I had the full day of on the 31st of December, 2021. Another last day of the year.
I only had one planned item for that day – a morning facial appointment at High Society. But I ended up having a packed day.
Mama’s Kitchen
After getting the facial, I walked towards Mama’s Kitchen, a Filipino restaurant in Soho, Central. I had never tried it before so I wanted to give it a shot.
I wanted to order the dinuguan, but the waitress said that they had ran out of it, so I went with the bistek. It was my first time to eat bistek as a silog, and also a dry version of it; I’m used to saucy bistek. It was pretty good, though, probably better than a tapsilog which is much drier and does not have the calamansi taste which is what I love with bistek.
A milestone moment happened over this short lunch – the waitress called me “tita” which is the Tagalog word for Auntie. I mean, I’m almost forty and should not have been stung by this but the first cut is the deepest, I guess? 😅
Also over lunch, my friend Beulah asked us if we really had no intention of having dinner for NYE. I said, okay, let’s go grab something, and we made plans to meet up at Harbour City later.
New Hair, New Me?
After eating, I walked around Central, bought some groceries, and thought about whether I should get a new haircut or color. My regular salon seemed full, but when I passed by Michell Rene, I decided to ask if they had a slot and they did, so I ended up getting highlights, treatment, and a curl. I didn’t know they would charge extra for the last one, or I would have gone for a straight blow dry. I did not expect the whole thing to take 5 hours.
While in the salon, I laughed out loud when this was the magazine I was presented with:
Kate is my age, by the way, so it’s funny because this reminded me that I really am a tita, you know?
Greyhound Cafe
I quickly went home to dump my groceries, get changed, and head to Harbour City. I swung by Ralph’s Coffee to take away a slice of my favourite chocolate cake before meeting Beulah and Roselle at Greyhound Cafe.
Bloopers # 1 happened when we realized all three of us had terrible sense of direction and had trouble finding the cafe. Beulah and Roselle ended up having to phone a friend – May – for guidance, while I got mine from a kind waitress in a random cafe I passed along the way.
Bloopers # 2 happened while we ordered our dinner – like we didn’t realize there was a whole other menu and we had ordered the wrong thing and didn’t realize that the curry thing did not have rice – but in the end everything we ordered was fine.
Bloopers # 3 happened when we asked the waiter to take our photo: he had cut Beulah off. 😂
I had my selfie stick with me, so we decided to take our own picture instead.
We had more laughs over dinner. Roselle was brought to tears by my story about getting lost in Puerto Galera. We parted ways far after we had planned.
New Year Toast
When I got home, I poured myself a flute of Moscato wine and toasted the upcoming new year. Happy New Year!
Leave a Reply