Throwback artwork

 I've been swamped with work the past few days with my simple series of comic strips to benefit the survivors of typhoon Yolanda here

And while I was searching for some reference works, I chanced upon other works I've done like this recent poster  above for Miriam grade school for a co-worker.

I thought this was cute. this was the last year of the contest.

 And some of the artworks I sent to Japan for their now defunct Yumiori Shimbun cartoon contest.

This was my take on gift-giving for monsters

We had to spend some money to have this delivered to Japan. We didn't win but we're glad we joined.

In case it wasn't clear, the lion was bored of putting on a show for the zoo visitors so he just has a hand puppet ready 

Mini food reviews:Omakase and Tokyo tokyo

 

For Mama's delayed birthday celebration, we wanted to go to dampa, but the car still had to be fixed so we went back to Omakase in Ayala Triangle. We weren't very satisfied when we first went here but we decided to give it another chance.

Malacanan Palace

We visited Malacañan Palace after lunch at Casa Roces. We had to give our full name and complete date of birth to the coordinator  10 days before our trip so that the government could check out our backgrounds, I guess. Also, there is a dress code. No slippers, mini skirts or sleevelss tops. We also had to go through 2 sets of checkpoints  before we could get to the entrance of Kalayaan Hall, above.

It looks very elegant and ornate, befitting a president's residence/office.

Casa Roces Manila

 Last Tuesday we went to Malacanang for an educational tour of Manila. I had never been to Malacanan Palace so I was quite excited.
First, we went to Casa Roces, which is just across the Palace, for lunch. They also arranged our trip to the Malacanang museum.
Casa Roces used to be the home of Chino Roces, publisher of The Manila Times. Their logo was a newsboy selling the paper and a statue of that newsboy welcomed us at Casa Roces.

Disappointment at Dayrit's

 This was a hard post to write but I hope readers will appreciate our honest experience.

More food finds

Turtle pie  from Purple Oven for my parent's anniversary, P680. Delicious!

 I read an article about how top bloggers are earning thousands from blogging but they're usually chic lifestyle posts on designer clothes and such. I can't imagine anyone wanting to see my outfit of the day! :D
Well, here are some of my latest food finds from the current cronut craze to the simple fare that will satisfy my cravings!

Dining in Dumaguete, Negros Oriental

One of the reasons I was excited about our summer vacation was because it meant we would be visiting 2 provinces in one trip! Siquijor did not have an airport so we had to go to Dumaguete, Negros Oriental first, before catching a ferry to Siquijor. 

Enchanting Siquijor Day 2:Coco grove

Coco Grove Resort in San Juan is definitely the biggest and poshest resort in all of Siquijor. It has a beachfront of 800 meters of white sand and a marine sanctuary exclusively for its guests. That's why it's also the most expensive on the island. (But  at P4,100/night, really cheap compared to Boracay and other more touristy islands) So guests can just relax under shade of the native huts or swim in the shimmering sea without having to worry about someone taking their stuff or dealing with pesky trinket sellers.

Enchanting Siquijor day 1

Siquijor's sea port. I have never seen a port this clean!

I was totally ready to accept that our trip to the mysterious island of Siquijor was jinxed.
First, my tour guide's father died so he couldn't take us around the island. He said he would bring a substitute tour guide who I never even talked to.
Then, we almost missed our flight! I was so busy with my plans I mistook our time of arrival in Dumaguete for our time of departure! Luckily, I checked our flight details just before going to sleep and found out our flight was for 7:10am and not 8:25am.
And what do you know? Our flight was delayed by 30 minutes, which led to our missing our ferry to Siquijor! I won't even go into how my betadine solution leaked all over my first aid kit...

Campaign season!

I joined a logo contest recently and it had 2 rounds of judging. The first would be the popularity vote. Contestants would have to enjoin their friends to vote for their logo once. The top 20 with the most votes would qualify for the 2nd round where they would actually judge how the logo looks. Voting was easy. No registration of facebook accounts required. The only problem was getting people to take 2 sconds to go to the site and click vote.

 I'm kind of a veteran when it comes to campaigning for votes so this was my first appeal on facebook. Simple and straighforward. The only problem with entering 3 logos is that my votes was also split.

 I also made a cartoony post that spoofed politicians to appeal to the young ones.

 I also showed a sample of one entry that had already had a lot of votes just 3 days later. I don't want to sound mean, but c'mon!
***Update*** This entry went on to have an insane 8,000+ votes for each logo which must have triggered some alarm bells. Days later, this entry was pulled out.

 To appeal to the masses who were in love with a certain soap, I went with a fake endorsement from their stars.

Finally, I went for the geek vote and used an image of Tyrion Lannister from the series Game of Thrones. So far I now have 171 votes.

Dimsum break with friends

Love that the dimsum is served in those containers

 A friend of ours from Canada was coming home for a bit and wanted to meet up with us. We were supposed to go to our traditional meeting place in Megamall but we were intrigued by another friend's ecstatic posts about Dimsum Break, which is a famous restaurant in Cebu that had finally opened a branch in SM North Annex.

 Dimsum break in Manila is a cafeteria-style resto with an array of dimsum varieties behind a glass case from which you select your meal and the famous "original steamed rice"
Apparently, this was different from the steamed rice we have here which is just plain cooked rice, to the consternation of Cebuanos who were expecting rice topped with a mix of meat and shrimps in a savory sauce that was a meal in itself.

 Everything was great and very tasty but we may have ordered too much as we had a lot left over even after so many hours of eating and laughing over stories old and new. But our host didn't mind because their prices are very affordable! Dimsum orders were just P65 while the steamed rice was just P68! These are very student-friendly prices so it's no wonder this place is a hit!

 And there are so many other items on the menu we haven't even tried! Lomi / Pancit canton/ Wanton noodles for P80, siopao for P38, desserts for P55... It's just a pity that it's a bit far from my place. But lucky for everyone else in Quezon City!

Lunch at Lorenzo's Way

 We went to the Ayala Museum last Tuesday for the Botong Francisco exhibit and for less than the price of a movie ticket, it was definitely a must-see! For lunch we went to Lorenzo's Way from the Larry Cruz group of restos that also brought us  Abe and Fely J.

For starters, we had the kesong puti with tomatoes and pesto (P275) Very expensive for the serving size. In fact, my officemates said much everything we had was too expensive. But I'm not complaining. It was free!

 We alos ordered the bamboo rice (P240) which was fried rice with bamboo shoots and served in a bamboo shell. Flavorful but also bitin (not enough) It also had a slightly pungent smell because of the bamboo shoots or labong

 We also had the teriyaki mushroom and tofu kebab (195) which I wasn't able to sample.

 A fixture in the LGC restos is the binukadkad na tilapia with buro and mustasa leaves. (P395) This feels very Kapampangan. The one we had at Fely J had a weird plum sauce that felt out of place.

another main ocurse was the Spanish Garlic chicken (P325) which we felt had way too much garlic but too little chicken.

We also had the bulalo (P450) which I wasn't able to take a picture of. We were too busy eating and the waiter had the tough job of dividing what was supposed to be an order good for 4 people into a soup for 8 people!  He succeeded although some complained that I got the bone marrow part and they didn't even get any veggies!

Overall, this is a really posh place with great interiors but rather unexceptional food given the price tag.

I'm back, baby! (or I won, I won at last)

Look what arrived in the mail this morning...

After a whole year of not winning anything, I won a raffle for an overnight stay for 2 at Taal Vista Hotel courtesy of blogger Nina of Just Wandering.org! And the best thing about it is that it was free! No purchase needed, no subscribing to a newsletter or group buying site, just leave a comment and hope for the best! Best of all, Nina sent the gift certificate to me at her expense!

Honestly, I thought my lucky streak had ended with the iPad2 but I just kept on joining and hoping against hope. Actually, I did win a notebook and a ballpen from a Starworld twitter promo but I have to go all the way to Pasig to claim it so I didn't get it, but I didn't reject it either. Like Oprah says, "Don't block the blessings!"

Here's hoping I win some more this year because 2013 is turning out to be a very lucky year!

Maybe I will buy some lotto tickets after all...

Previously in Manila...

Ayala is determined to thoroughly change its landscape and remove all the old landmarks that I used to know. After remodeling Quad/ Glorietta 1 , they have closed down Park Square 1. So say goodbye to Wendy's, Magoo's Pizza and all those little shops that sell cellphone accessories... I swear anyone who has been gone for even a year will get lost in Glorietta.
This was shot from the new location of National Bookstore, which returned to Glorietta 1.

In other news, I was looking for children's books for my Kuya Rocel's kids in the US and found this gem: Ako ay isang mabuting Pilipino by singer/songwiter Noel Cabangon. It's about what every Pinoy should do to help in nation building. It's also written in Filipino AND English. Plus, it features illustrations by Jomike Tejido and they are exqusite paintings on banig as canvas! This will definitely be my giveaway book for my nephews next Christmas!

And finally, here's my mom's version of Chili shrimps, a variation of the Singaporean Chili Crabs. We got this from a Del Monte recipe booklet and I convinced my mom to try it out.
You just saute some garlic, onion and ginger strips then add the shrimps, 200 grams tomato sauce, gata/ coconut milk and siling labuyo/chili.  Finally, stir in one egg. It was heavenly! Mama did not like the coconut milk though. Too savory, for her. Methinks it's funny coz she grew up in Quezon, which is coconut country. Nagsawa siguro! Anyway, you can opt to take out the coconut milk if you don't like it to be too creamy/coconutty. It's still good.

Strawberry shortcake:Fast and sneaky

Here's how I make a no-bake strawberry cheesecake. It's really just a variation of my  peaches and cream refrigerator cake.

I bought strawberry jam just in case I ran out of strawberries but I didn't

Best and worst of 2012

2012 came and went, and the world didn't end! It seems that the end of the Mayan calendar only meant that it's time to buy a new calendar!

Here are my picks for the Best and Worst of 2012

Film

 
Best
The Cabin in the woods for completely surprising me. It starts out with a mundane scene inside a lab before you get a cheesy -looking title and then goes on  to tell a typical tale of teens who go to a cabin. So far, so boring right? Then it proceeds to turn your world upside -down because you just don't know what's going on till the end! It reminded me of how I felt when I saw Scream for the first time. The characters knew all about horror films but they still made dumb choices in their own movie!