Last Monday, Alona and her friends Charmaine and Sheila Mae came over for a day of fun in the sun and the swimming pool. Even though I have been here over a month, and stood by while Alona and Miriam (who is now married and moved away, but that's another story) swam, I had yet to actually take a dip in the grand pool here. So this would be my first time, not only going into this pool, but swimming at all since my family had a pool in the house in Glendale Arizona, almost twenty years ago.

That's not the only reason I reference the term "For The First Time" though. The same is the title of a hugely popular romance movie that came out here last month, starring Richard Gutierrez and KC Concepcion from Star Cinema Film directed by Joyce Bernal. As with most Asian cinema, the film must come with a hit pop song, usually sung by the main characters in the film. Because of its popularity, the girls were constantly singing that song throughout the day.



So things began with the three of them cooking up a storm. As usual I handled the rice, and had to put Alona on hold because she always dives into cooling and then finished everything before the rice is ready, then we have to wait. As I was preparing the rice, Alona asked "Why so small?" I had forgotten there were four of us this time and had put in the usual amount as though I was cooking for just Alona and myself. So I added three more cups of rice, did the usual washing, and then set it up in the rice cooker. After that, the girls went to work.



As you saw in a previous post, I have many interesting canned goods that are pretty much "heat and eat" type fare. I also keep many packs of ramen type noodles on hand. The girls decided to go with a can of corned beef, a can of lechon paksiw and some noodles. Sheila Mae chopped up half an onion. They conveniently left the other half out for the ants I guess. After that, they went through the items in order. Alona cooked the corn beef and then followed with the lechon. Normally, when I cok the lechon fo rmyself, I put onion in it, but I guess some people prefer it without. I must admit I have on occasion seen Alona picking the onions out of her food. Anyway, next they had to wash the wok (remember we have but one burner and one wok) so they could move on to the noodles. Alona filled the wok with water but otherwise sat out on that one.





After we ate, it was time for phase two of our plan, for the girls brought with them lemons and salt. Me and Alona ran out to the convenience store to get a bottle of tequila while they finished cooking. Now the plan was to take out plate of lemons and salt and head to the pool. Unfortunately, when we arrived, many Koreans were there and two were sitting at the only table, a guy named Peter Oh and his wife. We sat on the side near the empty hot tub for a few minutes, and eventually Peter and his wife got up and offered us the table.



So now it was time for the great drinking to begin. I have this Effen Vodka shot glass that I picked up in Metro Ayala in Cebu City. Its really cool looking. So we basically went around in a circle from me, to Alona, then Sheila Mae and finally Charmaine, each taking a shot. We had more than enough lemons and salt. I guess the idea was that somewhere between rounds we would take a dip in the water. At this point, though, many Koreans were still around so the girls weren't to eager to get into their swim gear. Still, Sheila Mae, foolishly, choose to at least go and see how cold the water might be. She dipped one foot in to test and, of course, Alona and Charmaine pushed her in. Unfortunately, the sun was going down at this point and my camera needs a lot of light, so the pictures of her coming out wet and chasing them around are little more than blurs.



Eventually the Korean crowd thinned out, and the girls were not as shy about being themselves and jumping in. They were jumping around in the water as though it was freezing, which made me somewhat wary of going in. Like most things, though, I know it is better to just jump in and get it over with. I put one foot in to test it and was surprised. The water was really not that cold. Why would it be? It's very hot here. Maybe it's just cold to them. I jumped in and the water was fine. So we had a lot of fun drinking and swimming. Surprisingly I still knew how to swim, though I remember it being easier to stay afloat. I guess I just need to practice. Already I want to go again. Anyway, before we knew it, we had gone through a bottle of tequila. Nobody was drunk. Alona said from the beginning it wouldn't be enough. So me and Alona trekked off to the convenience store to get another one. We came back and went through the second bottle, swimming in between rounds. At one point, the security guard had to come tell the girls to keep it down, but for the most part we just had a lot of fun.



The second bottle did its work. Sheila Mae was the first to be done in by the strong drink. So much so that we let her skip a round. Alona, I guess is something of a mean drunk as she was kind of pushing the girls around as the night wore on. She kept saying Sheila Mae wasn't keeping up. Personally I think Sheila Mae was on the verge of vomiting and needed to be given a break. That didn't stop continuing fun in the water though, and the girls swam on. Eventually though it was late and time to call it a day. Everyone had drank too much. The girls had to go home. It wasn't quite the end for me though. I remember meeting an Iranian girl and chatting about Islam, the movie 300 and the Ottomans taking over Constantinople. Then I ran into Peter Oh again, which is why I know his name, and we sat and drank beer talking about who knows what for a very long time.



Finally I dragged myself off to bed. The hangover I had the next day, meaning yesterday, was legendary. Alona seemed perfectly fine for whatever reason. Makes me wonder how many beers I drank with Peter. Anyway, I don't know if my iPhone got wet or if anything weird happened to it, but I notice it is not taking pictures today. It otherwise, is working fine and I see the screen, it clicks and makes camera sounds and I even see the image slide into the folder. Unfortunately, the images in the library are blank. I have seen this before though, so maybe it will go away, or next time I sync it will be fine, I don't know. If not, there may be fewer pictures in future updates.

Yes, this is as cheap as it gets. A 3 peso egg, a 2 peso, or so, onion and probably about 5 peso worth of rice. Basically a meal that costs less than a quarter in US money. The funny thing is, fried rice also happens to be my favorite. I suppose the only thing cheaper would be a single pack of ramen, but is that really a meal? What strikes me is the level profit some Chinese food places must be making, especially in Burbank where a plate of fried rice might cost as much as $10.00. Some places, like Wokcano, it costs even more than that. Granted their Singapore Fried Rice is leagues better than what I made, but it is still just fried rice.

Of course, not everything is about being as cheap as possible. Sometimes I want to go out and taste the goodness of some of my favorite restaurants. I miss the wings at The Dessert Factory, which are still super cheap compared to getting similar in the west, but they are probbaly expensive by local standards because it's in the mall.



Speaking of malls, while Ayala is much closer to me, such that some might dare to consider it walking distance, and so I spend a lot more time there, sometimes it's good to venture out further and see what the other malls have on offer. The other day I went to SM City, which I wrote about very early on this blog. I didn't really get a chance to explore the place, as I was on a mission to get connected to the internet at the time. I had been back a couple of times since, but was usually on a mission. This time, I went just to look around. There is some cool stuff in here. Unlike Ayala, which seems to be all shopping, SM City seems to actually host events. The car company Kia seemed to have some kind of car show going on in one area. I don't know what was special about the cars, although I think one had fire painted on the hood, but people were milling around and some were even getting inside them to check them out.

I can't imagine why anyone would by a car here, unless they lived out in the boonies. A taxi here costs nothing, and you would spend more on your own gas than it would cost to take taxi everywhere. Also, like any major city, parking isn't exactly abundant. A car seems like an unnecessary hassle. I wouldn't buy one under any circumstances. A motorcycle would be far more practical, but the way people drive out here, you'll never get on one of those either.

While in SM City, looking at the cool sites, including one of thos kiosk type things where they take a widescreen HDTV and turn it on its side, I decided I wanted to try some eats not prepared in the home. I first went to the all powerful Jollibee. Whoever started this chain is a genius. I think it was created by a Chinese guy, but I am not sure. Still it is the Asian version of McDonalds. Even though they have typical fast food items like burgers, they have quick and easy Asian items on the menu. They also have better crispy chicken than KFC. Unfortunately, on this trip, I ordered the spicy chicken and it was spicy! On the whole, Jollibee isn't be best food in the world, but you can eat well for $2 and it is always crowded, with plenty of eye candy.

Later, having been at the mall so long, I decided to eat at Chow King. I think I wrote of this place before, and how I saw a cool TV commercial about it once. One thing I did not know is that Chow King also has crispy chicken. I guess fried chicken is just that popular here. Chow King is Chinese fast food done pretty good. Not the best by any means. Chen & Wok chains in the US are far far better, and just as fast, but still Chow King is pretty good, and very very cheap. You can eat for just over a $1.

So I just got paid for the last gig I did, and with good timing since I had about $1 to my name and was running out of groceries, so today I am off to the mall again. I already have a pretty big gig lined up and a couple of big looking possibilities in the queue. Remember I said I was working on something that Book II on this site will be about, and I can say it is starting to kick in. The adventure is going to grow.

Last Thursday, on October 9th, Alona had plans to take me on another cooling adventure. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but it is amazing that even though it sometimes looks like we are making a buffet, this stuff costs maybe $3 or $4 to do. Even eating out you can't get so much so cheap. So we returned to Metro Ayala and into the supermarket to get the goods for her next cooking attempt. She wanted to do some kind of soup this time. We got the vegetables pictured above. One was a huge squash for a few peso and another was some type of cabbage I guess. It was also 20 peso or so. She also got some nasty root looking thing called gabi, which after she skinned it and chopped it seemed kinda like a potato.

We then went on to the meat section where we decided to get some pork. They had every kind you could imagine. We got pork adobo, which is pictured left, in cubes. She also decided, at that time, she wanted to try some pork chops using her special technique of marinating in soy sauce and lemon. So we got the pork chops pictured in the center in the image above.



So when we got back, unlike last time, I remembered to get the rice going first. This way, since it takes its time to cook, we wouldn't have to wait for it. Alona chopped up all her ingredients and set to work to make her soup. She started by frying up the pork adobo. She likes to cook things on a high fire with a lot of oil, but that's another story. For some reason, I always have this expectation that the meat would turn red or brown upon cooking, like beef, but it doesn't. It turns white. Anyway, After some time, seeing as we have a somewhat traditional style wok, she moved the pork up to the sides and added the onion and garlic she had chopped up earlier. Of course, she also added quite a bit more oil for this. Still, things were really starting to smell pretty appetizing at this point.



The next step was to get the rest of her vegetables in there. Her weird gabi root and the orange squash thing. At this point she found herself wishing we had a lid for the large wok, but she made do by taking the lid off the rice cooker, which was done with the rice at this point, and making the best of it.





All that was left now was to add her broth, and then wait and let it cook. Or so I thought anyway. She actually hadn't added the cabbage like thing at this point. Still she claimed to know what she was doing so I just enjoyed the show. From the beginning she was worried about it all fitting in that wok. As the soup grew, I must say I started to wonder myself. Looking at the size of that pile of cabbage type stuff on the plate made me wonder how it was ever going to end up in that wok. I started to think that maybe she was right about getting a real pot with a lid. The thing is, when we first went shopping for supplies for this new place, I don't think either of us ever considered soup being on the menu. As things were going, she also cut the end off some chiles and threw them in to spice it up a bit.





The next great task was adding the cabbage type thing. Somehow she managed to get almost all of it in there. I guess it was added last so as not to get too soggy or something. Anyway, now it was all in the wok and surprisingly not flowing over the edges. There was, however, yet another problem which plagued us. Aside from not having a pot with a real lid to cook something like the soup in, we also only had one burner to cook on at all. The pork chops still remained. The question became, where do we put the finished soup so she can cook the pork chops, which have been nicely marinating all this time? The answer came in the form of taking the rice cooker and emptying its contents onto a plate. She was then able to put the soup in the rice container, clean the wok and have it ready for the pork chops.



And so the time came for me to try the soup. I have to say it was amazing. I already knew she could cook, of course, but this was a cut above. She even seemed surprised herself when she tried it. I kept joking with her about opening a restaurant called Alona's Kitchen, but she doesn't seem to believe in herself too much. She doesn't even cook like this for her family! I asked her why she doesn't cook like this for her mother or her brothers and she said she would be embarrassed and worried that they wouldn't like it. She didn't seem to think I was being all that honest about how good her soup was either. I think if she hadn't tried it herself, she might think I was making it up. She seemed extremely happy with the results though. Still she wasn't finished yet. There remained the pork chops that had to go in the fire.





So the pork chops went deep into a wok full of oil and later came out very nice. Her special mix of soy sauce and lemon marinade really has an interesting taste. It worked for the fried chicken too. Not the healthiest thing to eat, of course, and even she knew about the risks of high cholesterol, but it was very good. I don't know if she would ever consider really doing Alona's Kitchen. Unlike in the west, restaurants are easily one of the quickest and most profitable businesses to have here. She could sell one bowl of soup for half the price of what we paid for all the ingredients for the night. She could make ten times her money back on those ingredients in no time. Also, here you have advantage that a local can open up a roadside stand anywhere there's free space. I know this much, if she does decide to do it, I will definitely be eating there!

$1 Rum! Yes it does exist. Now, I had known about this for quite some time, though I never tried it before. Okay, I may have had a shot or two in the ghetto area with the milling around in the story of Grace, but I never bought my own bottle and really drank it. This is stuff is hugely popular. There's a billboard for it on the corner where I live. I hear commercials for it on the radio almost anytime I'm in a taxi. And let's face it most Filipinos could never afford a bottle of Cuervo or some other expensive alcohol.

Now, you may remember in my previous post that I had found a little convenience store just up the street, which I had never noticed before all the times I went by in a taxi. They have just about everything there. They even have individual eggs you can buy for 8 peso each, great if, like me, you don't have a fridge and want a couple of eggs to make fried rice with. I'll have to remember that. So me and Alona walked over there and got some Tanduay, which is the name of the $1 rum. It cost 40 peso, which is actually slightly less than a dollar these days. We also got a big bottle of coke and some corn chips.

Interestingly, we didn't mix the rum and coke as most might expect. That's not the way she and her barkadas (that's like a gang) did it back in the day. We drank the rum as shots and simply had a tall glass of coke nearby for a chaser. With that, the great drinking began, and we finished about two thirds of the bottle. Unfortunately, Alona also spilled a good amount of coke on the table which later brought a considerable number of ants to visit. I started to get worried because I couldn't even work on my computer without some ant walking across the screen.



Today, however, Alona would take care of the ant problem. When we first went shopping, we bought two of most things, so that we would have one to use while the other was in the wash. So she changed the table cloth to the other one we bought and set out to wash the original cloth, by hand, along with some of my clothes and things. She didn't stop there though. Since the rest of the place was getting kind of dirty, she decided to clean it up too. First she swept the place up, throwing all the dust, ashes and naps of my hair into the dustpan and out to the trash. After that, she even mopped the place clean. It looked as good as the day I walked in!



After that, she came out of nowhere with the idea to make crispy fried chicken. That she wanted it was not surprising as we used to eat it all the time at restaurants. That she suddenly claimed she could do it, was pretty surprising. So we trekked off, in a taxi of course, to Metro Ayala and into the supermarket where we got the chicken and some crispy breading mix. We also decided to get some chocolates, but that's no relation to this story. After we came back with all the stuff, she proceeded to mix the breading, which I thought was too thin at first, and I cooked rice and started heating a whole lot of oil in the wok. She thickened up the breading and in the first batch went.



The first was a little too high the first time around. The place got a little smokey and the chicken came out a bit dark. There was also blood inside. Luckily we tested it on only two pieces. Now with the temperature of the oil down we were able to continue. Alona, however, wanted to show me something else. She had her own way of doing fried chicken, without the crispy breading but marinated in a mix of soy sauce, lemon and Aji-no-moto spice. So we did about half the chicken breaded and half her way. The rest came out good. We won't be putting KFC out of business or anything, but it was good, both the breaded and her special mix.

So now here I am writing this update, contemplating the remaining bit of rum or other future adventures. I have been working very well on the couple of freelance jobs and money is coming in, so things are cool and seem to be picking up. I'm about to start creating some things that will lead to what Book II on this site will be about, but that is another story. As for my adventures, as things seem to fall into place and I get a bit more stable, I expect there to be a lot more exploring. There are still many other islands here, 7000 or so I hear, and there's still so much of this city I haven't even begin to see by hitting the streets. It's time to start seeing what I can find next!

Well, I'm still here. So the storm didn't blow me away. It didn't even hit this island. In fact, another storm came by just a few days later, but also missed us. I guess it's that season. I don't really have anything cool to report. I just noticed it was over a week since I posted and didn't want anyone to think I was dead. I am mostly sitting at home trying to get my freelance on so I can make some money to keep adventuring here in the Philippines. There's always a little something that seems to come just when I need it, but I want to get back into the big time. I got a pretty good size gig, and have two seemingly good possibilities lined up, so I am not worried. Still, money is tight at the moment, such that I even tried to avoid using a 60 peso taxi. And that meant hitting the streets.

I said I would do it in a previous post. The only way to see the real Philippines was to get out and walk through it, or take the jeepney as the locals do. I still haven't taken the jeepney, but I did head out to do some walking. It's amazing what you find, even right by where you live, if you just walk around. Google Maps just doesn't work here. They have, like, three places listed for the whole of Cebu city. They have their own version using Google's satellite image data on Wikimapia.com, but being a wiki, you have people entering stuff like "good ribs here" instead of the name of the place, or "my teachers neighborhood" over a whole area instead of listing individual places. I still have found the cool Japanese karaoke place I went to on there. I guess I can never go back unless I find someone who knows it.

So walking around I found two cool little restaurants and a cell phone shop right around here. There's also a bank close enough to walk to (well the mall is close enough to walk to by some people's standards). This means I might be able to go there and use the machine instead of spending taxi money to go the bank I used to go to or the mall. The best thing about walking around, though, is the girls. You see the girls you probably would never see in the mall. The real local beauties. In a big city like this there are going to be different levels of westernization. In a fancy mall, you're probably only seeing the more westernized and well to do people on a regular basis. Walking the streets, though, you see everyone else, and they are polite, smile, wave and maybe even strike up a conversation. People in the mall might walk by you like you're not even there. It's a world of difference.

So that was my small excursion hitting the streets. Once I get a little more comfortable with my freelance and feel a bit more stable, I will start exploring regularly. I might even buy a super cheap digital camera to take along with me (cuz some places I ain't taking my iPhone). Who knows what treasures are to be found around some corner?