Eating My Way Through Manila

As I mentioned before, we are in the process of seeing off many of the wonderful friends we've made here, and we've been doing so with gusto! As someone who is pushing a healthy lifestyle to the rest of the Embassy it's a bit embarrassing to admit that my entire weekend basically revolved around gluttony (and it was worth it!). Friday night the Husband went on his man outing to play golf in Intramuros. So I ordered fried chicken for me and the kids.* If there is one food that Filipinos excel at, it is some goddamn fried chicken.

On Saturday, Husband and I went to Qi Wellness for body scrubs and a massage. One of my most favorite things about the Philippines is all of the affordable pampering you can get! We followed that with lunch at Brasserie Boheme, which is literally right next door. It was delicious! I had a salad and the hame and cheese panini, and let me tell you, that bread was dee-vine! By far the best sandwich I've had in the Philippines! Husband also had a sandwich along with a bowl of tomato bisque, which he proclaimed to be the best fucking tomato soup he's ever had. And that is saying something! While our lunch was a pleasant surprise, I would have fasted for the entire day if I'd realized the lengths to which my stomach would go to try and digest the mountain of gloriousness that was our dinner at Elbert's Steak Room. It was hands down the best meal I've eaten here. The steaks were phenomenal, the service was wonderful, and the company was perfect. Each dinner comes with a salad and soup. I had the french onion, which was lovely and portioned just right considering the slab of meat that was yet to come. You had the option of ordering sides. Our friends who had dined there before warned us that you didn't really need sides, but I couldn't resist ordering the truffled mashed potatoes. I just can't do steak without a potato! Husband got the baked potato, and they were both delicious. Next time, I really want to tray the duck fat fried potatoes! Might as well go all out, eh? On top of the delicious food, the owner himself came out to check on the tables and see how everyone was enjoying their meal. I just love little service touches like that. It really makes you feel appreciated as a customer. He also offered us a round of limoncello on the house and some complimentary desserts. It was such a nice gesture. Anyway, we just enjoyed the crap out of that meal.

Having barely digested our food from the night before, we headed off to the Sofitel brunch on Sunday. If you have ever wanted to feel like a complete glutton, by all means you need to get your ass to the Soiftel Sunday Brunch! Unlimited champagne and endless variety of food: Japanese, Chinese, Korean, French, Filipino, there's even a cheese room! You really have to pace yourself. We were there for four hours! But, it's the only meal you need for the entire day, so that makes you feel a little better about the P3,000/pp price tag! When we finally got home, we immediately whisked the kids over to Rockwell Mall to see the new Star Trek movie. No food there (ok, I had some Nerds, so sue me!), but I loved the movie! I grew up on Trek (duh!), so I'm constantly amazed that I'm not put off by this new Trek-a-verse. But I love that new life has been infused into the franchise. More Trek for everyone!

*I am so my father's daughter!

Seriously??

It's raining. again. It's only mid-May. How can it be rainy season already? We only had 6 weeks of actual summer. *sigh* Thank god we're going on R&R in a few weeks. 3 weeks of beach-y awesomeness in Hawaii?* Why, yes, I think I will.


*ok, so I'm working two of them at my Reserve job, but still...it's Hawaii!!

Blog Silence = Busy as Shit

First off, happy Mother's Day, everyone! Secondly, I know it appears like I'm slacking on blog posts, but in reality I have been writing blog posts for our new Wellness program at the Embassy, so I haven't exactly been shirking my duties (just here at the Corner, but I know you all will forgive me). We've also been socializing like crazy. The FS is slightly different from the military in that there only two real transfer seasons, summer and winter. Summer transfer season is the bigger one since most families with school age kids rely on being able to move when it's less intrusive for their children. So we've been saying goodbye to all the amazing friends we've made over the last year, which has been really hard (isn't always worse when you're the one being left behind?). I've been feeling a bit sorry for myself as it began to seem like all the people we've grown close to just happen to be leaving right now! But, we went to dinner at a friend's last night, and she had invited several other couples who are also going to be here for a while and it struck me that there are people left at Post whose company we truly enjoy and perhaps, just perhaps, all is not lost and I shouldn't contemplate throwing myself into hermitage just yet.

We've also been continuing our plan of stepping out of our comfort zone. We even went out in the middle of the week...more than once! Just last week we went to the Aerosmith concert at the Mall of Asia and had a total blast. The company was great, and I was shocked at how many Aerosmith songs I not only knew but actually kind of liked. And Steven Tyler, seriously, when you're 70 and can still stage hump, you know you've still got it. Now we've got plans for a Ladies Karaoke night just so we can bust out our rendition of Walk This Way (the version with Run DMC, cause we're badass like that). With our trip to Coron and R&R in Hawaii on the horizon, we're looking at two more weeks of crazy socialization to cram in dinners with all of our departing friends before either we leave on our extended vacation or they leave post for good. It's a rough life.

In other news, I've moved sections. This assignment had me on a rotation to two sections, one for a year and one for the other year (with a brief interlude in ACS, as you'll recall). So now we've most definitely into our 2nd year. It's a bit anti-climatic, actually. I'm not convinced I'm going to love it just yet, but I've had lots of colleagues whose opinions I respect swear up and down that the boredom actually translates into some kind of zen-like tolerance, so I'm hanging on for that! ;)

With all this crazy galavanting about, we've also been eating at a lot of new restaurants. I'll save my reviews for another post (mainly cause I'm watching Amazing Gumball with my kids), but in just the last few weeks we've been to Wildflour, Sala, Cav, Tsukiji (again), and we have plans to go to the Peninsula Hotel next weekend and two other dinners which we haven't picked restaurants for yet. What can I say - we's crazy!