Introducing the A-List Manila Characters

I brought up the idea of the blog with my friends, and they liked it. Of course, to protect their identities, and in true A-List NY fashion, they will be taking the personas of the A-List people.

Manila Derek is a 10th generation oligarch.

Manila Austin works for a company bringing in expensive laptops, phones, tablets, and mp3 players.

Danny is, well, Danny!

I'm sorry guys, I'm really not good at coming up with a storyline for the characters in A-List Manila. But these are the personas of my friends, I will try to improve on the characters pretty soon as the blog and story-telling progresses.

Had merienda with Derek today at Go Gourmet by the Plaza in Rustan's. I often stay here while waiting for Danny to finish at Rustan's and to my surprise, they now offer free wi-fi! Love!

I love this coffee-shop more than the others sprouting in the Metro, and their latest offering just sealed the deal for me. I ordered a Cherry and Berry Pie:

Derek, on the other hand, ordered Caviar Pie:

The Caviar Pie inspired Derek how to prepare it for our Christmas Party. I did tell him that the presence of the onions in the cream cheese is the same recipe for the Caviar Pie being sold in Makati Shangri-la. Guess what?! The dessert was only PhP 50.00, and the Caviar Pie was PhP 170.00. It's so cheap!

After Danny finished, and after a little window-shopping in Rustan's (and a little shopping on the side in Glorietta 5), we met up with Austin and Richie for dinner at Heaven and Eggs, in Glorietta 5.

I started eating ahead of everyone, since I wanted to try their Unlimited Steak offer, for PhP 799.00++. The steak wasn't bad. They made a mean medium rare, and the steak was soft to the slice. Had to put a little pepper and salt in the gravy, and the mashed potatoes, as observed by Austin were from actual potatoes 'coz the skins were still in them.

Here's the steak I ordered with a slice cut off already:

I ended up having 3 servings of steak.

Derek and Austin split a Jeproks Slammer, which was a sampler platter of Filipino breakfast fare. The picture is just half of the platter, as the waiter had split it for Austin and Derek already. This was the bestseller meal for the evening, as everybody ended up tasting snippets of the meal.

Danny, so dismayed with his order, ended up eating a predominantly rice dish of Nasi Goreng. We helped him out by giving him some of our ulam. Obviously, the Nasi Goreng is just a plate of rice good for 2, and not an actual Nasi Goreng which should be a complete meal in itself already.

Another great evening with A-List Manila. Will keep all of you posted for more of our dining and shopping adventures!

I Know What You Did Last Summer

What did I do last summer? I went to Hong Kong!

To kick off this blog, and since I have a lot of pictures in my laptop and it needs unloading in a media other than Facebook, here's a photo collection of my Hong Kong trip this year's holy week. I have to apologize for the quality of the pictures because I ended up using the camera of the 4th Generation iPod Touch I had recently purchased for that trip.

That's the chandelier in the lobby of Holiday Inn Golden Mile.

And this is me waiting to be checked in at the lobby of the hotel.

What's the first thing you do when you've checked in and have the entire of Hong Kong as your playground? Well, if you're me, you eat first, so you have energy to go mall-hopping. So here's what the first meal in Hong Kong consisted of:

Ordering took a lot of getting used to, since I was always converting the prices to Philippine Peso. But we were able to order. Here's the before shot of the food:

And here's the after shot.. this is the effect of not-so-good food served during the Cathay Pacific flight. I mean seriously, Chicken Adobo Roll?

I'll be posting the mall-hopping up next. Keep you guys posted!