Among the restaurants along Maginhawa, only a few merit my taste bud and budget’s approval are Cocina Juan, Tomato Kick (for the beers), and before they were that dugyot, Friuli. House of Runes is okay though I’ve only been there once and Good Burger have some pretty nice meats in buns. Nice places to eat (or get wasted in) once in a while.

However, I always love lutong bahay-style cooking. Our mother was one hell of a cook in her day so we grew up a bit spoiled in terms of quality of food when budget permitted it. My sister and I grew up to be quite handy in the kitchen but we just don’t have enough time to labor in the kitchen to get a good meal. Hence, quite recently, the cans of Century Tuna neatly stacked on the cupboards.

Until, just this Thursday, we discovered this quaint panciteria which happens to be really near our place. It opened a couple of weeks ago but we only got introduced to it through Dyosa, whose great sense of barkadism never fails to prompt her to bring us a little something when she drops by.

Last Thursday, she dropped by with some lumpiang shanghai in tow. Amazingly, she bought them from that panciteria. And by gosh were they tasty.

So the next day, too lazy to cook and too sick of tuna and bangus, sis and I decided to just order some pancit. Enjoyed it so much that I ordered a small feast yesterday since Risha was dropping by. Lechon kawali, pancit bihon guisado, shanghai fried rice, chop suey, and lumpiang shanghai (each entree good for four) for under Php 600 was more than a good deal. I’m still munching on leftovers for breakfast as I write this.

Do try to check it out if you happen to be in the area. The place is called Pakibalot Panciteria. It offers Binondo style-cooking that fuses Chinese and Filipino cuisines. Well, their menu includes different kinds of pancit, stir-fries, and customizable vegetable dishes with your choice of sahog. It’s at the corner of Maginhawa and Mahabagin right across Mona’s Bakery. Or for orders and deliveries, you can call 3839625.

Now if only they’d give me some of those yummy lumpia for this plug. :p

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I don’t have Chinese blood but I love Chinese food. And since it’s Chinese New Year, everyone’s got an extra stock of tikoy or nian gao. Yum!

Anyway, here are some tasty tikoy recipes to get some variety out of your everyday tikoy.

Ang tikoy masarap!

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***

Who said that the Jollibee scandal would affect Jobee’s image. A little mascot pornography could actually do wonders.

Guess what? Jollibee’s profits are up by 62%.

Come to think of it, just a few days of circulating that video (discretely) in our office, we have been ordering more Yumburgers and Chickenjoy for lunch. Or was just the noon heat that drove us to order at Jollibee? Nah, it must be that video.

The power of the sublime suggestion. Aaah.

***

Now a high school barkada has been oh-so-proud that he back Nintendo all the way, promoting Wii over any other game next-gen (current-gen in about a week) consoles.

I always believed in the underdog. But being a PC gamer all my life, I have just gave thought about consoles just recently. Since PC upgrades will definitely deplete my meager savings, I am now considering purchasing a console myself (provided that I play my finances right and with all hopes that we do get our 13th month pay this December). Price being the greatest factor, I do think that I’d get the biggest buck per bang with Wii.

I have always tried to get the top-o’-the-line hardware thinking that . But given that Moore’s law now has an accelerated time factor, I guess it will now be down to the best buck per bang per month.

All hail the underdog! Will Wii be the People’s Champ? We’ll see.

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I never get to enjoy Oktoberfests. For one, I never was a big fan of beer or liquor in general. While friends were chugging fermented malt and hops and gin blossoms, and whatnot down their throats, I was the one sipping iced tea. I always have volunteered to be the designated driver mainly because I knew I’d rather have tea in my bladder than some 90 proof vodka eat my liver out.

Well, not to be hypocritical I got drunk twice or so but at least I only got to be piss-headed with friends not in public. I just don’t get the point of throwing up mixes of alcohol and digestive fluids for everyone to see. And hurled puke (pronounced “pyook” not the Tagalog for…) is not a pretty sight.

In any case, I am just amazed of how booze gets so. I drive to work with 107.5 FM on the car stereo’s display (since everything is digital nowadays, “dial” has become obsolete). And every morning of every weekday this October, the San Miguel Oktoberfest jingle never missed its morning slot, wooing all drinkers to binge on sisig, San Miguel and rock music. Advertising works in blatant yet amazing ways, influencing people like zombies conjured by Imhotep himself. Last I heard, hordes really rampaged the San Mig Oktoberfest gigs and golden brew poured forth.

Oh well. I have always wondered what drew people to be part of an orgiastic drink binge ritual year after year. It’s not that I have anything against drinking. Personally, I do not care if people decide to burn their liver, as long as I don’t get ran down or hit by DUI bastards, fine by me. It’s just perhaps the culture of getting piss drunk that weirds me out.

Much like my rambling about coffee, what’s with beer? Is this yet another case of “Alcohol influence, exploited by breweries everywhere”? It is as if it has reached sanctified proportions and, amazingly, the great coincidence of beer named after the archangel. I also wonder if we are really a nation of drunkards. Note that San Miguel Corporation is also the nation’s number one corporate entity.

“One man’s medicine, the other’s poison.” One man’s piss, the other man’s beer. Hehe. Come to think of it from afar, a bottle of piss can be mistaken as San Miguel Light. Pranks anyone?

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What’s up with Quezon City restos getting slapped with penalties for discharging waste water that leads to Laguna Lake? For details, you can click here.

What kind of waste water from a restaurant could be so pollutive? Sisig residue? Oh my. I love the Gerry’s Grill’s sisig. Now, this news makes me think twice about what I’ve been eating. Sure, sisig can be toxic to your health (cholesterol and all), but I sure hope that it’s not the same thing that’s considered pollutive waste.

***

A missing dino? A large fiberglass life-size dinosaur replica was stolen in the US making breaking news. And they don’t have any good leads yet.

Wow. What a day.

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I know that it might cost more in first-world countries in terms of the US dollar but Php 45 here in the Philippines is half a fortune (even though technically, it doesn’t cost much but given the salary rates here, it’s a fifth of the minimum wage).

Ice blended coffee falls under the Php 120 ( US$2.40) price range. Half of the minimum wage for a 16 ounce glass of mocha frap. Good heavens!

When in US, bums can enter Starbucks, in the Philippines, only rich kids and wannabe rich kids hang out in them. Is it only in the Philippines where a notebook or a laptop computer is the license to hang out in Starbucks for a couple of hours. That and pseudo-intellectual conversation by the artsy-fartsy types. Oh yes, also mind the pimping and the 5 seconds of fame whenever they call out “Suluwesi for Alex!”

In any case, my point in this rant is the differing premiums that people give things across cultures. Much like bananas are here and in Japan. Here, a bunch of bananas is roughly about Php 20. In Japan, that same bunch is four times as much in its value in peso.

To some extent we can see that there is value and premium assigned to something exotic. And it seems to be human nature for us to exoticize the unfamiliar.

What can be inferred in this differences in points-of-view on values and premiums (premia?) is how we assign different meanings. These in turn, affect how we assign meanings to certain concepts. A Starbucks logo can mean “coffee” in the US while here, Starbucks or Seattle’s Best are status symbols.

Hype stripped of it all, all you end up drinking in Starbucks is just coffee – a mixture of coffee been extract – much like the same chemicals in the small puch of Great Taste or Blend 45 coffee. So what’s the difference between muffins and capuccino and pan de sal and kapeng barako when both just mainly involve flour and caffeine?

Sure, there’s the flavor and taste. In Filipino there’s the statement “Lamang tiyan din yan.” (“They both end up in your stomach, anyway.”) Not really much difference. But mostly differences lie in the nuances we assign to them through our value systems.

Okay, enough for now, my Nescafe’s getting cold.

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