Kog and Ina's wedding

One of my friends from high school and college, Kog, married his now-wife Ina in Singapore earlier in the year and they decided to have a church wedding in the Philippines on December 30 so they could celebrate with their family and friends who are here. A few of us from high school - Anna, Topher, Lilia, Rodrigo, and myself - headed to Lipa where the ceremony would take place. Anna was asked to give the first reading while Topher was one of the secondary sponsors so it was important for us to be on time. The invitations said 3:30pm but it actually started at 4pm, which was good for us because we would've been late if it started on time. In fact, we just barely made it!

The wedding ceremony was held in The Church of St. Therese of the Child Jesus. It is located next to the Malarayat Golf and Country Club which is where the reception was held, and at some point during the ceremony, the priest encouraged us to recommend this church to other people planning to get married, a plug which I thought was a bit weird and out of place for a wedding hehe. Another funny tidbit during the sermon was when the priest asked Kog what the heart is for and he answered "to pump blood" hahaha. I am trying to think now, and I guess I am a scientist like Kog and would have most likely given the same answer (yes, I say scientist and not nerd ;)). There was no photo op at the altar with friends (it was all family and relatives), but an opportunity presented itself for the five of us invitees to head over to Kog and Ina and have our picture taken with them while we were still in church.

The reception included a lot of good food and a lot of really good wine. It was too bad that I was driving all the way back to Manila that same evening since there was a lot of wine and I could have had maybe a few bottles if I didn't have to drive. The program included variations to the traditional bouquet and garter toss. I can't really recall how the bouquet toss was executed, but for the garter toss, all the bachelors were split into pairs. Each person was then pitted against their partner in a game of hula hooping - the person who could hula hoop longer would be excused. I lost the first round to Rodrigo but I managed to win the next round, which meant I didn't get the garter.

The program ended at around 9pm and we ended up hanging out with Kog and Ina and Kog's siblings. I was happy my barong lasted the entire night (I wore my only decent barong a couple of weeks ago during Reg's wedding and it hadn't been washed yet by the time Kog's wedding arrived, and my other barong had a ripped sleeve so I kept it together with scotch tape and it somehow did the trick haha). Discussions invariably went to tennis talk, which is of course always interesting because Kog, Ina, and his entire family are extremely pro-Federer and of course I am pro-Nadal haha. We did manage to keep discussions quite civil haha so no fireworks. :) Anna and I had to leave at around 10pm unfortunately so we had to say goodbye but it was amazing that we got to celebrate with Kog on one of the most important days of his life.

Another dessert find: Mango Torte from Dulcelin

During my get-together with Bett, Chari, Jette, and Anna in Omakase and Jack's Loft, discussions invariably turned towards food. Bett said that one of the best desserts she's had is the Mango Torte from Dulcelin. I decided to get one and bring it home to my family for Christmas, and I do have to say, it definitely lived up to the hype!

photo from the official Dulcelin website.

This delectable dessert has mango balls and cream on a crust of (what I think is) cashew brittle. The quality of the ingredients and the contrast in textures makes the Dulcelin mango torte absolutely perfect! Needless to say, it didn't last very long when I brought it home.

Address: 36 Times Street, West Triangle, Q.C.
Tel: 374-2165 or 67
Mobile: 0917-535-2592

There are a few other branches that you can find in their official website. They don't have a restaurant and they don't deliver, so you have to pick up your order. They do have a lot of mango tortes ready as they know this is their best seller so you can just drop by and make your purchase without pre-ordering.

Parties galore

The Yuletide season always brings with it a whole lot of reunions, parties, and get-togethers. The scheduling is always difficult but since I don't want to miss anything, I try to influence the dates by sharing my calendar upfront and getting my friends to agree on a date ASAP (I then start blocking off dates one by one, making sure there are no conflicts). I guess I've been in the corporate world too long and it has influenced even how I plan Christmas parties with my friends LOL but hey, it's effective in that I get to attend virtually every gathering.

The first was karaoke night in Chicago KTV in the Metrowalk area on the 17th. A couple of my batchmates from high school - Ezra, Jay, and Marlon - were in town so Joyce organized a party with them. More than a dozen folks showed up and it was fun catching up with everyone, especially Ezra who was a good friend of mine back in HS (I remember our McDonald's birthday treats with Eugene and Ed).

The next evening, I joined my friends Walter, Tim, and Basil for dinner in Galileo Enoteca. I had been there once, years ago with my friends from work, and frankly I was expecting to return there a lot sooner than I did. I remembered this restaurant when we were thinking of venues and when I suggested that we have dinner there, everyone agreed. We ordered three set menus - with each of us picking a different pasta - and one pizza so that we could have a bit of everything and enjoy a bit more variety. The meal was good and so was the red wine that came with it.

A couple of days after, I headed to Raffa and Joh's house for the reunion of my circle of friends from work. We had a few folks from Singapore in town - Che, Hannah, Alvin, Pau, and Gi - and of course the Manila contingent was there - Me-Ann, Mike, Chris, Shar, and of course, Joh, Raffa, and myself. Once again, it was a festival of food, with the pritchon taking centerstage. Pritchon has now become a staple of our Christmas reunions and interestingly enough we noticed that the quantity served to us is not as large as it used to be (chalk it up to inflation). I was in charge once again of dessert and this time I brought another one of my favorites - the Torta De Los Reyes from Aristocrat. Everyone thought it was really good and Me-Ann said she always looks forward to the desserts I bring. Oh the pressure LOL! Now I need to make sure I bring really good cakes and sweets whenever we have parties in the future. After dinner, we had our white elephant exchange gift where I got a really cool tumbler set from Starbucks.

The next evening was karaoke night (again) in Chicago KTV (again LOL) with almost 30 other members of our band club at work. This was our Christmas celebration and it was a perfect way to cap the year, especially after the time and effort we put in to prepare for our gigs earlier in the month. It was a good mix of old members and new, and the great thing about the evening was that everyone got along really well.

On Thursday, I met up with my friends Bett, Chari, Jette, and Anna (unfortunately, Ric and Lany couldn't join us) for dinner in Omakase in Il Terrazzo in Tomas Morato. This Japanese resto seems to be a favorite among a lot of my friends since it offers a lot of good food and the prices are quite reasonable. After dinner, we walk over to Jack's Loft for coffee and dessert.

And finally, I met up with Anna, Mitch and Ferg, and Gary and Winnie in Mitch's house for dinner. I was assigned to bring dessert yet again - I decided to bring a whole Chocolate Obsession cake from Kitchen's Best - and it was very well received. I stuffed myself yet again on lasagna, chicken, and barbecue. Ferg then served us all some wine and coffee. Christmas really is the time to stuff yourself silly LOL.

I still have two more Christmas party to attend. First, I'm meeting up with my college friends in a couple of days. The other get-together with my HS and college friends Mitch, Anna, Iona, and Joyce has to wait a bit because Joyce just gave birth and won't be able to meet up until after the New Year. Once again, a really hectic but fun-filled Christmas season, with a couple more get-togethers to look forward to (specially seeing Joyce's new baby :)).

Christmas with the family

Christmas is a time for family. This year was not an exception. We celebrated Christmas by having a wonderful dinner in my Tita Ace's house. We planned to go to Enchanted Kingdom on Monday which is a bit of a long drive from home so I suggested that we just stay in a hotel in Makati. So on Sunday, my family, including my grandparents, checked into the New World Hotel, which pretty good room packages during Christmas and was thus significantly cheaper than a lot of the other top hotels in the area.

Before checking in, we went to the Piazza in Upper McKinley Road to have lunch in Little Asia. We headed there because my mom saw in the newspaper that there was a Venetian exhibit of and other Italian cultural items in the Piazza that was on every Sunday so we were hoping to catch it. Unfortunately, the exhibit was no longer on display that Sunday. It was still good, though, since my family got to visit a new place and we had a really good meal.

We got to the hotel late in the afternoon and I promptly took my nephews to the swimming pool. We spent about an hour in the pool before cleaning up in time to hear the 730pm mass in Greenbelt. We then rushed to the Rustan's toy section since I hadn't gotten my nephews Christmas gifts yet and this way, they could choose their gifts. CJ's birthday was coming up so I got him a NERF gun as a combined Christmas and birthday gift. I got Ciera a Kung Zhu hamster and a Beyblade launcher. We had dinner in Heaven and Eggs before walking back to our hotel for a good night's rest.

We got up early the next day in time for breakfast before going to Enchanted Kingdom. What greeted us was a huge mass of people waiting to get in. Which automatically meant that the entire amusement park would be teeming with people trying to get on the rides. The waiting lines for the popular rides were immensely long, probably averaging 1 1/2 to 2 hours, if not more. Ciera managed to get on one of the kiddie rides before we moved to the Ferris wheel where we waited for more than an hour for our turn. After that, we queued up for the Go Karts but apparently kids needed to be accompanied by adults which my nephews were not too thrilled with so we skipped it. In the end, we were all too tired to get on any of the rides after that so we just went shopping for EK stuff.

We left at around 7pm had some comfort food in Razon's in the Technohub to cap the night. A tiring long weekend but it certainly was time well spent with the family.

"A Dustland Fairytale" by The Killers

Pretty cool song from 'Day and Age', the fourth album of The Killers.


video uploaded in youtube by user FuRryyX

The KFC Double Down

My new addiction - the KFC Double Down:

photo from the KFC double down wikipedia entry

Apparently, KFC marketed the Double Down heavily during the Pacquiao-Margarito fight back in November, but since I didn't get to watch it (I don't really like watching boxing 'coz I always feel bad for the loser so I just caught the tail-end of the fight and didn't see a lot of the advertisements). Which explains why the lines in KFC were so long shortly after the fight, although my friends told me that the double down was always unavailable at the time.

I had my first Double Down a week or so after that because I was in line in KFC and noticed that there were a lot of them available. And I loved it! Two chicken fillets sandwiching bacon, cheese, and mayonnaise. Not the healthiest option but, as I tell my friends, it can't be that much worse than a 2-piece chicken meal with rice. (Or well that is what I tell them LOL I am sure the cheese-mayo-bacon combo is unhealthier than rice. :)) Anyways, since that first Double Down, I've probably had maybe a dozen more. Yikes! I guess when I start putting on the pounds, I know what the culprit is.

The wedding singer is back :)

Not exactly sure how long it's been since I last sang in a wedding, but my friend Reg just got married and she asked me to sing during the reception. She didn't know exactly which song she wanted me to sing so she asked me to suggest songs. She also asked me to provide a few duet recommendations since the band they hired to play during the reception had a female lead vocalist and Reg was thinking it might be a good idea for us to sing a duet.

I go through the songs I had performed before plus a few others that I knew I could do and felt were appropriate for a wedding. I toss in a couple of duets, shorten the list, and send it to Reg so she could go through it and make her selection. She told me she wanted me to sing 'Bless the broken road' by the Rascal Flatts. I ask her if she wanted me to sing anything else, and she said that her fiance-then-husband-now thought 'Angels brought me here' was a good song. Interesting song choices as there were the exact songs that Raffa and Joh asked me to sing in their wedding a few years back. Reg said she would ask the band to learn the songs but she asked that I prepare a CD with karaoke versions of these two songs just in case the band couldn't play them.

I made a silly mistake though in that I forgot to print out lyrics of my songs. I was pretty confident about singing "Angels brought me here" but I had only sung "Bless the broken road" once ever in my life and I messed up the lyrics of the second verse then. I got all the words right when I was practicing at home but when I ran through the song during my practice with the band, I forgot the words to the entire second verse. That psyched me out quite a bit and true enough, when I performed the song during the actual program, I blanked out! I start just mumbling random words and humming and it was horrible LOL. I managed to get through the rest of the song without any further incident, and my "Angels brought me here" took off quite well (especially the big high note in the final chorus). Of course my friends there were saying it was all right but that's how friends are hehe. Oh well, just need to be sure I do much better next time.

Big project done!

Wow. It took several months of hard work, including a few months of really long, stressful days and massive issues. But in the end of it, everything turned out great.

The entire project team was called together to be in the same meeting room to discuss the findings. It is rare that you get everyone involved in a project all in the same room, but since everyone had put in so much blood, sweat, and tears into it and this was 'D-day', attendance was at the top of everyone's priority list. The room was packed! Even our big bosses were there.

Each component of the project was discussed during this findings presentation, but everyone in the room was really just waiting for the overall findings. When we were finally told that the project was a success, the whole room erupted in unbridled joy! More than a few people shed some tears. And while it can be argued that it's a bit extreme for anyone to cry about work, if you put in so many hours and go through unparalleled stress to get something done, you can't help but be emotionally invested in it. The icing on the cake is that the completion of our project right before Christmas means I don't have to worry about anything work-related while I'm on my holiday break. That's just absolutely brilliant. :)

Kitchen's Best: New dessert find!

Powerplant has a thing called the "Baker's Dozen" where a lot of of stalls that sell bakery items like cakes, pastries, and other sweets are set-up temporarily in the Concourse during the months leading up to Christmas and also at other times of the year. I'm a big fan of desserts but rarely purchased anything from there. But one day, I was there and wanted to have a simple chocolate dessert so I looked around. It was a bit hard to decide but in one stall, I saw a news article that said that this particular chocolate cake made the Best Desserts list of Manila Bulletin in 2008. A slice was P95 - which I felt was reasonable - so I decided to get one. As soon as I tried it, I understood completely why it made the list. It was absolutely delicious!!

The store is Kitchen's Best Home Patisserie and the cake is Chocolate Obession. I initially planned on eating only half the slice and saving the other half for later in the day (you know, trying to reduce my sugar intake hehe) but I ended up gobbling the whole thing in one sitting. It was that good!

photo from the official Kitchen's Best facebook page

This cake is very moist and rich, and it fully deserves its name 'coz I wanted to eat another slice immediately after polishing off the one I got. I made sure to get another slice the next time I was in the mall. I lucked out too - I purchased a slice about 15 minutes before the mall closed and the salesperson (I guess she was the owner or someone related to the owner) offered me a second slice for an additional P5 only. That was P100 for two slices! I had to ask the salesperson twice to make sure and when she confirmed it, I didn't even think twice. :)

You can order Kitchen's Best for delivery via 2121212 (QuickDelivery.ph). Here's a link to their menu. You can of course dine in the restaurant, too.

Address: Unit 5B Bldg B, Karrivin Plaza 2316 Pasong Tamo Extension, Makati
Telephone: 843.3847, 381.8518
Mobile: 0917.896.6248

I'm putting this place on my list of must-visit restos. Looks really promising.

Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn": Mime version

This is a really funny video from years back.


video uploaded in youtube by Legendkiller05

The guy's name is David Armand and he does such a great job with his miming, from the hilarity of his actions to the precision and timing of his execution to his incredible facial expressions. Apparently this performance of 'Torn' got so much buzz that he ended up performing it live with Natalie Imbruglia. Check this out and pay special attention to Natalie from the 2:35 to 3:18. She is so cool! :)


video uploaded in youtube by GHENCEA14

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1

I guess you could say I'm sort of a fan of the Harry Potter series. Definitely not as big a fan as a lot of other people who have not only watched all the films but have read all the books too. In fact, I have not read any of the books. I think that's the reason I didn't really like this latest film in the series.

Based on all conversations I've had with people, I noticed a trend. People who read the book felt that the movie stayed true to it quite well, and as such they enjoyed the film. However, those who didn't read the novel such as myself were left with no clear basis to understand the story and felt that it moved along too slowly, at least for the first half. I guess it was my fault as I actually missed watching the Half-Blood Prince, which meant I was didn't know a few key elements of the storyline. Like the fact that Harry, Hermione, and Ron were looking for the locket because it was a horcrux that they had to destroy in order to beat Voldemort. In fact, it took about half the film before I realized that was what they were doing.

I have to say that the plus-side to all those walking-around scenes was the great cinematography. Seeing those amazing scenery shots took away some of my boredom LOL. The story did pick up towards the end though, which built up my interest to see the final installment of this film franchise. (To make sure I can keep up with the story, I guess I should try to see the Half-Blood Prince first. I have a few months though 'til Part 2 of the Deathly Hallows comes out so it should be very doable. :))

Duncan and David in town

Two of my closest friends, Duncan and Amy, recently moved from the US to Singapore because Amy got an assignment there. While their stint in SG won't be for more than a year or two, it makes it easier for us to meet up. This definitely was the case when Duncan had a business trip to Manila for a few days.

The cool thing was that our other friend, David, who had been to Manila quite a few times since he moved from the UK to Brisbane, was also going to be in Manila for the same event. Naturally, we made sure to all meet up while we were in the same city. The last time I recall all of us being in the same place at the same time was in Seoul back in 2001!!

We ended up hanging out in Handlebar, which wasn't surprising since we were with David, who always has dinner and/or drinks there every time he is in town. We were joined there by Ozaki-san and Seki-san, both of whom I had also not seen in years! Both Duncan and David were flying out early morning the next day and I still had a truckload of work, but that didn't stop us from having more than our fair share of drinks LOL. We did a lot of catching up, and both Duncan and David proudly showed us pictures of their really cute kids on their phones. Speaking of phones, Duncan showed David 'Plants vs. Zombies" on his iPhone and got David playing the game for a few minutes. Later in the night, an all-girl band started playing some old-school rock songs. There were three of them - one on the drums, one on the bass, and one on lead guitar - but the coolest thing was that the vocalist was the one on the drums!

It was a fun night and but before the second set of the band started, David said we better get a move on (I think they both had to be up at like 430am the next day). Hopefully there will be another opportunity for all of us to hang out again while Duncan is still here in Asia.

Christmas performances

Christmas means office parties. Which also means programs with musical performances. So yeah, you guessed it. I got to sing again. A couple of times.

The Christmas party of our department was on December 2, Thursday. I initially signed up to sing 'Magasin'. It's my favorite Eraserheads songs by a mile and I was so psyched to perform it (would've been the first time I got to perform an OPM song in an office event too). However, we were asked to perform Taio Cruz's 'Dynamite' to officially open the evening proceedings. The band assigned that song to me since they felt that it was a song I could pull that off well and since both songs would be performed one after the other (Magasin was the last song of the lead-up to the event proper), it made sense to have someone else sing the Eraserheads song. Too bad! Thankfully, I love Dynamite too so I was at least trading one song I love for another. The fact that it was current and very lively helped set the mood for the party, too.

'Dynamite' by Taio Cruz:


video uploaded in youtube by user stirYzer

I sang one more party song that night - 'Club can't handle me' by Flo Rida - at the end of our final set which came after the program was officially closed, but by that time, most of the folks were outside getting drinks so we were left with a fairly small crowd partying with us inside. Didn't matter, this was practice since we needed a dry run for 'Club can't handle me'. Why? Coz we were performing it the next night live while the dance group performed along with us. We needed to get it down pat to make sure our timing and all our cues were perfect to make sure the dancers wouldn't miss a beat.

The Christmas party for the entire office was held the next night, on December 3, Friday. I was initially supposed to sing a lot of songs, including a Beatles medley a Jay Sean medley. But the lack of preparation time led us to drop several of these medleys. I also begged off a couple of other songs, like singing back-up in 21 Guns and joining the A Cappella performance of Teenage Dream, since my workload was the most intense is has ever been in years.

Nevertheless, I still got to perform two songs apart from our reprise of "Club can't handle me" (which turned out to be a great performance, what with our collaboration with the dancers). The first was the original version of "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey. It was someone else's idea to put this song in our play list but I was asked if I could sing the male part in what was supposed to be the Glee version of the song. However, as the band spent time learning the song, they felt it was better to do it in the original Journey key, which for most males is very hard to sing with all its high Bs and even the C#s. I was doing well with it during practice but my unbelievable work load left me with an average of 4-5 hours of sleep leading up to the event so I had tonsillitis that night. Some extra rest the night before and a lot of Kamillosan (and most likely adrenaline as well) helped me get by. It wasn't the cleanest performance but I think it was generally acceptable.

Don't Stop Believing by Journey:


video uploaded in youtube by blobb54

My last performance that night was the Queen medley with the rest of the vocalists. I sang back-up in 'We are the champions' and 'We will rock you' and had solo parts in 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. But what made my day was performing 'Somebody to Love'. Finally! I told my bandmates that I had been wanting to sing that song for years but never had the opportunity 'til now. My voice was a bit hoarse and it wasn't my best performance, but the important thing was that I got to finally do it. Who knows, maybe there will be another opportunity for me to sing that song with a clear voice in the future. :)

Ciera's First Communion

My nephew Ciera had his First Communion last Saturday. Unlike my other nephew CJ's ceremony which started in the early afternoon, this one started early morning. Unfortunately, it always takes a while to get people ready in the morning, and as such we ended up around 10 minutes late. This meant that Ciera missed the entrance into the church but in the overall scheme of things, it was okay.

The ceremony was held in the Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Cubao. It wasn't in the main cathedral, actually, but in one of the more intimate chapels. I took on the official photographer role and managed to take a few good shots, including one of Ciera accepting the Host for the first time.

CJ has an excellent memory and still remembered we had a celebratory meal in Red Crab along Tomas Morato after his Communion, and he suggested to Ciera that he select Red Crab again as our celebration venue for his own Communion. Apparently CJ's influencing skills are pretty good as Ciera asked us to have an early lunch there. We actually arrived about 10 minutes before they were supposed to open but they decided to turn on the stoves for us a bit early. My nephews wanted chocolate drinks which were not available in Red Crab, but there was a Starbucks a block away and our waiter allowed us to bring in stuff from Starbucks which I thought was pretty cool.

So now both my nephews are able to receive Communion which should make it easier whenever we go to church on Sundays since I will now bring both of them with me during that part of the mass.

Tree planting with Haribon

Earlier in the year, I co-organized a charity fund-raising fun run in the office for the benefit of Haribon and Kythe. We raised more than P130,000 from pledges made for the more than 100 volunteer runners, and this amount was split between Haribon and Kythe. Our donation to Haribon was equivalent to almost 700 trees and we decided to organize an actual tree-planting activity so that we could plant the seedlings we donated.


We worked with Haribon to set up a date and decided to stage our activity on November 13. The venue was Tanay, Rizal, which has been a priority area for reforestation ever since Ondoy. We managed to get 50 volunteers - any more than that and each person would end up planting very few trees. As luck would have it, the Shangri-la hotel also had a tree-planting activity on that day and had 2,000 seedlings to plant but they didn't have a lot of volunteers themselves. We ended up helping Shangri-la plant their trees, which meant that our volunteers got to have a more worthwhile experience as they were not constrained by planting only a few seedlings in under an hour.


I took on the task of being photographer which proved to be a bit difficult since I didn't want to get mud in my camera. This meant that I managed to plant only a few trees but it was great to see the other volunteers fully immersed in and totally committed.


We are planning a bigger tree planting activity - more trees and more volunteers - next June. It'll take a lot more work to pull it off successfully and smoothly but I am definitely looking forward to it.

Helping improve the quality of education in the country

A colleague of mine suggested that we look into partnering with the Ateneo Center for Educational Development (ACED) back in August 2009. She said she volunteered for one of their strategic planning workshops and said it would be good to have our Corporate Social responsibility program organize a group of employees to volunteer for this activity. Only a handful of volunteers are needed to run a successful workshop and it doesn't require a lot of logistics so after a few meetings to understand the requirements of the event, we decided to do a "test run" in January 2010.

Our initial call for volunteers resulted in almost 50 volunteers signing up in less than 20 minutes so we knew that a lot of people were interested in it. The first run we had was very successful, with a lot of good feedback from both the ACED staff and our own volunteers. As such, it was a given that we would continue with this partnership and help out in these strategic planning workshops whenever we could.

The workshops are not run during the summer months so we resumed the partnership once the 2010-2011 school year started. Weekend-long strategic planning sessions were scheduled on July 31-August 1, September 11-12 and November 20-21. I normally work on gathering volunteers without volunteering myself and just swing by during the event to provide some support, but one of our volunteers had to back out at the last minute during our September 11-12 session so I had to take her place. It was a really interesting experience. Once you are used to the corporate setting, it is almost automatic for you to define specific goals and objectives, assign responsibility, and track progress. This isn't the same in other settings because people don't want to be blamed for things not going according to plan or schedule and which results in a tendency to shy away from accountability. It took a while for the school participants - which included the principal, teaches, barangay representatives, and parents of some students - to get the hang of setting priorities and defining indicators that would allow them to measure the success of their actions but in the end, we managed to come up with a pretty good plan that was actionable and achievable.

The great thing about ACED is that after each workshop, they gather feedback from the participants and the volunteers to figure out how to make things better, and I can see some specific changes to the workshop when I compare the first workshop we volunteered for in January to the one that just finished last Nov 20-21. There are a couple more schedules this school year - one in January and another in February - and we are already in the planning stages for those. Hopefully, our continued efforts to partner with ACED will help improve the quality of education in our public schools.

Game night

My friends and I once had a game night a long time ago - shortly after Suzanne and Nenen came to Manila and gave us all board games as gifts - but we never got around to staging another one. That is, until my friend Mike returned from his six-year stint in the US. Mike had a couple of board games that he wanted us to play. We set aside one Friday night for it.

We had dinner in Kirin in Bonifacio High Street before heading to Mike's place to play Settlers of Catan. The objective of game is to be the first person to earn 10 points by building a colony. Players can earn these points in a variety of ways, like building houses or putting together the longest road or amassing the largest army. There were quite a few of us - Mike, Joh, Raffa, Suzanne, Me-ann, Nats, Julie, and myself of course. It was especially nice to have Nats and Julie there coz it had been years since I hung out with either of them.


The game requires a lot of strategy and planning and it takes a while before someone manages to earn 10 points. We played two rounds - Mike won the first round and Julie won the second. We all enjoyed game night so much that a couple of weeks after the first, we set another one up while Che was in town. There were fewer of us in part 2: me, Che, Joh, Me-ann, and Mike. We ditched Settlers in favor of Ticket to Ride just so we could try a new game.
The objective of Ticket to Ride is earn the most number of points by completing train routes. We got to play only one round as people had to get up early the next day, and Mike, who is an expert on all these board games (he owns them after all), won yet again. Doesn't matter as we all had fun (apart from the fact that I kept singing the Beatles' song 'Ticket to Ride' the entire night, so much so that at some point we decided to play music so that I wouldn't drive everyone crazy LOL). Hopefully we can all get together every now and then to have more game nights.

F1 season comes to a close

Congratulations to Sebastian Vettel for clinching the 2010 F1 Drivers' Championship. It wasn't easy, but a win in Abu Dhabi (the final race) combined with Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber placing 7th and 8th respectively meant that Vettel became F1 World Champion. This was made even sweeter by the fact that Red Bull Racing won the Constructors' Championship, ahead of McLaren-Mercedes and Ferrari.

The podium in Abu Dhabi was also pretty interesting in that Vettel was joined by the last two World Champions: Lewis Hamilton in 2008 and Jenson Button in 2009 (they placed 2nd and 3rd in the race respectively).

Brunei: Final Thoughts

Brunei has enough going on to keep tourists interested. In fact, if you are more into nature-tripping, there are rainforests and parks outside the city that you can visit. However, Brunei is not your destination of choice if you are looking for late-night, alcohol-laden parties since the sale of alcohol is banned in the country (I believe that people flying into Brunei are allowed to bring a few bottles of alcohol, but there is a specific limit).

Bus fare in Brunei is quite cheap: BN$1 or about P30-35 even if you are traveling to the furthest point in the bus route. The same can't be said about taxis, however, but since our hotel was within walking distance of the bus terminal and a lot of the sights in the city center, we never had to take one. What surprised me was the relatively low cost of food. As I mentioned in previous blog posts, my mom and I got to try two hotel buffets (dinner at the Radisson and lunch at the Empire Hotel and Country Club) both of which cost about P1,000 or less (buffet lunches and dinners in the top hotels in Metro Manila are all more expensive than that). A lot of decent restaurants had menu items that were in the BN$4-6, or about P130-200, which is the same amount of money you'd spend on a decent restaurant meal in Manila. A latte in Coffee Bean is about BN$4 (P130) while a coke zero in can purchased in a convenience store is about BN$1.

This holiday was also the first time that I was able to try a couple of restaurants suggested by my travel book. In all my previous travels to other countries, I've always wanted to try recommended dining places from my books but somehow I never got to. In this trip, however, my mom and I got to eat in two places highlighted by my Lonely Planet book - Nyonya Restaurant and Portview Cafe (both in or near the Yayasan Complex). If not for my stomach problems, we might have been able to try a few more. Probably our favorite resto was Nyonya. This is where we had our first meal outside our hotel. We thought the food was good and reasonably priced that we decided to have our final dinner here as well.

One really cool thing about Bandar Seri Begawan, at least for Pinoys, is the fact that Jollibee has become a permanent fixture in the city. I saw four branches - one in Yayasan Complex, one in The Mall, one somewhere on the road from the city center to the Jame'asr Hassanil Bolkiah Mosque, and one in the airport. I guess it isn't surprising since there are a large number of Pinoys working and living in Brunei. You can very easily find Filipinos working in hotels, restaurants, stores and shops, and in the buses. It made it so much easier traveling around the city since there was always someone who could help out when needed.


If you have the time and funds, I recommend a trip to Brunei. It may not be as popular a travel destination as other countries in Southeast Asia, but it definitely has its fair share of sights worth seeing.

Brunei: Travel tips and Suggested Itinerary

Your most economical option to visit Bandar Seri Begawan from Manila is most likely Cebu Pacific, which frequently has promo airfares to Brunei. The caveat is that flights are not daily so you have to plan your trip carefully, and you most likely have to take days off from work.

Assuming you take the same flight schedule we did, you will have the following itinerary:

• Depart Manila on Saturday, 11:45 PM, arrive in Bandar Seri Begawan on Sunday, 1:40 AM
• Depart Bandar Seri Begawan on Wednesday, 2:25 AM, arrive in Manila on Wednesday, 4:20 AM

The schedule is tricky and you have to be very careful when planning your trip around this itinerary.

Tip #1: book accommodations correctly
Arrival in Brunei is on Sunday at 1:40 AM, which means you still need to sleep that night. This qualifies as a Saturday check-in (albeit a very late one). Departure from Brunei is on Wednesday at 2:25 AM, which means that at around midnight, you should be heading to the airport already. As such, you don't need to book a room for Tuesday night anymore (otherwise, you pay for a room you won't really use). Given this, make sure you check into your hotel on Saturday and check out on Tuesday. That's a total of three nights - Sat, Sun, and Mon - which makes sense because you will spend 3 full days there (Sun, Mon, and Tue). A group of Pinoys checked into the same hotel and they made the mistake of not booking a room for Saturday night, and no standard rooms were available which caused them a significant amount of hassle.

Tip #2: if you are on a budget, stay at the Jubilee Hotel
It's a very basic hotel, probably 2-star, with basic amenities and no room service. However, the Jubilee Hotel is pretty cheap - about BN$70 or P2,400 a night - so if you are not fussy and just need a place to stay, this hotel is for you. The biggest selling point, though, is the free airport transfer: transportation is provided to the guests during pick-up (yes, even at 1:40 AM!) and departure. Given that taxis to and from the airport cost about BN$30, you save $60 or about P2,000. That means you effectively spend "only" P1,700 a night on accommodations. That's a steal in my book. The hotel also has free wifi access.

Tip #3: buy a travel book and bring it with you
It isn't too difficult to get around in Brunei so you are better off spending about P1,000-P1,500 on a good travel book instead of spending big bucks on a tour. I find tours to be quite limiting in terms of flexibility. Figuring out what you want to do when you want to do it allows you to explore the city more, and it gives you a lot more time to take the photos you want. You could also read the internet to prepare for your trip and mark the places you want to visit, but I prefer having a book with me so I can read and re-read the details of the places I want to go. It also helps a lot when your plans change and you have to figure out what else to do and how to get there.

Tip #4: Proposed agenda
My last three blog posts share what we did in each of our three days in Bandar Seri Begawan. But there were things we wanted to see that we were unable to visit. As such, assuming health and weather conditions permit, here is my proposed itinerary:

Day 1 (Sunday)

• Late morning: Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque. Try to climb the stairs of the minaret to see a great view of the city, or take the elevator (we didn't get to do this).
• Mid afternoon: Jame'asr Hassanil Bolkiah Mosque.
• Early evening: Jerudong Park Playground. This amusement park is closed on Mon and Tue, so Sunday will be your only chance to visit. (We weren't able to go here since we were too tired.) It might be hard to get a taxi from the Park when you are there, so try booking the transportation from your hotel.
• Note: if you are Catholic and want to hear mass, you can go to the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption. You can catch the 9:30 AM mass if you wake up early enough, but if you miss it, you can still catch the 5:30 PM mass.

Day 2 (Monday)

• Early morning: Royal Regalia Museum. If you are interested in buying souvenirs, this is actually the best place to do it. A lot of items carried in their souvenir shops like post cards and magnets are cheaper than anywhere else and they have some inexpensive shirts that you can't find anywhere else. Try to go the museum at around 830-9 AM so you can leave by 1030-11 AM.
• Late morning/Noon: take a trip to Seria to visit the Brunei oil fields. The bus terminal is in Jalan Cator and buses to Seria leave every 40 minutes. The trip itself takes about 2 hours. If you catch the 11 or 11:40 AM bus, you should get to Seria by 2 PM at the latest. Once you are in Seria, you can take photos of oil fields from afar and the Billionth Barrel Monument up close. You can also visit the Oil and Gas Discovery Centre. It is closed on Tuesday hence my recommendation to visit it on Monday. You can spend a couple of hours here before heading back to Bandar Seri Begawan in time for dinner or maybe some more souvenir shopping.

Day 3 (Tuesday)

• Mid-to-late morning: Kampong Ayer water tour (including a trip to the mangroves for a backyard view of Istana Nurul Iman)
• After lunch: You have the option of dropping by Istana Nurul Iman for a quick photo op outside the gates. If you don't feel the need for this, you can instead move quickly to
• Mid-afternoon: Empire Hotel and Country Club. Take photos while the sun is still up in the afternoon. You could even have dinner here before heading back to the city center. Make sure you check out one of the souvenir shops here since they also offer some items like shirts and pewter mugs that cannot be found elsewhere.
• Evening: you could make a return trip to the main mosques so you can take photos of them in a different light.

The important thing to remember is that some of the sights are not open daily, so make sure you map out your itinerary to take into account days and times of the day when these tourist spots can be visited.