Sicilysimo at the Festival Mall, Alabang

Today restaurants are banking on authenticity, wellness and flexibility on its raft of product offerings. The metropolitan Manila alone is teeming with dining places of these types of culinary concoctions and interior themes. But none can you see a restaurant that offers all three in one fold. 

We explored far and wide in the outskirts of the urban diningscape to look for restaurants of these threefold culinary creed and fate took us to Sicilysimo at Festival Mall Alabang for some of life's best gastronomic adventures. 

The restaurant brims with pride on an epithet of "brick oven baked pizza" but they offer not just pizza but pasta and risotto and a lot more as well. 

Their guiding principle hinges on Sicilian authenticity, rudimentary wellness and a flexibility of choice. To that, we tried concocting our own pizza and pasta. 

Courtesy bread sticks. I don't know if it's refillable, it would have been better if it is. 

Waldorf Salad. 

Do you still remember those gigantic pair of wooden spoon and fork hanging in your ancestral house's dining room? Here they are, being used to mix the pasta. What an ingenious and uncanny concept.

A closer look of the pasta that we built. 

And we built our own pizza too with out choice of meats, cheese and toppings. 

To conclude our day, Lychee Shake for me and Dalandan Shake for her. 

Because they're are in such a large quantity, we weren't able to consume them all no matter how hard we tried. So we took home some of the pizza slices. 

Burp… that's one single comment that says it all. 

Manila Maki at Elizabeth Place, Makati

My irresistible, gastronomic affinity to Japanese food, Maki and anything dipped into the thought-processes-breaking Wasabi being in those lists, spans beyond ordinary and has gone to a whole new level with the Manila Maki sprouting in the metropolitan scene. 

Manila Maki brims of an unassuming, cozier than most fast casual restaurants, by offering a whole slew of maki types from the most spice-drenched to the meat-abound maki to boot. 

Located at the ground level of Elizabeth Place in Dela Costa Makati, it is a welcoming addition to the dining alternatives within the area, a break away from the stereotypical fast food joints. 

Batchoy Ramen - Ramen noodles with thinly sliced pork and chicharon bits in a savory, garlic-shoyu soap base.

Chicken Teriyaki - boneless chicken thigh in teriyaki sauce.

Pinoydon Maki - adobo fresh, Philippine mango and cream cheese rolled in sushi rice.

Crazy Maki - kana rolled in aligue sishi rice with toasted panko topped with kana salad.

Lomi Udon - Japanese Udon with shrimp, pork, kikiam, veggies, and quail eggs in a rich shoe broth thickened with egg. 

It actually has been one of our favorite hang out places whenever we need to unbridle the usual corporate slavery chains around our already weary necks. 

The experience keeps me coming back for more. 

A Cruise to Corregidor

Fondly coined by the Spanish-American War to World War 2 journalists and historians as the island fortress of the orient, Corregidor is best known for its formidable harbor defenses fortified by coastal artillery and an arsenal of military might. 

It is essentially our own version of Alcatraz, but more than a penal institution, it is also a Filipino and American military outpost and is probably our last frontier of defense against hostile take overs. 

I am not really that well-versed when it comes to history except for weapons of choice during the era(or except for history that involves measurable components like sizing up the remnant matters as echoes of the Big Bang, or how stars are formed during its violent stellar stages) but there are a whole slew of historical materials found in the island when you dock in for a day tour. 

Not so long ago, we had a cruise and a day tour going over to the island which happens to be my Christmas gift for her, so consider this to be an example of history unwritten… until now. 

The view to a kill. It was a lovely view and has a design element of Spanish and American architecture. 

Our tour badge. She has my name, obviously, because it's under my reservation. 

Stronghold installations are a fond reminder of Filipino and Allied gallentry. 

What is a tour without a food, we asked.

Good thing it's a buffet but only limited selection primarily because you only have a limited time in the island. 

We started it out with a soup to throttle out appetite.  

Veggies to aid in the digestion process. You can make your own salad actually with your choice of a dressing.

Her plate has chicken, Paella Rice and veggies. 

My plate consisting off assorted veggies, Bicol Express, and Plain Rice. 

Rice Cake. 

Fruits. They have pineapple and watermelon. 

She's obviously full now and there goes her epithet, BL which at this point means Busog Lusog, but in all instances Baby Love, Beautiful Lady and Blissful Life.

Taken inside Malinta Tunnel in which ghosts(whatever form of matter and energy distribution they yield) are rampantly seen. I couldn't see a thing other than a her beauty haunting me deep into my subconscious. 

The tour costs about Php1,999 per person and is brought to you by Sun Cruises of Magsaysay Lines. 

Sony Xperia Go: Classy Rugged

I must admit, I got so exceedingly ecstatic when the news cadenced into the market about the the Xperia Active Series, only to have dropped my vivacity to the ground when I found out that they weren't that sturdy to use in extremest and harshest condition.

But then Sony released another marvelous iteration of its active-lifestyle-driven phones via Xperia Go. 

It doesn't look the typical rugged-ish look, instead it is more of the average phone design that is somewhat reminiscent to the HTC Legend, which is essentially a plus factor on its rafts of outstanding features because some people(me for example) hates sporting a non-classy device in our fold. 

And to prove that it's really an active-lifestyle driven unit, I tried immersing it up into a container of water while playing music, and oh boy, it does work. It's IP67 certified(dust proofing and water resisting up to 1meter of water for 30min) makes me think of using one while I'm lazily dipping myself into a bath tub. 

Under its hood, the phone has a LED backlit LCD at 320x480 pixels on a 3.5inch screen. It is protected by a Sony Mobile Bravia Engine and an IP67 certified technology. 

The front camera is slapped with a 5MP with LED flash which is decent enough in taking pictures. And with its Wifi, HSDPA and bluetooth technology, you can easily dump tour pictures anywhere you like. 

Running on an Android v2.3 Gingerbread and a dual core 1GHz Cortex A9, it is one of the value for money phones in the market today with an SRP of Php14,999.

Nokia Lumia 800: A push once more

The once king of the road of mobility once again pushed another move in the gadget chess game with the Nokia Lumia 800. With the unappealing reception of the market through its orphaned Nokia N9, the Nokia Lumia 800 carries in itself a slew of uncertainties. 

One might want to say that the Nokia is a half-baked device, having had to come out from the production oven of around 6months, it was intended to be a cornucopia of greater things to come. That statement might raise eyebrows from the technophile community as it simply borrowed the overall design of the Nokia N9. 

Armed with the Windows Phone Mango, they are poised to prove that it is the first stir of its kind.

Let's us hear from them. 

The AMOLED capacitive 480x800 pixels at 3.7inch screen protected by Corning's Gorilla Glass Technology on top of Nokia's ClearBlack Display technology makes it a screen "wow grabber."

Snappy enough at a 1.4Ghz Scorpion Qualcomm MS8255 Snapdragon, it produces really good navigation feel to its user interface. The camera is slapped with 8MP Carl Zeiss optics with dual LED flash. It has a good take nonetheless butter the color is leaning towards a pinkish hue. It also has a wifi, bluetooth and HSDPA as its connectivity features. 

Although I personally like the Windows interface for business use, one ordinary user might want to ask for more, like more application after-market support.