global asian cuisine - PORTICO 1771

I am very sorry for poor resolution, I just had my cellphone with me.

I was invited to have lunch somewhere in Taguig. A friend of mine treated us something special. Indeed, it was special as I started to savor each chew in some of Portico's specialty of the house. Let me share... First, I had their special starter...Spring Tofu, a touch of Portico 1771's oriental flavor - light yellow tofu omelette with spring onion tempura. Food quality/ Taste - very satisfied!

Then...

Baby Back Ribs, marinated overnite...stewed until tender the deep-fried, coated with a tasty long-cooked sauce with guava jelly.

Chicken Extravaganza (one of fave in the list!), sauteed boneless chicken leg with button and shiitake ushroom and asparagus spears in oyster sauce, flavored cream sauce.

This is my favorite, Pan-fried Lapu-lapu, lapu-lapu fillet topped with lemon-butter, shallots, capers in just a little pickled ginger.

I love it!

Let me rate the place according to my own opinion. Scoring from 1 to 5 (highest).

Cleaniliness (5), Music (4), Food Quality/Taste (5), Menu(5) , Price (3) - Value for money! Based on my first visit, yes! I will dine-in again. The place is great!

Next visit, I will take what I have missed...Gindara with crispy pata bits!

Visit the place, try and you will love it.

Portico 1771 - Serendra, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig

Numbers: +632-8560581 or check out their website, www.chateaugroup.com

sa kambas ng lipunan

Above is an excerpt from Joey Velasco's speech at the start of his Book Launching and First Solo Exhibit in Art Asia. His book is entitled "They Have Jesus: The Stories of the Children of Hapag" and was launched on Oct. 13, 2006.

This video contains just snippets of the book "They Have Jesus" based on his obra "Hapag ng Pag-asa" (Table of Hope).

A sad eye-opener but has inspired me to prepare my heart for the coming of Jesus this Advent. May this video clip inspire us to give and love more! - Vannie

reunion - plantation bay mactan resort cebu

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After 5 years, my elder brother Jude flew back in Cebu with his family for a month stay vacation. I envy that long rest days. Me...I only had an approved 5 days leave! We thought of it as a first reunion after our Mom's death. It was memorable especially when you see your nephews and nieces grown so big and starting to converse with you. Actually, our last meeting happened after my marriage with Ana. We spent our vacation in Bohol somewhere in Panglao Island (oh, nice place).

Thanks to Jude and wife Tes for being the sponsor of our stay in the Plantation Bay Resort Mactan Cebu. The place is awesome! Nothing in Manila can beat this hotel resort. I guess, they have the biggest pool in Philippines. We stayed in a room in a compound with its own small island pool. Sorry, I have not taken any picture of it. Breakfast was great! I love filipino treats. Fresh fruits, mangoes...oh no place like home!

My favorite part was the kiddy pool. It has a bubble massage as you settle yourself along the side. You won't be missing it, there are carved seats for comfort. I was having fun then seeing my son Kim, so happy playing with his cousins...which I believe he doesn't know any about blood relative at his age. We spent time also in the lagoon...very nice.

I should say, in one simple word...it was fun. However, we missed Ana. She was not able to come with us to Cebu due to work commitment. Thanks to Agnes and husband Bong for the logistics.

If you have budget, try this resort. High five!

Check their website, http://plantationbay.com

back-to-back typhoons - Bracing for the worst!

Typhoon “Lando” (international codename Hagibis), on the other hand, has maintained its strength as it continued to move away from the country.

As of 10 a.m. yesterday, Lando was spotted at 180 kms west-southwest of Pagasa Island, packing winds of 105 kph near the center and gustiness of up to 135 kph. It was forecast to move west-northwest at 11 kph.

Tropical storm “Mina” (international codename Mitag) has intensified into a typhoon as it moves closer to the country threatening massive floods and landslides, state weather forecasters said yesterday.

Chief weather forecaster Nathaniel Cruz of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) said Mina is likely to gain more strength threatening the coastal areas of eastern Luzon.

With Mina fast approaching, the government has ordered the evacuation of thousands of people in the Bicol region which is expected to bear the brunt of the storm.

Laguna (our province) has been declared signal #1 as of 5AM today, Nov 23, 2007.

filipino wang claims gold in wushu

The RP wushu team did the country proud again as Willy Wang bagged a gold medal and bannered a productive campaign by the Filipinos in the recent ninth World Wushu Championship at the National Olympic Center in Beijing, China.

Aside from the lone gold, the Philippines also came home with two silver and two bronze medals to finish seventh overall, a performance that should augurs well to the country's bid in the 24th SEA Games in Thailand two week from now.

Congratulations! and Good luck to your upcoming events!

Check out his performance.

paeng in personal

Paeng Nepomuceno of the Philippines is a six-time world champion and is acknowledged worldwide as the greatest international bowler in the history of the sport. In recognition of his achievements, Juan Antonio Samaranch personally awarded Paeng with the prestigious IOC Presidents' Trophy which is the first for the sport of bowling. The International Bowling Hall of Fame displayed a glass encased 7-foot photo of Paeng at its bowling museum entrance based in St. Louis Missouri, U.S.A. The Guinness Book of World Records commencing with its 1994 edition, listed Paeng as having won the most number of World Cups which were achieved in each of three different decades. The World FIQ, the governing body of the sport, named Paeng as the “International Bowler of the Millennium” in behalf of 100 million bowlers. - Paeng's homepage

I guess this is the reason why Paeng was invited in our CBN day in P&G Cabuyao Plant as our main guest. I am very impressed the way he gave and still giving pride to Filipinos. If my memory serves me well, he mentioned about in one international event he had, as he was about to take his stance for a throw, he heard from behind critics about Filipinos. They said about using coconut to practice bowling. Ah man...big mistake. Obviously, Paeng heard it and that made him thrive hard to practice and eventually reached such an esteem in the world of bowling. I was surprised knowing that Paeng have designed a bowling ball by accident. It happened in one of his tournament wherein, he was having a hard time getting the grip of his skill. He noticed that the lane has excessively slippery. What he did was, he got himself a sandpaper and started sanding the ball and he said it worked! Now, you can view his patented ball in major bowling alleys here in Philippines. By the way, when he was a kid, he used to play golf as his first sport.

One portion of his talk was about decipline and how dedicated he is to maintain such athletic form at the his age. He was invited to be a model in a highly acclaimed international sport magazine. This guy is amazing!

Nice to get one good shot with him after his talk. :)

a filipino who fought gallantly in 2007 world pool championship!

On a day when the country’s brightest hopes were wiped out in succession, Roberto Gomez assuaged the pain of those losses by beating Englishman Karl Boyes in the semis to arrange a finals meeting with Daryl Peach in a race-to-17 series.

Gomez, new rising star in Philippine pool of elites, emerged as the 1st runner-up in the recently concluded 2007 World Pool Championship which was held here, in Aranta Coliseum, Philippines, November 11, 2007.

Kudos! You brought glory to Filipinos!

i love this song...pinoy na pinoy

I started buying Noel Cabangon's CD when one of my distant relative played his album. We were having our Christmas lunch then. It was good and soothing, I tell you. Well, all depends on one's taste, isn't it? Let me share to you one song of his, that everytime I hear this...my mind immediately mesmerized by its rythem and started to recall the depthness of my memory...the province I once lived before, my family and those times when we were kids, my barkada in high school, college...

our kids love this song...

Is High School Musical sounds familiar to you? Albeit, HS musical part 2 was released couple of months back but this first episode was certainly a hit to most if not all kids who have seen this musical film. My son, Kim, started humming the tune then started singing, well, you can hardly understand his words but it was good enough for me to start laughing..."bulol" kasi. Anyway enjoy singing!

an espresso has less caffeine than a cup of coffee!

A cup of drip brewed coffee has about 115 milligrams of caffeine, an espresso (and percolated coffee) about 80mg, while instant coffee has about 65mg of caffeine. Decaffeinated coffee is not totally caffeine free, containing about 3mg of caffeine. A can of Coca-Cola has about 23mg of caffeine, Pepsi Cola 25mg, Mountain Dew 37mg, and TAB 31mg. Tea has about 40mg of caffeine, while an ounce of chocolate contains about 20mg.

The first Espresso machine was introduced in 1822 by the French, but it was the Italians who later perfected and distributed it.

Coffee businessCoffee is the world's most popular stimulant: 4 out of 5 Americans drink it, consuming more than 400 million cups a day. Consumption in Scandinavian countries is more than 12kg (26lb) per capita. With more than 25 million people employed in the industry, coffee is second only to oil in world trade.

Although coffee is believed to have been grown near the Red Sea since the 7th century, an Arabian author of the 15th century, Shehabeddin Ben, wrote that Ethiopians enjoyed coffee ever since anyone could remember. By the 16th centuries, coffee plants were found throughout the Yemen region of Arabia. After a Turkish ambassador introduced it to the court of Louis XIV in 1669, Europeans quickly acquired a taste for it. A few years later, the Dutch introduced coffee into Java. In 1714, the Frenchman Desclieux planted a single cutting of a coffee tree on the island of Martinique. Plantations soon grew from French Guiana to Brazil and Central America. Today, coffee is planted in moist regions around the world.

Instant coffee was invented in 1906 by Mr. G. Washington, an Englishman living in Guatemala.

why is a hamburger called a hamburger although it contains no ham?

During a trip to Asia in the early 1800s, a German merchant - it is said - noticed that the nomadic Tartars softened their meat by keeping it under their saddles. The motion of the horse pounded the meat to bits. The Tartars would then scrape it together and season it for eating. The idea of pounded beef found its way back to the merchant's home town of Hamburg where cooks broiled the meat and referred to it as it as Hamburg meat.

German immigrants introduced the recipe to the US. The term "hamburger" is believed to have appeared in 1834 on the menu from Delmonico's restaurant in New York but there is no surviving recipe for the meal. The first mention in print of "Hamburg steak" was made in 1884 in the Boston Evening Journal.

The honour of producing the first proper hamburger goes to Charlie Nagreen of Seymour, WI. In 1885 Nagreen introduced the American hamburger at the Outgamie County Fair in Seymour. (Seymour is recognised as the hamburger capital of the world.)

However, there is another claim to that throne. There is an account of Frank and Charles Menches who, also in 1885, went to the Hamburg, New York county fair to prepare their famous pork sausage sandwiches. But since the local meat market was out of pork sausage, they used ground beef instead. Alas, another hamburger.

The first account of serving ground meat patties on buns - taking on the look of the hamburger as we know it today - took place in 1904 at the St. Louis World Fair. But it was many years later, in 1921, that an enterprising cook from Wichita, Kansas, Walt Anderson, introduced the concept of the hamburger restaurant. He convinced financier Billy Ingram to invest $700 to create The White Castle hamburger chain. It was an instant success. The rest of the history, we might say, belongs to McDonald's.

And, no, a hamburger does not have any ham in it. Well, it's not supposed to. Hamburger meat usually is made of 70-80% beef, and fat and spices.

ocean adventure adventure...

Thanks to our company(I love you P&G!), we have been sponsored (well, all employees actually) to enjoy with our family one of our very own marine park, Ocean Adventure.

The drive was so tiring, ...you better have back-up driver if you plan to visit soon :).

Hey, that's not me...it's their mascot.

You know what, when we were in the path going to Subic, everthing seemed to be good. I realized the long hours drive was indeed worthwhile. Greenery was awesome! Just drive cautiously because there are zigzag roads that you will come across with.

We arrived OA early, well, we were one of the early birds. One more important tip, pack along with you some good snacks or just simply make one that will suit your breakfast need. Why? because there were no sari-sari stores inside, no jollibee (fastfood have a meaningul role that time)... Inside, I was ashamed to my family (becasue I've been rushing them to get ready early on that morning) but they did not complain. Sorry...

I believe Ocean Adventure is offering exciting program - Dive with the Whales. There is no other like it in the world. You will have a chance to join their false killer whales in their natural, open water home for a special, intimate and underwater experience you will never forget. They will allow you to touch them, swim with them, and explore their underwater world together. We have also seen how well their sea lion performing to us, in person. They are real, no director's cut.

The park also offers a good cafe restaurant, souvenir shop, playroom for kids, and aqua museum.

This may help you (just got this in from other website)

To get there by car you can enter through either the Subic Freeport Main Gate at Magsaysay Drive and turn left at Rizal Highway then right at Argonaut Highway or through the Subic Freeport Tollway and turn right at Rizal Highway and left at Argonaut Highway. Drive straight along Argonaut Highway, pass the airport, through the former Naval Magazin Area and the picturesque rain forest and down to Camayan Wharf. This drive will take you approximately fourty five (45) minutes.