Philippine Reunions 2018

While in Manila, I met up with different sets of friends from KPMG, P&G, high school and college.

The KPMG Way

Mhiles, Boss Ed, and Donna were my first ever colleagues in Manila when I started my first job back in 2004.

We met up at Lorenzo’s Way in Greenbelt 5 and had some delicious Filipino food and wine because it was Donna’s 21st birthday and she could finally drink.

Just kidding, Donna isn’t 21, of course, and also, we have no idea what’s the legal age when people can drink alcohol in the Philippines, believe it or not. The Philippines isn’t strict about that.

After dinner we had cakes and tea at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. The calamansi pie turned out to be not as scary as they thought it would taste.

Aside from providing updates about our lives, trying to remember former colleagues, and contemplating investments, we also leafed through my new passport trying to identify each of the Philippine landmarks on the pages. We failed to identify a bunch. Our Sibika teachers are gonna be so disappointed.

Coffee in Antipolo

I stayed at Chi’s house on the hills of Antipolo for a couple of days to spend time with her, her husband Punch, and their dogs.

While waiting for them to finish their work day, I went shopping in SM Megamall and bought Hask keratin shampoo, Maybelline SuperStay lipsticks (it’s like half the price in Manila compared to Singapore), and a few other things. When they arrived, we had dinner at Gringos, a Mexican restaurant.

They have one of the best nachos I have ever tasted!

I was excited to go home with them and greet my “goddog” Coffee, a toy poodle. He’s such a hyper puppy so it’s very difficult to take a decent picture with him, but I finally managed to!

The next day, Chi’s maid cooked delicious liempo and pochero for lunch. She said she had a secret recipe for the liempo that she isn’t going to give away to anyone.

Later on she cooked rebosao aka banana cue for snacks.

Chi and I quickly stuffed ourselves before heading to the Pinto Museum. I didn’t expect much, even though Chi mentioned that it was an Instagrammable place. I was completely blown away by how photogenic the place is!

Doesn’t it look like Greece?

I have so many pictures so I will post those in a separate blog.

Flisha’s Birthday

Flisha took the day off for her birthday and invited me to spent it with her and her husband Gim.

In the afternoon we went to The Spa in Greenbelt 1. I have always been curious about this place but just couldn’t afford it before. There are definitely perks to being in your mid thirties. 😆

While Flisha and Gim had a couples massage in one room, I had a sea salt body scrub in another room.

After I was scrubbed down, I was so amazed at how smooth my skin was. I don’t think I’ve ever felt my skin this smooth before! I’m so glad I asked which was best for exfoliation.

After that we had dinner at People’s Palace in Greenbelt 3 where we were joined by our other college debater friend Ronald.

Flisha and Gim explained that they had long wanted to try this restaurant but there was always a long queue. So they made a reservation for tonight and it did not disappoint.

The food was so delicious that Flisha declared it to be the best Thai restaurant in the Philippines.

My fave was their pad thai, which we discovered from the waiter is actually a Thai filler food and not a main course. This was only one of our many learnings that night.

After we cleared the food, the waiter brought a small creme brulee with a lit candle for the birthday girl. That was very nice of him! The creme brulee had hints of a Thai herb in it.

After dinner we had tea at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf near Gim & Flisha’s place. Gim took their deck of Cards Against Humanity and we played it at the cafe.

We were all laughing so hard, especially when these cards were played:

Thankfully we were in Manila and not in Singapore, so nobody got mad at us for being noisy. 😅

Accounts Payable

I met Caloy, Jen, Rhea, April and Anna, my former colleagues from P&G, at Manam, a Filipino restaurant at their work building in Net Park, BGC. Though they’re all still in P&G, none of them are in Accounts Payable, where we all began.

Manam is so popular that there’s always a long queue and they don’t seat you unless your whole party is available. Luckily we were early so we beat the crowds and got a table quite quickly.

We ordered a bunch of food including their bestselling sisig, which Jen insisted was the best sisig in the Philippines. It really does taste so good and I just might agree with her!

I also really loved their baby squid in garlic and olive oil. I noted that this is the smallest baby squid I have ever seen and felt sorry for the poor squid who had to sacrifice their college dreams in order to become our meal.

One more intriguing dish of theirs is the beef short rib sinigang sa watermelon. I’ve never tried it before and it tastes really good, too!

We all wanted to drink ube shakes but they said one was too big for one person so we ordered three to split among six people. They actually served the drinks in six small glasses, which was really nice of them!

We had interesting conversations and at one point, they wondered which group I would have ended up at if I had not left P&G. I’ve wondered that myself.

After dinner, April and I walked through BGC to look for an eyebrow threading place before heading back to the office so Caloy could bring us home in his car.

Todd English and Tagaytay

I told Drew and Kes that I missed videoke (karaoke) so we tried to do that in SM Aura but unfortunately the place was booked so we had dinner at Todd English instead.

Our fave part of the meal was dessert – OMG chocolate cake.

I stayed at Drew’s very cute condo. I love how he decorated the place!

I also missed Tagaytay so the next day we took a trip there. We booked a car with driver and Nurture Spa vouchers through Klook.

The driver picked us up at Drew’s building, then we swung by Tim Horton’s to scoop up double double coffees and donuts before picking up Kes and driving to Nurture Spa.

We had blissful nilaib massages in Nurture Spa. The hot pouches of stones and herbs rubbed all over our bodies were the best part!

After that we had lunch at Marcia Adams.

We loved everything we ordered.

After that we got back in the car and drove to Bag of Beans to have coffee. I chose Bag of Beans because it’s so popular, but I’ve never been, so I wanted to know what was up.

It turns out their coffee and frozen blueberry cheesecake is so good. No wonder it’s so popular!

Then we went home and Drew and I ordered in S&R salad and fried chicken and watched To All The Boys I Loved Before on Netflix.

My flight is tomorrow and I really hope it goes smoothly despite the Xiamen plane incident that had NAIA closed for 2 days!