Bisita Iglesia...

So... hiya folks... sorry for not posting over the weekend but I think you can forgive me since it was the lenten season and all... and Jesus would want you to forgive me.. really... *wink*

Anyway, this lenten holiday, we decided not to go anywhere and just have a vacation at home.  No traffic, no crowds, just stay in at home and bum around and reflect.  My wife coined it as a STAYCATION... nice word... I actually like it!

So anyhow, on Good Friday, we did our annual Bisita Iglesia.  It's been 8 years since we started doing this and we will continue to do so in the future.  I guess you can say that this is our panata.  Our promise to God.

Our Bisita Iglesia consisted of visiting 14 churches.  One for each station of the cross.  And we had to finish it before 3pm, which they say is the time Christ died on the cross.  That is our Bisita Iglesia.

My wife's sisters (Dimpol and Ahmere) accompanied us during our Bisita Iglesia this year.  We did a list of the churches we were going to visit and put the list in order as to how we thought it would be more efficient (time saving and gas saving!).  This is how our list ended up:

1.   San Felipe Neri Church,  Mandaluyong

While at San Felipe Neri Church, we saw some people who are doing their own panata:

 I think the end of their route is at the church itself...

2.   The Divine Mercy Shrine,  Mandaluyong

3.   San Roque Church, Mandaluyong

4.   Nuestra Senora De Gracia, Makati

5.   Sto. Nino De Paz Chapel, Makati

6.   San Antonio Parish, Makati

7.   Immaculate Concepcion Cathedral, Pasig

I couldn't get a picture of the front of the church since they were doing repairs so you get a picture of the inside of the church...

8.   Sta. Clara Church, Pasig

9.   St. Pio Chapel, Quezon City 

We were surprised when we went to St. Pio for our 9th station.. they give out crosses that you would bear during you own way of the cross... there were different sizes of the crosses and you get to choose which you are comfortable in carrying...  you also had to be careful not to hit anyone with the cross and avoid getting hit by others... it was a careful balance of patience, strength, stamina and agility... but patience above all..

 Really, I wanted to get one of the bigger ones, but they ran out when it was my turn...

 Personally, I really liked the stations of the cross here at St. Pio...

10. Monasterio de Sta. Clara, Quezon City

11. Mt. Carmel Church, Quezon City

 This was where the wife and I were married, and we almost forgot to include it in our list...

12. Sto. Nino Chapel, Quezon City instead of Sto. Domingo Church -- When we got to Sto. Domingo Church, it was already jam packed and there was a mass already in session... we couldn't get to the stations... good thing we had a back up church...

 Our back up church..

13. Our Lady of Hope Church, Quezon City

14. Christ The King Chapel, Quezon City

 Our last station!

We started at 9:30 in the morning and finished at 2:48pm.  We cut it a bit close but the delay was caused by the televised mass at Sto. Domingo.  We still finished it on time so it's ok.  We were tired at this point as well as hungry.  Our last meal was morning breakfast before starting our way... I guess this is also part of our panata... our promise to God.  It always feels good whenever we finish our Bisita Iglesia.  Like some weight has somehow been lifted from our shoulders... like we were walking on air... or maybe we were just a tad bit hungry... hehehe..

We intend to do this again next year and I hope you guys like this post for the lenten season.

Mumbling my prayers... till next time!

Mortal Kombat... Legacy

 Who doesn't love the game???  Nobody that's who!!

This is one of the most successful fighting games ever and has spawned some great and some forgettable movie franchises.  The latest of which was a teaser of sorts, a re-imagining if you will of the MK universe by none other than Kevin Tancharoen! Who? Kevin Tancharoen! Who the F*** is Kevin Tancharoen?

Hooookay... after googling, it seems Mr. Kevin Tancharoen was the once the choreographer of Madonna.  He also directed Britney Spears and led the remake of the 80's film Fame.

WTF?! The dude's a flake! Him doing MK will probably mean Kano dancing the hustle and Subzero and scorpion doing the conga... Geeez!!!

So I watch this dude's MK: Rebirth... and I was blown away!

Kevin Tancharoen was not totally faithful to the franchise but I was expecting that bcoz it did say a re-imagining of the MK universe and it's characters.  What I was not expecting was that he got the grittiness and the dark and the gore... everything that made MK a success to sick little bastards playing to kill his opponent.  He totally got it and Eff me for being dubious.

Now Kevin Tancharoen is back!  With Warner Bros blessing he made some short episodes of MK: Legacy and will be exclusively available at Machinima.com!

Mortal Kombat: Legacy is a lot more faithful to the franchise but what I'm hoping for is that he brings his dark vision and excellent fighting choreography to the web series.  That will be so cool!  See the pics below:

Subzero!

"Get Over Here!!!"

The web series will star Jeri Ryan (“Star Trek: Voyager”) as “Sonya Blade,” Michael Jai White (“The Dark Knight”) as “Major Jackson ‘Jax’ Briggs” and Darren Shahlavi (“300”) as “Kano,” this series will take gamers deep into the history of the warriors they know and love.

If you have time, drop over at  Machinima.com! and see the newest take on an immortal franchise!


Mumblling while being dragged by scorpion on the ground...

Ang Okra... bow!

mmkay... so this post should have been merged with the ampalaya post but I decided to put it on a separate post due to it's significance...

You see, yesterday, at our family's reunion and my niece's birthday (Happy Birthday Rochelle!), my brother saw it fit to make the feast more lenten friendly by preparing mostly fish and vegetables(which includes the king of ensaladas, the ensaladang ampalaya!).  Y'see another dish he also prepared was garlic fried okra.  It's basically an Okra half cooked on oil which was previously used to toast garlic (the garlic is then used as a toppings for the okra.

Now as you know, the okra closely resembles the eggplant not visually but alike in that when you eat it, you feel the icky, yucky insides.  Now that I've tried the eggplant, it seemed like a logical step upwards to my new and numerous vegetable conquests...  So I tried it!  Since the Okra was lightly cooked, it still retained the crispness and the insides were not icky nor yucky!  It was goooood!!!!

Here's a pic of the dish I'm telling you about:

It was simple yet surprisingly tasty... and healthy to boot.

But I also learned something about okra... the crispness stays while it was still newly cooked... after the food has gotten cold, it lost the crispness and the icky, yucky insides were back... so I guess I only eat okra when half cooked... it's a good start dontcha think?

'Till my next mumblings!

The bitter truth about me and Ampalaya...

If you've been reading my blog, you'd know that I have a long standing war with vegetables that I have only recently been able to quell to a manageable level now that I have matured enough and somehow, someway, my taste has matured too...

I've posted a while ago that I have just recently started eating the eggplant.  Long before that, there was this other vegetable that I have abhorred bcoz of it's bitter taste and after taste... the Ampalaya!  But truth be told, when I got married, my wife made me eat it... and learn to cook it!  It was one of her absolute favorite dishes, the ginisang ampalaya, and since marriage is full of compromises and with her abnormally persuasive powers over me, she got me hooked to learn to cook and eat it.

The first time I tried the ampalaya, my wife did the cooking, and I guess she did it with so much love that I enjoyed every piece that was served.  It was amazing... I liked it and from then on I even learned how to prepare it how she does it... with love! ;P

Admittedly though, I still don't eat ampalaya just anywhere... I only eat amplaya when Me, My wife or my mother-in-law or any of my brother's and sisters prepared it.  If it's from someone else.... forget it.

So recently, I got to taste a different ampalaya dish prepared by my brother... it was the ensaladang ampalaya!  OH.MY.GOD!  It was that good.  I don't know how others prepared it but my brother's enselada was the top notch king of enselada's!  KUYA DING abso-friggin-lutely made the best ensaladang ampalaya there is! 'nuff said!

I dont know if the picture does it justice but this dish was the best!  Kuya Ding, thank you for the ensalada!!!

Game of Thrones

 The new series from HBO starts today or for our western friends, tonight... It aired earlier today/tonight and is based on the multiple storylines of the novel series "A Song of Fire and Ice" by George R. R. Martin.  That wasn't a typo, he really has two middle initials or maybe two first names... I forget which...

The series looks cool in a Tolkien way but if you're expecting more of Lord of the Rings you'd be dead wrong... Think more on the lines of War of the Roses... It features the lives of the noble family and emphasis is given on castle politics, knights, and basic human brutality.

The series will be 10 episodes and that I believe is only from the first book.  If all goes well, I hope they cover all the books of the Song of Fire and Ice series.

It also good to know that HBO will stay true to the bloody and lusty vision of the author... so expect some adult oriented scenes.  The series is a complex drama of power and violence salted with a little magic and action.  Although you don’t need to be a Dungeons & Dragons nerd to enjoy this series, but it definitely helps if you like the sight of horses, swords and naked women.

HBO's adaptation is clearly amazing. The cast, the sets and the visuals are superb!  This series is clearly going to have it's own cult following like the series it was based on.  SO if you have time to catch it on TV, check it out... It might just give you the chance to live out your D & D fantasy.

'Till thoust meet in thy humble mumbles once again...

Breakfast at... Mercato Centrale!!

So this morning, we were gonna meet up with one of my wife's oldest friends (since college) and we decided to have breakfast at Mercato Centrale @ the Bonifacio Global City!  It's just beside the MC Homes Depot and slightly at the back of the only Starbucks with a drive through order service.

They used to only open at nights but recently, they also open on mornings but only on weekends.. Scratch that first line... as one of the comment posters pointed out (thanks for the input!) this was originally a weekend morning food haven.. I guess to cater to the early morning joggers/runners at BGC.   Recently, they have opened up the Midnight Mercato which the name suggests, opens late in the evening to the wee hours of the morning (10pm-3am).  Mercato Centrale is a refuge for food enthusiasts and caters to those who are tired of the same old meals that you can buy everyday from the same food stores.

Back to the story, we were a bit late... my wife's friend (Loujean) and her special friend Ted got there ahead of us.  So they roamed around a bit buying some cassava cakes to take home in the process.  We arrived a few minutes later and found them on one of the tables setup for the customers.  Now, I don't have to tell you how long absent friends of the opposite sex behaves when they meet again... needless to say, short of screaming, there were a lot of kissing and hugging and kissing and hugging and a few greetings and then more kissing and hugging... Well, Ted and I being guys just shook hands and introduced ourselves.  After the intros... we then proceeded with the task at hand which is to sample the delicious food laid out in front of us!

There were a lot of selections, there's barbecue, chicken barbecue, an assortment of pasta, LECHON!!!, different styles of the filipino tapa, MONSTER burgers, Hungarian sausages and a whole lot more!  One of the things I gotta have is the lechon!!  how cool/sinful/bad is it to have lechon for breakfast?! It was delicious!  We also had Paella Negrita, some barbecues and some Cheesy Garlic Potatoes (Yummy!!!).

 The Yummy Lechon in all it's glory!!!

Hungarian Sausage for the hungry...

The Yummy Cheesy Garlic Potatoes!!! (I'm drooling while writing this...)

Some ribs and lasagna ...

 Our friend Loujean getting us some early morning fruit shakes!!! Cool!

The Monster Burger!!! Check out the size of the thing! It's massive!!

 It was starting to get packed!!! Some Stalls were still setting up...

 Some cupcakes for dessert?

A super close up of the Angry Birds cupcakes!!!

We had our fill but we still had another roam around just to check things out... And there I found that I missed the food that I was targeting at Mercato... The Pan De Bagnet!!!!   Imagine a fully cooked and crispy bagnet in the middle of bread with tomatoes, onions an a special sauce!!! Utterly mouth watering!!! I had to have one so I ordered one to go... <Insert devilish laugh here!>

The famous Pan De Bagnet!!!

They also have Lechon de Tortilla!!!

They also have Lechon de Tortilla which is  shredded bagnet with onions and and tomatoes and a special sauce wrapped in a tortilla!!! I didn't get one of these... maybe next time... no! Definitely next time! :)

Afterwards, we had desserts!  We got over to the Mochiko stall and got us some Ice Cream!!!  One order gets you a scoop of their special ice cream wrapped in a sticky rice wrapper.  Check out the pics!

The Mochiko Stall!

The wifey showing off her Mochiko Special Mint Tea Ice Cream!

The desserts were the perfect ending to our early morning breakfast adventure!  We had to part ways coz we had another appointment elsewhere (and yes, that's for another blog post...)..

I hope you guys liked this post, if you do, run over to Mercato to sample their delicious food!  The ones I've told you here and what I've shown in the pics barely grazes the assortment of food available.  You have got to try it for yourselves!  Oh yeah, some (not all!) of the food is a bit pricier than the common food that you eat in fast foods so be prepared.  I had to throw that out there... but it's totally worth it!!!

'Till my next mumblings.. (couldn't mumble properly coz I have Pan de Bagnet in my mouth...)!

The Almighty Johnsons... Norse Mythology anyone?

Alright! The first season of The Almighty Johnsons has just finished and it was a bit unexpected and a bit of a set up for the coming of season 2.  For those of you not in the know, The Almighty Johnsons is a new comedy-drama television series from New Zealand with a fresh angle on Norse Mythology.  The premise of the series is that the brothers  are living incarnations of Norse Gods.

You do know the Norse Gods without googling it right? I mean, Freya the goddess of prosperity? 
How about Odin the Allfather?

Loki the god of Mischief??

Come on? Reeeally?  Ooookay... let me give you this one: Thor? As in the Mighty Thor? The God of thunder and lightning...

Yeah, that should have rung a few bells unless you live under a rock coz he's got a movie coming from Marvel but that's gonna be a different blog post.

Anyway, back to the series.  Ok, so they are living, breathing gods but in this series, they are not all-powerful -- not just yet anyway.  So there's this bloke Axl Johnson celebrating his 21st bday, unbeknownst to him is that in their family, when you reach 21, you receive a different kind of gift... the gift of Godhood! Axl is the youngest in the Johnson family and all his other brothers are also gods.  His Uncle who, in this story is also his grandfather, is an Oracle. When he received his godhood, his Uncle finds out which God he is... It turns out that Axl received Odin, the Allfather. The King of the Gods. Axl is the youngest of the brothers but technically, he outranks all of them. Sweet!

And since Odin is back, it is said that he must fulfill a prophecy... he must embark on a quest to find his beloved wife Frigg!  When they have married and consummated their love, all the Norse gods will return to power and rule mankind once more! Should he fail, it would mean the lives of his brother. 

It's an interesting concept and an entertaining series, at least for me.  Somehow, I feel that this is not for everyone.  You can find the acting a bit lacking most of the time, there are a few gems in there.  Like Spartacus:Blood and Sand, expect some adults scenes on this series.

If you like it check it out but don't blame me if it's not your cup of tea.. but I find it good nevertheless... mumbling away while crossing the rainbow bridge to reach Asgard!

The Coolest/Creepiest Opera stage... Ever!

The French Revolution opera "Andre Chenier" is set to start on July on the banks of Lake Constance.  For this end, they are building a massive stage for this opera which looks like a massive human stage!  Can you say cool and creepy in one sentence? This does it with no words! See for yourself.

It's a surreal event when they were attaching the 15 meter (49-foot) head to the torso!  They had to use cranes for heaven's sake!  Now that's a big head...  you can see the original post here.

It's like a man made world of wonder... see you on my next mumblings!

My take on... Limitless

Last weekend, the wife and I were able to check out this movie LIMITLESS... it stars Bradley Cooper from the Hangover movie.

You can watch the trailer below:



How cool could it be to be able to access your thoughts in an organized way in just a snap!?!  The possibilities really are Limitless!

Note: Spoiler alert! Don't read any further if you don't want to know details of the movie!
The premise of the movie is that you take a drug, a pill that would allow you to access 100% of your brain and access any thought or memory you may have gleaned in your whole life and collate it with other data that is in your brain!  As per the pusher, it works better if you're already smart...  After taking the drug, you instantly become a human computer with a souped up relational database manager rolled up with instant cross referencing and you got yourself a Super Geek!  Aside from making you a geek, it also makes you addicted to the rush and confidence it gives... the only side effect is that if you stop, you might die... :)

My take: I have a few gripes about the movie, (1) although the pusher claimed that you will be able to use 100% of your brain, I am dubious about this bcoz I believe that If we are able to use 100% of our brain, then I should have mental powers like telepathy and telekinesis...  and yes, I really believe that!  (2) Plus, there's a scene in the movie wherein he was able to reference all the fight moves he has seen from tv and movies and was able to employ those moves to beat up some guys who were giving him crap.  Even though he had access to the memory, I don't think he had the muscle training to pull off some of those moves... unless the pill also gives you some kind of muscle memory then I'll take back my gripe.

If we can get pass this (I sure did!), the movie was better than I expected.  The concept was great and the execution was also not bad.  Unfortunately, this movie wasn't overly marketed or it would have had a much bigger success on our shores...  Even RottenTomatoes gave it a 69% rating while the RottenTomatoes audience gave it a 75% rating...  It's really worth watching..if it's still showing, I recommend that you give it a whirl... I guarantee that you'll be entertained.. if it's not showing anymore, then tough luck, you could wait for the official DVD or find a bootleg copy via torrent, DL or Quiapo (your choice *wink*) which I don't really recommend (the OMB maybe reading this... shhhh)..

'Till my next mumblings!

Som's Noodle House.. Mandaluyong

So, last night before heading home, we (by we, I mean me, my wifey and Ahmere - my sister-in-law) visited a Thai restaurant located at Mandaluyong City along Maysilo called SOM'S Noodle House.  My sister-in-law was craving for some Thai food and we had to refill our tummy tanks anyway or we wouldn't last the trip home...  A major plus is that it was just along the way home, so it was a perfect stopover for us.

Damn! Malabo kuha... I wasn't able to bring my Nex-5...*sigh*

This restaurant is one of the hidden gems of Mandaluyong City.  It boasts of authentic Thai food at reasonable prices!  Their Phad Thai is to die for and it wouldn't cost you an arm and a leg.  One order is even enough for the 3 of us!  We just added a few spring rolls, Chicken pandan and some Thai tea to complete the meal.  It was a perfect meal to cap the night before heading home!

Here's a few shots of our meal:

The delicious Phad Thai!!!

 We added spring rolls and Chicken Pandan... wait? Dangnabbit! I didn't get a shot of the Chicken Pandan!

Here's Ahmere drinking Thai Milk Tea

This wasn't our first visit to this place but this is the first time I visited with the intent of blogging about it. ;)

I hope you guys can also try it out!  See you again on my next mumblings!