Super Blue Blood Moon

This extremely rare event was a trifecta of lunar phenomena. The first, most common, one is the supermoon, which is when the moon is closest to the earth so it looks bigger and brighter. The second is the blue moon, which is simply the second full moon in the same month. The third is the rarest: a lunar eclipse. This happens when the earth is exactly between the sun and the moon. As such, the moon falls completely behind the earth's shadow, at which point is gets its red color, hence the name blood moon. As such, January 31 allowed the world to see the Super Blue Blood Moon.

I actually almost missed it. I saw something about a the moon on social media earlier that day but I didn't pay attention to it. So I was busy sorting stuff out at home when my friend sent a message to our chat group and said that the moon was really beautiful. I commented that I kinda felt too lazy to get out of the building to look at it (I couldn't see it from my window) so he sent a photo that he took using his phone and the moon looked distinctly red. I don't recall ever seeing the moon red and I was instantly excited. I immediately headed down and looked at the moon and it was indeed beautiful.
 I'm not sure when we will experience the next Super Blue Blood Moon- some say in 150 years, some say in 20 - but I am pretty happy that I got to see it this time around.

Kuh Ledesma covers "Unchained Melody"

This version of Unchained Melody is actually the first one I heard. My dad had a cassette tape of Kuh Ledesma's album Feeling which includes her song Help Me Forget and 10 covers. It wasn't until a few years later when Ghost came out that I discovered the original by the Righteous Brothers. Listen to Kuh's take on this beautiful song:


video uploaded in youtube by sokuhro

I have always loved, and still love, Kuh Ledesma's voice. It's distinct and instantly recognizable, effortless, soothing, and has such a gorgeous and pleasant tone. She still is one of my favorite Filipino singers. Listening to this brings back memories of the late 80s when I used to play this cassette a lot. I wish it gets re-released as a CD or digitally so I can listen to it again. For now, I guess youtube will have to do.

Bake Cheese Tart now in the Philippines

Bake Cheese Tart from Hokkaido opened in Manila recently. I got to try this cheese tart during a recent trip to the mall and I have to say, the hype is real. :) It is on the expensive side but it is oh so absolutely worth it!

I learned about Bake from my friend who told me that she doesn't really like Pablo but she loves Bake. When I saw Bake at the mall, I remembered that conversation o I decided to buy one. It is expensive at P95 per tart but the moment I took one bite, I knew that it was P95 very well spent. It was so unbelievably good!

It was so good in fact that I got 7 more boxes. 3 for me and my family and 4 to be given as birthday gifts (I had planned to get my friends something else for their birthdays but after trying this cheese tart, I knew immediately that it would be a much better gift than my original plan LOL).

As I mentioned, one cheese tart is P95. A box of 6 is P540. The box that they put the cheese tarts in is also pretty cool because the bottom level pulls out of the box.

Considering how good this cheese tart is, I am surprised there was no queue when I was there. This is currently my favorite dessert and I will certainly have more of this in the future. There are two branches in the Philippines now, one at the Podium Mall and one at Power Plant Mall.

Bake Cheese Tart
https://ph.cheesetart.com/
The Podium: 18 ADB Ave, Ortigas Center, Mandaluyong, 1550 Metro Manila
Power Plant Mall: R2 Level, Power Plant Mall, Lopez Drive, Makati, 1209 Metro Manila

Australian Open 2018

We're just at the first Grand Slam event of the year and already, records continue to shatter. Roger Federer and Caroline Wozniacki were left standing after the dust settled, holding aloft the men's and women's singles trophies.

And so it is over. After two weeks of upset and drama, a fortnight of toil and sweat, the tennis circus is packing up its tents and leaving town.

What will we remember from AO2018? https://t.co/bUgNh0byUj#AusOpen pic.twitter.com/rrgHyEttRt

— #AusOpen (@AustralianOpen) January 28, 2018

While both were champions, there was a stark contrast between their wins. This was Roger's 6th trophy in Melbourne, tying him with Novak Djokovic and Roy Emerson for most men's Australian Open titles (and with Novak for men's titles during the Open era). Even more mind-boggling - this is Roger's 20th Grand Slam singles title. That is just absolutely incredible!

🇦🇺 🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆
🇫🇷 🏆
🇬🇧 🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆
🇺🇸 🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆#RF20 #AusOpen pic.twitter.com/Mbz8OeoFKY

— #AusOpen (@AustralianOpen) January 28, 2018

Caroline, on the other hand, finally won a Grand Slam tournament for the first time. She beat Simona Halep in the final. Both players had been ranked #1 - Halep was #1 coming into the tournament and Wozniacki was #1 several years ago - but neither of them had won a Grand Slam event. In fact, both previously had a strong enough case for best female player never to have won a major title. We knew one of them was going to shake that title off. The winner would also be ranked #1 after the tournament. As it turned out, it was Wozniacki.

A maiden Grand Slam title that meant so much to both players could, sadly, only belong to one. And it belongs to you, @CaroWozniacki.

Full match report: https://t.co/MineDnDZvC#AusOpen pic.twitter.com/cvNidRWwc1

— #AusOpen (@AustralianOpen) January 27, 2018

But let's talk about Roger Federer again for a bit. Not only is his Grand Slam haul of 20 the best among the men by a decent margin, it is only 3 short of the women's open era record held by Serena Williams and 4 short of the overall record held by Margaret Court. People have been talking about how Serena may eclipse Margaret's record and here you see Roger knocking on that door. Is he going to end his career with the most Grand Slam titles by an invidual, whether male or female? It will be interesting to see how the rest of his career pans out (and that of Serena's too as both of them are within arm's reach of that all-time record).

January Get-togethers

My friend Jesse was in Manila for the Christmas holidays but she didn't have time to meet up in December. As such, we decided to meet up in early January while she was still in the Philippines. She wanted to meet up in BGC and she asked for Filipino restaurant recommendations so I suggested Locavore and she very readily agreed. Basil hadn't tried Locavore before and as he tried the Lechon and Oyster Sisig and the Sizzling Sinigang, he thought it was so good that he wanted to schedule our next visit to Locavore already LOL. After dinner, we went on over to Casa Italia (this combination of dinner in Locavore and coffee and dessert in Casa Italia is really a favorite of mine) where we all had gelato.

A couple of weeks later, I met up with my friends Mike, Reb, Martin, and Jane for a late lunch in Greenbelt. Martin had just arrived in Manila and was jetlagged so he suggested a late lunch since he might not have the energy for dinner and interestingly enough, a late lunch schedule worked best for everyone since Mike had work that morning and Jane was also sorting out some errands earlier that day. I suggested that we meet up in Bizu since I miss the food and dessert in this place. There was a whole lot of catching up since it had been ages since I got to hang out with all of them together. I had initially planned on ordering one of Bizu's solo cakes like their Samba or Roca but when I saw the Chocolate Souffle on their menu, I decided to order that instead. :)

Finally, Nenen and Suzanne came home to Manila since Nenen was celebrating a milestone birthday and she wanted to do it with her family and friends in Manila. We ended up dining in Your Local in Legaspi Village. This was the first time our group was meeting up over dinner in a place other than BGC so the change in scenery was quite refreshing. :) Your Local only has two dessert options but they said we could order coffee and dessert from Yardstick which was right next to it - I guess they have the same owner/s or they have some sort of tie-up? - so I ended up getting a salted caramel waffle and coffee from there. Our set of friends are scattered across Asia and North America - a lot are based in Manila and in Singapore and a few are in the US and in Canada - and in the last get-together, it was discussed that we should have some kind of grand reunion somewhere in the world. We continued this conversation over dinner while celebrating Nenen's birthday and while the options that were narrowed down are not the cheapest international options, we had some time to save up for it. :) I do hope it pushes through; if (when?) it does, it will be awesome.

Meryl Streep gets Oscar Nomination #21

Another year, another record broken. Meryl Streep continues to add on to her own record of Oscar acting nominations as she once again gets recognized for her performance in The Post. This is her 21st acting nomination, and her 17th for Best Actress. Hopefully, The Post gets shown in the Philippines so that I can get to see her performance (the film is also nominated for Best Picture so it should be good viewing).

photo from https://www.foxmovies.com/movies/the-post

Meryl is almost certainly not going to win since Frances McDormand has been winning all the awards so far for her performance in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri but I'm still amazed at the fact that she still keeps getting nominated. Her first nomination was in 1978 for the Deer Hunter and she won her first Oscar (for Best Supporting Actress) the year after for Kramer vs. Kramer. After that, she has been nominated at least 4 times in each decade. She had 6 nominations, all for best actress, in the 1980s. That remains to be her most recognized decade. However, the current decade, 2010s, is coming close. She has 5 nominations so far and one win, and there are two more years left.

I actually recently got several of her older films on DVD (I need to catch up to the times and set up a Netflix account or something since DVDs are now quite outdated LOL). These include The French Lieutenant's Woman, Silkwood, The Deer Hunter, and Manhattan. I need to make sure I get to see this films in the near future.

My first game night of the year

I had my first game night of the year last weekend. I also got to play a couple of games for the first time. One of them was my own game, Valeria Card Kingdoms. I bought it several months ago but I hadn't had the chance to play yet so since I was organizing this game night, I told my friends that my only request for the night was to play this game. :) The instructions are relatively easy and game play is relatively short - the box suggests that takes 30-45 minutes to play but obviously, it took us longer than that given that it was our first time - but it is really enjoyable. I am pretty sure I will be playing this game many more times in the future.

Valeria Card Kingdoms (photo taken by my friend Cla)

I really like the artwork of this game (photo taken by my friend Denise)

The other new game I played is The Game. This is a cooperative game but unlike most other coop games where one or two expert players can become a bit too dominant, this one requires everyone to be fully involved. The goal is to be able to play all of the cards, meaning that there are no cards left in the stacks and none in any of the players hands. In our first round, we got a dirty win, which meant that we had less than 10 cards left to play. Surprisingly, in our second round, we actually won. Cool! I kinda want to get my own copy but my current promise to myself is that I won't get any new games until I play all the games I've bought (but maybe for this one, I will make an exception).

The Game

I got to play two other games that night. The first one was Steampunk Rally which I had played with almost the same set of people. It's a really cool game to play when there are many of you since up to 8 players can play it (the only downside is that the more players there are, the longer it takes to finish the game LOL). It was past 1am when we finished playing and by that time, most of the folks left. Only four of us remained and we decided to end the night playing Splendor (without the Cities of Splendor expansion). We played a few rounds before calling it a night.

Since there were about a dozen of us during the evening, we split in two groups and three other games were played by other people while I was playing Valeria Card Kingdoms, The Game, and Steampunk Rally - Clank, Orleans, and Bears vs. Babies. I haven't played Bears vs. Babies yet so hopefully I get to play it at some point in the future. I have another game night coming up really soon and I'm looking forward to it. :)

Happy 2018!

Happy new year, everyone! As I always do at the start of each year, before I jump into 2018, I will take some time to look back at what happened in the previous year.

I gotta say, what a year 2017 was. Let's start with the highlights. We celebrated my grandmother's 90th birthday. I treated my family to an incredible French feast at Zucchini's to celebrate the birthdays of my mom and my brother. My high school batch got together for a grand reunion. I visited Marcia Adams with two of my closest friends from high school. I got to meet up with a whole lot of my friends during the year. There were also a handful of weddings: Eman and Mia, Mike and Reb, Jef and Diane, and Geop and Ana. It was in this last wedding that I experienced being a wedding ninong for the first time.

While we are on the subject, 2017 also proved to be a year of many firsts and many new things. For the first time in more than a decade, I moved to a new company. I also got a new phone and started using apps like uber, waze, fb messenger, viber, and foodpanda for the first time. Apart from visiting some restaurants like Zucchini's and Marcia Adams for the first time, I also got to try and enjoy the ensaymada and cheese rolls of Segovia's Cakes and Recipes. I also made my first purchases at Estrel's and Tim Horton's. I went to my first art exhibit opening: the Small Wonders Exhibit by Ang Ilustrador ng Kabataan. I watched my first live professional volleyball match - the finals of the Philippine Superliga All-Filipino conference. I got a new aircon. I set up my cooking stuff and purchased new cookware. I got a new chest of drawers.  I replaced my old, broken down washing machine with a new one before the year ended. And while we're talking about getting some stuff sorted out in my life, I finally updated my SSS, Pag-ibig, and Philhealth. I also finally got my SSS UMID.

2017 was also the year of geeking out big-time. I got Voltes V shirts (plus a free Voltes V umbrella) from Giordano and Star Wars shirts from Folded & Hung. I watched Star Wars: The Last Jedi wearing one of my new Star Wars shirts. :) I successfully escaped the Star Wars-themed Rebel Resistance room in first-ever Mystery Manila experience. I continued to have game day/nights throughout the year and I went from participant to contributor, getting my own horde of games and bringing some of them to the game nights I attended. I started 2017 with only 4 games and ended it with 25. And that's not counting expansions. Wow.

I didn't travel abroad again but I got to do a bit of local traveling. Apart from a few trips to Tagaytay, I visited Baguio for the first time in a couple of decades. I also revisited Bacolod after going there a couple of years ago and in this trip, I got to enjoy an afternoon at the Tawhai Floating Bar in Lakawon.

I am also thankful that I got to see some great shows this year. I braved the crowds, the heat, and being on my feet for 10 hours just to watch Coldplay perform live at the SM MOA grounds. I got to see West Side Story for the first time and Wicked for the second time. I also saw the Manila Symphony Junior Orchestra twice: once during a free concert in Glorietta and the second time at their Ayala Museum concert right before they left for Austria where they won second place in the Summa Cum Laude International Music Festival.

There were also many sporting highlights that made the year even more special for me. Nadal won his 10th French Open title, his 10th Monte Carlo title, his 10th Barcelona title, and he ended the year #1. Mika Reyes was named Miss Volleyball, won her first individual award as second best middle blocker during the All Filipino Conference in which her new team, the Petron Blaze Spikers, emerged as champions. She followed that up with a first best blocker individual award in the PSL Grand Prix where Petron placed second. The DLSU Lady Spikers won their second women's volleyball championship in a row, with Majoy Baron being hailed MVP. Dawn Macandili continued to gain honor with a 2nd best libero at the Asian Women's Volleyball Championship and another best libero award during the PSL Grand Prix where her team, F2 Logistics, won the championship.

The reason I continue to blog and write mainly about the positive stuff that I experience is that it makes it very easy for me to see all the amazing things that happen in my life and for which I should be very grateful (and I truly am). I really love this personal tradition I started many years ago of starting the new year by looking back at the highlights of the previous one. I have now written more than 1500 posts in almost 13 years of blogging. Hopefully I can keep doing this because I do find it quite rewarding.