Sunday, March 21, 2010

I have moved.


http://deaguwapa.com

I finally got my own domain, whoopee! I also moved over to Wordpress.


I hope you can follow me there.

http://deaguwapa.com

Thank you, http://guwapa.blogspot.com. I had oodles of fun with you, but it's time to move on.

See you at my new blog, my dear friends!

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Meet Cello

cello

This half-Beagle/half-Lhasa Apso pup is my brother Momon's baby. He's the new apple of our eyes, everyone in our household is in love with him.

I have learned to clean up doggie pupu and wipe doggie wiwi. I never did that with Django, the yellow Lab I share with Abet, but that's because Abet does all the dirty work. But Cello is just so cute and so tiny and a little toilet paper and Lysol is enough to take care of his mess.

I'm just so smitten with this puppy.

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DSC02241-edited2


Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Jonker Walk, Malacca Food Trip

I received today a positive comment on one of my blog entries about our backpacking trip last October, and I realized that I haven't posted anything about that trip in four months. It's a shame, really, because I still have a lot of stories and pictures to share about that adventure. I have my notes in my Moleskine notebook to remind me about our trip--that it wasn't just a dream--but my notebook doesn't have photographs. I did plan on documenting our trip on this blog so I can read back and look at our pictures and reminisce, but things got busy in December. Anyway, I'm going to pick up where I left off. My last entry about the trip was about our afternoon in Malacca, now let me tell you all about our food trip in Jonker Walk that evening.

If there is one thing you need to experience in Malacca, it would have to be Jonker Walk (or Jonker Street or Jalan Hang Jebat) in Malacca Chinatown, and it is best to experience it in the evening when it's alive and bustling with activity. The street is lined with antique stores and houses, and in the evening it is closed off and becomes a night market where food stalls abound.

We got to Jonker Street just before the sun set, and most food stalls weren't open for business yet. We were already famished at this point, though, so we decided to snack on the fare of one of the tables that were already ready to serve.

Jonker Walk
30 sen (P4.25) apiece, except for the sticks with pink tips which are 40 sen (P5.50)

Jonker Walk
cucumber was free :P

We tried the refreshments from this stall:

Jonker Walk

Abet liked the drinks here, we came back later in the evening.

Jonker Walk
I enjoyed the sweet-sour lime and plum juice

For dinner we tried Malacca's most popular dish at Restoran Famosa: chicken rice ball. Chicken rice ball is similar to Hainanese chicken rice (our favorite dish in Singapore), except that the chicken-flavored rice is served shaped like golf balls.

Jonker Walk
Abet's roasted chicken rice ball

Jonker Walk
my steamed chicken rice ball

Good and cheap, but I still prefer the chicken rice in Singapore. We walked around after dinner para magpababa ng kinain, and before long, we were ready to sample more of what Jonker Walk had to offer. Our pick this time: siomai! Siomai of different shapes and sizes and colors. We tried seven of these:

Jonker Walk

Abet loves tubo, he wasn't able to resist the sugarcane juice vendor.

Jonker Walk

I still haven't had my dessert at this point, so I bought a stick of assorted fruits dipped in chocolate. This wouldn't have been so bad if there wasn't a cherry tomato in it. Blech. A chocolate-covered tomato isn't really my idea of dessert.

Jonker Walk

To cap off our evening, we had shared a bowl of cendol at Jonker88, a museum-cafe which is probably the most popular spot on Jonker Walk:

Jonker Walk

Sorry, super blurred photo (again, DSLR n00b here). This was seriously the best thing I ate in our entire 11-day trip. I first fell in love with cendol when we were in Singapore last year, and it is now on the list of my top 10 favorite foods. Cendol is a similar to our halu-halo, except that its main sahog is red beans and green rice "noodle strips." There's the finely shaved ice, and coconut milk is used instead of evaporada. Then there's that dark brown syrup made from palm sugar that tastes just like the latik of the biko my momma makes.

Whenever I reminisce about our trip to Malacca, I fondly think about our Jonker Walk food trip (and the cendol, of course). Blogging about this experience and seeing all the food pictures above makes me want to go back. Since I don't see a trip to Malaysia in the near future, I think I just might drag Abet soon to a restaurant named Malacca along Jupiter and see how it compares to the food we enjoyed in Jonker Walk. If I'm lucky, the cendol will taste just the same.

Monday, March 8, 2010

My March

Well, looky here. I can't believe it's the already the second week of March. Actually, I can't believe that it's already March, didn't we just celebrate the holidays?

I'm loving my March so far! At the home front, it's been very happy and fun lately, we're really blessed. We're all excited about Joe's vacation mid-month, and we're glad that he's now a yearling or a third class cadet--that's a second year student for us civilians.

This month, I've also been doing good with my fitness goals. I have a rather ambitious goal for this Lenten season, and I'm well on my way to achieving that by Easter. I've been trying to eat well since Ash Wednesday, but I amped it up at the start of the month by going to the gym after work. I actually went four times last week, and this week I'll aim to go everyday. I'm on a roll! During lunchtime, I now utilize a phrase I didn't really use before: "Half-rice lang po, 'te."I am so getting my sexy back this year!

Has anyone seen Alice in Wonderland yet? I'm a big Tim Burton/Helena Bonham Carter/Johnny Depp fan, so this is something I've been looking forward to since last year. The reviews on my friends' Facebook statuses are mixed, but Abet and I are still looking forward to watching it in 3D. We'll wait for a couple of weeks for a) our paychecks, because we're currently poor; and b) the opening weekend crowd to die down (but it's mainly the former, haha!).

Speaking of movies, I've been "craving" for some movies lately, I'm making Abet download random movies I'd like to watch again: Land Before Time, Fern Gully, The Cutting Edge, Drop Dead Fred, etc. Maybe it's because I'm getting older (aren't we all?), but I want to watch movies from my childhood again.

And speaking of poor, Abet and I have been staying in a lot recently. Weekends are now spent watching movies and TV shows on his laptop instead of going out. We take turns choosing movies. So far he's picked Somewhere in Time, I've chosen The Graduate and Children of Heaven, a beautiful Iranian film about a brother and sister and shoes. We also make the other watch our favorite TV shows: he's now watching How I Met Your Mother and Glee, and last night I watched the pilot of Ed (ancient, I know, but it's his favorite). We just make popcorn with their cool electric popcorn maker. I guess we'll be having more of these tipid movie nights in the next 18 months 20 years.

You know what I'm most looking forward to this month? My boyfriend's birthday! Abet will be turning 29 this year--pwede na nang mag-asawa! :D

Have a good month, y'all!

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Father & Son

Father & Son

From That Girl