Thursday, April 27, 2017

Quality time with family and friends

Tito Mario celebrated his 70th birthday this month. It was a simple yet beautiful celebration. His son and my cousin, Fr. John, celebrating mass as their house. Dinner was served after the mass, courtesy of Pink Chefs Catering, which apparently also caters a few ABS-CBN shows like GGV and Showtime. Cool! Karaoke-time followed, with my cousins asking me to sing a lot of songs. I ended up having a bit of a mini-concert LOL since I kept getting requests to sing more. As it was my uncle's birthday, I of course obliged. We wrapped up the karaoke session shortly before 10pm of course, and by then most people had left so I decided to call it a night as well. I'm really happy that I was able to join this milestone celebration of my uncle.

That wasn't the only milestone celebration I attended. My late grandfather's brother, Uncle Albert (yes, we call him Uncle even if he is two generations ahead), celebrated his 80th birthday in Shangri-La Makati. The cool thing is that the birthday of his wife, Auntie Isabel, is just a few days away from his so they had joint party with Auntie Isabel also celebrating her 79th birthday. Amazing!

One more amazing family reunion this month happened on Maundy Thursday. My uncle Jojit called both my grandmother and my mom very early that day to say that he had just arrived in Manila and wanted to have dinner that night. He was staying at Manila Pavilion so he asked if people were free to meet him at the hotel at 6pm so we could all have dinner together. Normally, my family doesn't go out on Maundy Thursday but since this was the only free date that my uncle had, we had to make an exception. A lot of places were closed due to Holy Week but thankfully, the original Aristocrat along Roxas Boulvard was open so we decided to have dinner there.

Aristocrat Roxas Boulevard on Maundy Thursday

I was absolutely stunned at the volume of people having dinner there that night. I think that due to the number of guests, Arisocrat used function rooms that would normally be reserved for weddings and events as regular dining areas for the guests that evening.

The Fountain at Rajah Sulayman Park right next to Aristocrat

I also got to spend some quality time with friends. Anna was in town for a few days so I met up with her and Chari for dinner. Since Chari lives in the far South, we agreed to meet in Rockwell. We had dinner in Wooden Spoon before moving to Dean and Deluca for coffee. I wanted to have dessert but I overate in Wooden Spoon. I did however try something different. Instead of my usual brewed coffee or Americano, I opted for a Macadamia Nut Latte. It was expensive but pretty good! I wouldn't mind having it again.

Finally, I had dinner with my friends Kathy and John. I hadn't seen them both since they got married more than five years ago. I had been meaning to visit them in Alabang but somehow it never worked out so when they moved back to Makati, I made sure to make time to meet up with them. This meet-up was also especially important for me since Kathy had just come through a very challenging medical situation and I'm tremendously happy and thankful to see her in good physical condition. Kathy prepared a sumptuous dinner, the star of which was a roast chicken served with potatoes and squash with walnuts. Just thinking about that dinner now is making my mouth water. It was also important for us to meet when we did because shortly after that, John left the country to work in Europe.

There was one more milestone event last month, but I will write about it separately.

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