for her to say, "okay... here are your boarding passes." But no... I had to unload some of my stuff. I tried... but couldn't really decide... I kept thinking about what I would spend here if I left some of my stuff... and then my other stuff was worth more than the excess baggage I had to pay. So... I just decided to pay. The price for my inability to pack light? 97USD... This will be the last time I ever go beyond the baggage limit.

But then, everything was smooth sailing after that... I think Emirates is a very nice airline, touch screen pa ang TV ko. :D Although SQ has more channels to choose from, the Emirates selection was enough. I was even able to watch Darjeeling Unlimited which is still showing in theaters back in Manila. :) The flight stewardesses were very nice...and accommodating. Food was also good. And there wasn't much turbulence throughout the flight.

Then, the Dubai International Airport... this place reminds me so much of home. :D Ang daming Pinoy! And because of that... the entire ambiance of this enormous airport just seemed so warm... so different from the cold ambiance of the Frankfurt airport. We had enough time to scour the duty free. I was sooo sleepy that time that we went to the gate hours before our scheduled time... and I just made myself comfortable on the floor and took a short nap. :D

The flight to Vienna was also uneventful...although we took off about 30 minutes late due to 'traffic' on the runway. It was another 6 hours until we reached Austria. But this itinerary is way better than last years... where we spent around 29 hours on the trip (with 3 transit stops!)

When we got to Vienna, it was -2 degrees outside. We easily made it through immigration, got our luggage and then headed out. Our driver was already waiting. From there, it was about a 45 minute drive to Bratislava.

So now, I'm back again... and all I can think about is going to Paris! Some officemates and I are going to Paris over the Holy Week. We already booked tickets... now all we need is a hotel. :)

Tagaytay

Having high expectations can only lead to disappointment... this was proven yet again when we reached Dacha Villas in Tagaytay to kick off our weekend R&R. The place was easy enough to find, but what was described on their webpage was really a lot different from what we saw. Well, maybe it wasn't different... but it was totally not what we expected.

Oh well... sayang talaga yung place... kulang sa maintenance. I don't want this to be a 'ranting' post, so I'll just move on...We had lunch at the villa, heated some adobo and cooked rice. Siyempre the food was great, luto ni Axle yun e. :) Then, we spent the next few hours just lazing about... Tere, Maitz and I watched House on my laptop. Afterwards, some picture taking around the place. More pics @ my Multiply album. Then we heard mass at Lourdes Church, then had dinner at The Grill by Antonio's (Ihawan ni Antonio) hehe.
The food was very good! Albeit slightly more expensive than other restos in the area, but food quality was really better. Especially for the bulalo. :) The sisig was also nice, kinda livery, but surprisingly yummy. We also ordered a grilled fish and squid. For dessert, we had ice cream, hehehe. Back at Dacha, everyone slept early except for me, as I still had to work (demmit!).

On to the next day...I was awoken by an uber handsome guy saying 'Gising na ninang' and then giving me a kiss... awww.... For those who don't know, that's Gabby. :D Maaga daw kasi nagising kaya ginising na rin kami lahat. We cooked breakfast, some Chorizo and corned beef... Ako nagluto ng corned beef hahaha! Pero in fairness, masarap talaga ha! Lots of garlic and onions. ;)

Anyway, due to my dad's 'resourcefulness' we were able to enter the super-exclusive Tagaytay Highlands estates. It was gorgeous! Like driving cross country abroad. If I were to win the lottery any time soon, a huge bulk of it would go to putting up a property in this place...

We had lunch at China Palace (or something like that, I can't remember the exact name hehe), since my dad was craving for Chinese food, and this resto was highly recommended. Take note, the same resto can be found at MOA, but I guess the charm and ambiance of Tagaytay Highlands can't be denied. Then we had desserts at the main lobby cafe... Mom had the blueberry cheesecake, Maitz a banana torte, Betty had Creme Brulee, Tere & Gabby had choco mallows, Papa had halo-halo and I had the Coconut-Pandan cheesecake. They were all yummy!

Afterwards, we made our way back to Manila after a quick stop at Rowena's, and some 'white mais' vendors along the way. Maitz and I continued on to Glorietta to take a last look at the sales.

That capped my weekend. All in all, it was fun, relaxing... and as always, a great time with my family. Now that Maitz is living in Singapore, time spent with them when we're all together just became more meaningful and a lot more enjoyable. :)

Updates and a baptism

Ahhh... I can finally relax... just a bit. :D

It's almost 1 AM and I'm just waiting for Maitz to pick me up from the office... just went through a looong and tiring patching process, and that's after a week of stressful cramming to meet my deadlines. So now, I can finally relax...at least for the weekend because on Monday, I'll be patching the TD Pretermination and Redemption APIs, work on the DP Gaps and remaining DP APIs. Hopefully there won't be any UAT or FAT issues to deal with.

Tomorrow we'll be going on an overnight trip in Tagaytay! Yay! Maitz is also here for the Chinese New Year break so we're one big happy family, hehe. I'm just really excited about the much needed R&R I'm going to get.

I need to pack my stuff soon too... I'll be leaving next weekend. Going to Vienna! Well, that's what my ticket says anyway... but we'll be proceeding to Bratislava from there. Now that I have my Schengen visa, going to Vienna (or maybe even Prague) seems like a very realistic goal I can look forward to...we'll see. And if it does happen I'm sure to post pictures. :)

So...to recap the week... Mich and Jay-ar got married in Caleruega last Feb 2! Unfortunately, I had to beg off from coming because my original flight sked was for Feb 1. In any case, I did get to attend my cousin Jonathan's baby's christening. Congrats Jo and Joyce! Welcome to the Christian world Juliana! Tere is the ninang... Me, I just like holding babies, hehe.

Other than that...it's been a really busy week. I also caught this allergy from dustmites...most probably from trying out clothes while shopping. Grrr...it was pretty nasty if you ask me. I got these really itchy rashes and welts...Even had to take a sick day off and the derma prescribed steroids to clear it up. I'm a lot better now after 5 days of diligent application of Clobetasol and taking the meds. So yun... ingat kayo sa pag-fit ng damit ha. :D

Anyway, that's it for now. Happy weekend and Kung Hei Fat Choi everyone!

College Reunion :)

They say the test of true friendship is that if years go by without you seeing each other and yet when you do you just pick up where you left off, as if nothing has changed, then you're true friends. That's exactly what happened when the Smalltalk group (or my college barkada) finally met up with complete attendance...the first time in years!

Just to recap, We met up at Fish out of Water @ Greenbelt5. Then, had crepes and smoothies at Fuzion cafe. Afterwards, we just wandered around, did some window shopping and parted ways soon after. It was a fun day, reminiscing about college and keeping up to date with our current lives. Several things have changed (just compare the fresh out of college pic below), but one thing's for sure... we're still all really, good friends. :)

More pics @ Multiply.