My 4th time in Sofitel Luxury Hotel's Spiral Buffet

My fourth time in Sofitel Hotel's Spiral (1st was during the time when blogging wasn't a social phenomenon, 2nd was here, and third was here) was more than just a marvelous, it was mesmerizing. And with the season of a four-letter word L-O-V-E, this was the best dining experience in my 30 plus years of being an evolved homo horminidea specie. 

After a year of earnest anticipation from its renovation due to the storm that hit Manila and consequently wrecked the stone walls that  served as a protective bulwark of the crushing sea waves, flooding the entire restaurant floor to knee-deep, the 11million makeover finally pave way to feed some prurient gastronome like mine.

They opened its curtain once again into a 5-star restaurant hotel setting where 21 dining ateliers unveiled freshly cooked entrees right before the diners' eyes. 

The interactive dining brims of a 2,921 sq meter wall that can accommodate 296 people. It connects to a veranda that is a prelude to the hotel's iconic lagoon-shaped pool facing the Manila Bay sunset. 

Pralines and truffles section. 

Bread section. 

Wines, Whiskey, Rhum, Champagne, and Sparkling Water. 

Japanese section. I was surprised the chefs greeted me in Japanese. I know I don't look like one but I digress it is their way of brandishing authenticity. 

The bounty from the sea. 

They have all in here. 

I made my own salad. Look at how lovely it is. 

I asked the chef to make me a buttered shrimp. 

Grill request to the chef. Lobsters grilled to goodness. 

Little bit of everything. That nice pinkish rib eye steak is such a behold. 

Maki and Sushi. With a Wasabi, these will all makes sense. 

Dimsum. Didn't I tell you that I like dimsum so much that I can live on a dimsum only meal? 

Meats. I love the Rib Eye but I choose to have it in a small quantity so to accommodate other entrees or my return entrees. 

An assortment of desserts.

Fruit medley composed of Watermelon, Dragon Fruits, and Pineapple. 

I made my own halo-halo. A Filipinian's meal isn't complete without it. 

I asked the chef to prep up a crepe topped with green tea ice cream for me. 

To conclude my meal was a chocolate ice cream. Even if I still have the capacity to digest while on the fly, she restrained my intake to control my diabetic accolade. 

She was apparently a happy camper in the salad section.

Although there were new things being offered, like the Cheese Room, which I really like(I am definitely a cheese person), there were other things that they curtailed too. One of them was the overflowing wine and champagne. It was supposedly a plus factor for every buffet just as it was in the Oakwood Premiere, but sadly they didn't offer it any longer. 

Burgoo American Bar and Restaurant at the Gateway Mall

We love pigging out. She has an impeccable taste and I have a voracious appetite, that alone is an unalloyed formula to our blissful dining experience. 

Long ago, as I was basically just catching up some late write ups due to my extremely busy schedule, we had the opportunity to try out Burgoo just to satisfy our rabid craving for comfort food. Not only is it near to where to both of live, it is the only American comfort food I can finally find in the area. 

While it's name can easily be associated to a burger chain(I am not explicably referring to Scott Burger), the name is derived from a stew, the recipe that traces its origin way back in Kentucky 1700s. Burgoo is a concoction of different kinds of meat: deer(or maybe goat), probably as exotic as squirrel, and other kinds of animals caught in a day's hunting game, mix it up with herbs, vegetables and spices. 

And just like the restaurant itself, Burgoo American Bar and Restaurant is a melting pot of meats of all kinds. 

The ambiance is cozy yet casual for a regular chat-while-you-chew setting. The lighting is just as right as it is in other fast casual restaurant and bar. 

They say it's a poor man's Friday but a poor like me wouldn't mind, especially on a starving stomach. 

They don't have Calamansi Juice which we both like so we ordered Lemonade instead. I wish they serve courtesy bread while we are waiting for the order. But then, that might also weaken our gastronomic thrust by filling in the capacity meant for the main entrees. 

Oriental Chicken Salad. Crisp greens, red cabbage, water chestnuts, crab meat, Mandarin oranges, in an Oriental dressing topped with fried chicken. 

Shrimps and Ribs Platter. Mouth-watering combination of barbecued baby back ribs, Cajun spiced fried prawns served with either rice or US fries and grilled corn on the cob. 

Mississippi Mudpie. Chocolatey goodness. 

The dessert which concludes them all. The Strawberry Cheese Cake. 

One notable experience was how the servers introduced themselves to the dining guests. They put in a huge squeaky clean paper, wrote their name in inverted pattern readable at the guest's front, and left crayons on the table. It was screaming a predisposition to unleash your creative glands, and so I must succumb. I did and I sketched her. 

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.  

Samsung Galaxy Note 2: Power within your hand

In a space fiercely competed by smartphones of different shapes and sizes, Samsung Galaxy Note 2 earned definitive upsmanship hands down in all categories. 

Coined as an amalgamation of phone and tablet, "phablet", it is by far the most promising smartphone to have ever graced the Androidworld. 

The technological tug of war between the Android phones is gradually meting out a conclusion that not only does the specs put you in the gold standard of measure but the overall handset experience. 

So let us see what are the things that will wow us in the Samsung Galaxy Note 2. 

As opposed to the 5.3" of its predecessor, it has a 5.5" 1280 x 720 Superduper AMOLED display but narrower so typing with one hand, especially reaching out to the far end keys, will be a breeze. The microUSB connector is found at the bottom, right beside where the S-Pen(Samsung's branding campaign to name its stylus) is. The 8MP camera has a LED flash and is able to produce crisp and vibrant photos. 

The front camera at 1.9MP is used for videocaling or perhaps in my case as an electronic mirror when I need fixing up. Best thing of it all is the 3100mAH battery to support the whopping Exynos quad core processor for your best Android 4.1.1 Jellybean experience. Pack it up with a 32GB of microSD and you're set for the best mobile multimedia experience in your life. This phone unleashes the power within you, the power to control life whenever mobile, wherever roads take you. 

One thing that I adore is the enhancement of the S-Pen experience which gives me the capability to send edited annotation and picture snippets to my colleagues or bosses. The sensitivity has vastly increased as well. and with the released version 2.2 of its S-Pen SDK, it will give them an upper hand in the developmental program to beef up the application even more. 

So hold on to that 13th month annual supplementary wage of yours for this lovely device. 

On Theory and Law

I have come across a college classmate of mine saying that "heck, the Big Bang is just a theory."

You see, we, men of science, have stopped using the word law right now, because a law might violate the future's random probability. 

To give you an example, philosopher J Carrol once said that "All gold sphere's are less than a mile in diameter." Sure it is, and it can be easily be put into a law as nobody had created a gold that big yet, but what if someday a certain Arab Sheikh will spend all his fortunes creating one. 

That is is just good as saying that "all Uranium 235 are less than a mile in diameter." Again true, and it can be one of the laws of particle physics because once Uranium 235 will reach beyond its critical mass, or more than six inches in diameter, it would become unstable and will kaboom into a nuclear explosion. But what will stop one mad scientist from creating one. 

So saying that a law has a higher degree of veracity than a theory is even a misnomer. 

Even existing laws are consistent on a certain set of conditions only. They are true at a particular mathematical length. Look at Newton's Law of Motion, it has all its drawback once the velocity is nearing the speed of light. Not only does it have a problem on high speed, there are also restrains from space contraction, spontaneity and mass variability. That also goes true with the Theory of Relativity which breaks down to explain the conditions of a Black Hole and the physics before Big Bang. 

What I am saying is that the LAW has much same intensity of candor and truthfulness there is as with a THEORY.