High School Mini-Reunion

One of my closest friends from high school, Eugene, moved to the US almost shortly after we graduated and he has been living there ever since. The last time I saw him was in 2004, almost exactly ten years ago because it was end-Feb when I met up with him and his wife Lorraine in New York. He hadn't been to the Philippines even longer than that - his last time here was in 2001! - so when he and his wife came for a couple of weeks, we definitely had to meet up.

It didn't start out the way I hoped it would though. The plan was that we - including our other friend Mitch - would take a tour to Corregidor before having dinner somewhere in Makati after. Unfortunately, a couple of days before, my laptop conked out and I lost about two days worth of work because of it. This meant that a ton of urgent tasks piled up and I had to get them all done before our Corregidor trip. I got stuck in the office until the wee hours of the morning and while I had set three alarms to hopefully wake me up, I unfortunately slept through all of them. It was a call from Mitch that finally woke me up and by then I didn't have any time to make it to the pier. I told them that I would just meet up with them when they got back from the tour.

I finally caught up with them later that afternoon at the Lobby Lounge in Shangri-La Makati. Since we would be having an early dinner at 7pm, we just ordered the Classic Afternoon Tea set. There was a decade of catching up to do so it was pretty cool that while we shared stories over tea or coffee and finger food, we had a live orchestra playing great music.

We then moved to Rambla in Rockwell for dinner (Mitch's family joined us there as well). Mitch had eaten there before and she said the food is really good. We ordered a few starters, all of which were delicious, but the most memorable thing I had was my main course. I didn't note down its exact name but it was Risotto with Chicken and Prawns:

And oh my God this dish was so exceptionally good! Rambla is quite expensive - most of the main courses were in the P500 to P1000 range and my risotto cost P695 - but if you do want to splurge, this is definitely a good place to do it.

Folks still had work the next day - it was a weekday and I took the day off for our mini reunion - so we called it a night quite early. I drove Eugene and Lorraine back to their hotel in Makati before heading home myself. While it didn't start out great with me missing Corregidor, it was still a fantastic and very memorable day. Hopefully we all get to reunite again soon.