Three different sets of friends. Three different sets of joint birthday celebrations.
The first one was with my high school circle of friends (the one I've had for the longest time). Michele's birthday is four days ahead of mine so every year for several years, we've celebrated together. Michele said that Iona wanted to have a good steak so she suggested Mamou. However, I had three discount vouchers for Marciano's which I recently purchased for birthday celebration purposes and since Marciano's also had steaks, I suggested it instead. Michele said she had never eaten there before but had been wanting to so our venue was set. Given that Anna and Lia are both not Manila-based anymore, the rest of the gang and their families who are in the country were all present: Michele, Fergus, Aidan and Rory; Iona, JP, and Aya; and Joyce (she didn't bring Trigo with her). We ended up over-ordering since Aidan and Rory apparently had eaten a bit and Ferg didn't stay with us for most of dinner because he wanted to catch the Liverpool-Everton derby which was on that night (he ended up spending most of the evening in National Sports Grill). I took home all the leftovers but I do have to say the food and selection in Marciano's is pretty good, and the portion sizes can definitely fill you up.
A week later, I had a joint birthday celebration with Bett and Chari. Both of them have birthdays in October but since our circle of friends from the first company I worked for still meet up every few months, we ended up with the tradition of celebrating our birthdays together. Jette lives far up north and has difficulty going home so we usually have dinner somewhere in the QC area to make it easier for her to commute home even late in the evening. As such, we picked Romulo's in the Tomas Morato area as our celebration venue. Ric and Lany (and Bett's husband Pikes) joined us. I've blogged about Romulo's before and I really do enjoy the food here. Plus, the service and ambience are great. The only problem that night was that they ran out of a lot of dessert items, including their Lava Rock chocolate dessert. I ended up getting cheesecake instead while my friends got the crispy suman sa latik.
The next day, I celebrated my birthday with my co-Yaminoys Anj and Meg. Emmy suggested that we have dinner in Zao in Serendra and since Anj and Meg had no objections to this resto, we ended up celebrating there. It had been several months since I was out with my Yaminoy friends so it was great to see them. Joining Meg, Anj, and myself that night were Emmy, Marie, Lea, Beck, and Eliza. Unfortunately, Yam and Belle were out of the country and Fred was in Davao so they couldn't join us. Apart from catching up, our conversations that evening inevitably covered a lot of entertainment-related topics such as reality TV and TV shows in general, concerts, musicals, and artists and celebrities. And how could this be a Yaminoy without talking about Elliott Yamin? He released another album earlier this year - Gather 'Round - which is sold exclusively in Japan. I don't have that album, but I did get a copy of his previous (non-holiday) album Fight for Love. It contains what I think is his best song to date, "Know Better". Check it out!
uploaded in youtube by user Abliga8
The first one was with my high school circle of friends (the one I've had for the longest time). Michele's birthday is four days ahead of mine so every year for several years, we've celebrated together. Michele said that Iona wanted to have a good steak so she suggested Mamou. However, I had three discount vouchers for Marciano's which I recently purchased for birthday celebration purposes and since Marciano's also had steaks, I suggested it instead. Michele said she had never eaten there before but had been wanting to so our venue was set. Given that Anna and Lia are both not Manila-based anymore, the rest of the gang and their families who are in the country were all present: Michele, Fergus, Aidan and Rory; Iona, JP, and Aya; and Joyce (she didn't bring Trigo with her). We ended up over-ordering since Aidan and Rory apparently had eaten a bit and Ferg didn't stay with us for most of dinner because he wanted to catch the Liverpool-Everton derby which was on that night (he ended up spending most of the evening in National Sports Grill). I took home all the leftovers but I do have to say the food and selection in Marciano's is pretty good, and the portion sizes can definitely fill you up.
A week later, I had a joint birthday celebration with Bett and Chari. Both of them have birthdays in October but since our circle of friends from the first company I worked for still meet up every few months, we ended up with the tradition of celebrating our birthdays together. Jette lives far up north and has difficulty going home so we usually have dinner somewhere in the QC area to make it easier for her to commute home even late in the evening. As such, we picked Romulo's in the Tomas Morato area as our celebration venue. Ric and Lany (and Bett's husband Pikes) joined us. I've blogged about Romulo's before and I really do enjoy the food here. Plus, the service and ambience are great. The only problem that night was that they ran out of a lot of dessert items, including their Lava Rock chocolate dessert. I ended up getting cheesecake instead while my friends got the crispy suman sa latik.
The next day, I celebrated my birthday with my co-Yaminoys Anj and Meg. Emmy suggested that we have dinner in Zao in Serendra and since Anj and Meg had no objections to this resto, we ended up celebrating there. It had been several months since I was out with my Yaminoy friends so it was great to see them. Joining Meg, Anj, and myself that night were Emmy, Marie, Lea, Beck, and Eliza. Unfortunately, Yam and Belle were out of the country and Fred was in Davao so they couldn't join us. Apart from catching up, our conversations that evening inevitably covered a lot of entertainment-related topics such as reality TV and TV shows in general, concerts, musicals, and artists and celebrities. And how could this be a Yaminoy without talking about Elliott Yamin? He released another album earlier this year - Gather 'Round - which is sold exclusively in Japan. I don't have that album, but I did get a copy of his previous (non-holiday) album Fight for Love. It contains what I think is his best song to date, "Know Better". Check it out!
uploaded in youtube by user Abliga8
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