Food Haven

Iloilo City - The second stop of our consultations for a UP System-wide initiative brought us to this beautiful city in Western Visayas. Home to the UP in the Visayas, the province of Iloilo and its capital Iloilo City is the gateway to the entire region. A 15-minute outrigger boat ride brings you to the fabulous island of Guimaras, where the mangoes abound and where the beaches are fabulous. About 2-3 hours away is the province of Capiz and Roxas City, the seafood capital of the country. About a few hours away also is the province of Aklan and the pristine beaches of Boracay Island. Iloilo is the place to go for some of my most favorite gastronomical delights. A trip to Iloilo is never complete without the usual trip to Ted's Old Timer for their Extra Super Special (yes, it's that superlative) batchoy, complete with all the toppings (some of which are better eaten than described). Another place to go is the Biscocho House in Jaro, home of my super-ever all-time favorite butterscotch. The molo soup also originated in this wonderful place. Yummy! And how about Tatoy's, the place where beachside dining is at its finest. Atchara pa lang, ulam na! There was also a time that I ate enough talaba to last a lifetime.

Recently, Jonas informed me of his most recent venture (no, not his sleeping pills, though I'm desperate for some), The Mango Tree. I discovered that, at the time of my visit two weeks ago, The Mango Tree was in the 3rd week of its operations. With some expectations on the food (courtesy of taste-tested sisig while playing DoTA) and ambiance ("It's the most romantic date place in Iloilo City" boasts my friend), I invited Prof. Manegdeg of the ME Department to have dinner at The Mango Tree. Dr. Ricarte Nunez of WIT (I'm not so sure of this) joined us for dinner.



True enough, the ambiance at the entrance is impressive especially by the standards set by other restos in the city. Music was provided by a component system that I vaguely recognize from the Gonzales home in Capitol Homes. The restaurant had space to seat about 50 people but it can easily accomodate double or triple that. Upon entry, a huge MANGO TREE (thus the name) welcomes the casual diner (note to visitors: slippers and sando/sleeveless shirts aren't allowed, though I saw a group of teens wearing flip flops when we were about to leave).

Prof. Manegdeg, Dr. Nunez, and Mr. Po after dinner


The menu was printed on copy paper, cut into three. Hardly impressive, I thought, but maybe they're still developing the menu. I was remembering the instructions... try the sisig, don't forget the bulalo steak... I immediately asked for those, and then ordered some spicy gambas. I don't remember if they had mango shake but I do remember some kind of food with mango dressing or sauce. I may want to try that next time. Prof. Manegdeg ordered some molo soup, which arrived first. The molo actually tasted very ordinary, especially when compared to the ones from Molo (duh?!) but was heartily tasty nonetheless. The sisig was a tremedous improvement from what I tasted and I am now a bit more sure of backing Jonas' claim that it's the best sisig (the one from Razon's could compare but it's not fair to compare them because I ate the sisig with halohalo). It was very tasty, just a teeny bit spicy and the calamansi added a nice touch to the flavor. The spicy gambas was, well, spicy. But the shrimps were very fresh (dapat lang!) as they came right out of the shell. It was a perfect complement to the beer (oops, did I say beer??). The servings were paltry though as we had to order another plate. And, for the coup de grace, the bulalo steak was amazing (just don't think of heart disease). It was very tender and the grazy was smothering the steak in all the right places. I told Jason later that night that the bulalo steak looked very much like the one in the picture (a tarp outside). Few restos can boast of that.

**

Food Quality: 4 burps (I can make better adobong mani than that!)
Value for Money: 4 burps (considering its Iloilo, where the minimum wage is much lower)
Ambiance: 4 and a half burps (the music mix was quite ecletic; may nahahalong music na wala sa mood; the mango tree lighting was very well made)
Rest Room: 4 and a half burps (walang mirror! paano na pag magpapapogi yung nakikipagdate?! but the rest room itself was designed well and may soap)
Overall: 4 burps (may room for improvement pa)

I'm not dead

Ok, so it's been almost two months since my last post. A lot has been happening lately. Consider yourself lucky you're reading this...

The main highlight for the month of has got to be the wedding of the decade. Pat and Chico's wedding was a successful bash (If I say so myself). The Best Man did a great job... oops ako pala ito. Well, all I really did was arrive very early at the bride's house (since the groom was busy confessing whatever) and then later on that day spoke of some funny, skewy, detailed anecdotes about my long affair with the bride and groom. I must admit a part of that speech was googled (gasp!) but the greater part of that speech came from the heart and I know the couple is very well aware of that. Of course, what would a wedding be without a wild bachelor's party?? Well, it wasn't exactly wild (Happened the week before the big day). We just drank a few beers and and shared funny/gross stories.

October 15, Oliver invited us to his newly built swank place smack right beside their old house. Of course, visions of Oli growing old with his brood of kids beside his parents' house is a mighty sight to behold. Overall a nice place, so nice it's gonna be the venue of our annual Christmas party. I remember the last one, conversations till the wee hours of the morning... without any alcohol. Of course, this year promises to be different with everything we've planned.

October also marks the frenzy of 1st sem grade submission. This is without a doubt my most pasaway sem, submitting grades a day late (gasp! again!). A funny anecdote could be told about our Chairman receiving a memo for late grades. She snickered at me, to which a replied with a wry smile. Shock overcame her upon reading HER name on the memo, and not mine.

Novermber (and late October) gave me a time for a short breather. However, unlike in previous terms, I didn't find the sembreak to be quite relaxing. I didn't actually have to go to a spa.

The start of classes have been a regular November thing for me (since I was a student in UP). Its quite different when you're on the other side of the fence. Teachers have to prepare more at the start (and the trend of preparation reverses significantly come finals time).

A whole lot is scheduled and slated for the coming weeks. Today marks the start of the 23rd SEA Games. Two good friends are competing for the country and from what I hear (and read), they're shoo-ins for the gold. Mickey (fencing, team foil and team epee, I think) and Sandra (triathlon), good luck and go for the gold (so cliche). In other matters, the usual end of the year signals the start of planning for next year. Being in some position (not necessarily of authority) I'm doing some planning myself. It's on top of teaching kids what happens when we reject the hypothesis and it turns out to be true.

Come December, it will be fast and furious. By Friday, I'll finally have a taste of The Mango Tree, Jonas' latest baby. With a sisig that's to die for (no pun intended, I hope), I can't wait to stretch my taste buds in Iloilo. Less than two weeks of classes, then the break. IE Club will be gunning for its 6th consecutive EWOC. Its likely they'll repeat. Balita ko ang pogi and charming nung adviser nila. Eng'g faculty and staff will also enjoy their own version of Eng'g Week albeit capped by a feast that's enough to feed half of the acad oval.

A couple of Christmas parties with friends are also scheduled. Regi should take care of us from IEC '98/'03. I'm looking forward to a reunion with some PIQC friends. Oh yeah, my only godchild's birthday is on December 19. Lucky ninong.

My thesis docket has been empty for quite some time. High time to get rolling on it.

No pics of my throat getting slashed or me hitching a ride in the wonderful roads of Oahu for now. Just a short update, much like CNN's breaking news. Nothing sensational.

A Best Man's Tale

This should not come as a surprise to many of us, most especially me. However, when I got this bit of great news I will admit that I was indeed shocked to hear it. I will not go into the details of my reaction (though the bride will give you a vivid account upon request) but more importantly, we should look at how our lives are changing. Jonas predicted that in the next 2-4 years, we'll be going to about 4-10 weddings (lower number for me, higher for him). We were also discussing "sinong mauuna?" The guess was correct. Timing? Way off!!


She announced this with a dagger in-hand. Future husband took photo.





As their best man, I dedicate this blog post to my very good friends Chico and Pat! Best wishes!


The downside is that we won't be able to ask them to play dota a lot now, since they'd now have "bills" to pay... nyay!!

Looking at the bright side, at least they'll get an income tax exemption... :D

Productivity Lows

I think I may be suffering my worst streak of low productivity... although a part of me thinks it's due to an immense workload never before seen in my two and a half year career.

***

After I finished printing my exam for today, I burned my time reading other people's blogs and following links everywhere. Got this from Jae... (this is probably more than two years old now!!)

50 more reasons why we love surfing the net

Inasmuch as I wanted to work hard on a Saturday to finish a huge backlog of papers and commitments, Time Magazine's list of the 50 coolest websites gave my productivity a huge blow.

I've gone through the entire list and I've seen probably less than five of these sites. I've visited only a few and the sites were really good. The blogs are a new category this year and some of them are really hilarious. A sample quip (from Overheard in New York...)

Hobo #1: Do you know what time is it?
Hobo #2: Yeah I know.
Hobo #1: Thanks.

lab exercises and research in ergonomics

One of my tasks in IE 134 (Ergonomics) is to come up with laboratory activities for our new equipment from Vernier (thanks to Angelica of Velca). My students were surprised to note that we were using the same stuff Physics 71.1 and 73.1 (lab courses on Mechanics and Thermodynamics) classes were using.

Most of the exercises I designed were really exercises, as in my students would have to do some sweating to get their project done. Research in this line of ergonomics would be allied with what they're doing down there at the CHK (Human Kinetics). We're trying to look at anthropometry, its applications, and its implications on human performance.

I hope we do some justice for our room's name, the Human Performance Laboratory.

***

I'm sort of disappointed to note that none of my students decided to conduct research in this field of ergonomics, preferring the safer route of ergonomic evaluation of everyday stuff. At least, there's a saving grace since some students decided to pursue research in the field of industrial ergonomics, or the ergonomics in the workplace. Since the IE program in UP Diliman is really manufacturing/industry oriented, we might as well focus our research in this area. Another area I find interesting is cognitive ergonomics.

More on my Hawaian adventure next week...

Aloha!

***
Happy Birthday
18 - Leks
22 - Pat aka Raven
23 - Wilbert P.
28 - Chewy

sorry tinamad maglagay ng links

delayed...

For those whi didn't get to view this properly...
***

It seems that whenever I want to post something, a lot of things go wrong. As a colleague of mine would comment "Murphy is hard at work..."

For this post, I had lots of trouble posting pic on the web. I thought it was a prerequisite for posting pics on a blog (to have html tags on your pics). Well, I just learned that you can upload pics from your computer (Chico's voice saying COMPUTER!!). I was asking Jae how to upload pics and he gave some relevant advice. The saddest thing was I had to resize all my photos (for this set, thanks to Bern and Stenie!!) since each was about 1.5-3mb big!

I used my photobucket account for this but as of press time, most of the pics are loading. I'll post a link for all the pics in my next post.

Conference Stuff

I was sent to Hawaii for one main purpose, to present a paper on Probabilistic Dynamic Programming (try searching for this, hehehe). I was scheduled on a Thursday and that gave me lots of time to prepare for my presentation.


What's Ergo Boy doing in an OR conference??


Now I'm trying to stress a point. The "stressed" session chair seems to react positively to my inquisitive and highly intelluctual points.


My session included mostly maintenance stuff and there was more than enough for me to chew for that session.

The other sessions were very interesting.

DAY 1 - First session was the application of OR in the criminal justice system. Though the presentation was mostly for R&D allocation of high-tech police weapons, there are similar stuff that we can adopt in our SC project. I dunno if I can even mention it. Oops, I guess I just did... The next session for the day was the application of OR in healthcare. It included an assessment of Israeli hospitals and optimization strategies for NZ ambulances (interesting to note if they rescue sheep down there, which enjoys a huge numerical majority over humans). The day's last two sessions were on practical optimization applications and six sigma.

DAY 2 - I attended a session on recent advances in metaheuristics...

Uhh, ok. So I didn't. Sue me! Bern and I decided to cut the afternoon sessions and go to the mall. We went to Ala Moana Shopping Center (no pics... didn't feel like taking pics in the mall). The mall reminded me of SM Baguio. No A/C, nice surroundings. Went to Macy's and discovered that it's quite expensive there (but a sale was forthcoming). Less than a week later, AMSC would serve as my take-off point for my North Shore adventure (more on this in the succeeding posts)...


Waiting for a bus to the north shore just outside the Ala Moana shopping center... more pics and stories to come...

DAY 3 - Excursion day! Got some pics (in my kuya's iBook) and I'll post these pics from the Polynesian Cultural Center, Polynesia's equivalent to our Nayong Pilipino. As a side note, I actually asked my 19-early 20's students if they know about Nayong Pilipino and they all exclaimed "Syempre naman Sir!"

Maybe a post about this excursion??

I also had a sumptuous dinner at the house of Bern's Aunty Ala in the upper portions of Honolulu. The winds felt like a storm was brewing (in the middle of summer?!?) but they said it was normal.

DAY 4 - My big day!! Interestingly, I only attended my session and decided to go to Nordstrom later that day. It was also luau day. I got some pics from the luau but this is all I have now...


Me (Aloha shirt c/o Aunty Ala), Bern (in her lovely Aloha dress) and our Taiwanese friend Zhi Ping (fresh from Maui). I actually met Zhi Ping on the flight going to Honolulu from Taipei. Gumana ang nerd-dar ko, hahaha!

Oh, BTW... I have a pic with Frederick Hillier. You might not know him but I bet you Torveks knows. Also ask any IE you know. I'll post these as soon as I get a grip on my small photo collection...

Day 5 - Having spent Thursday night drinking at Planet Hollywood (with $5 beers!!), I woke up late on Friday and decided to just hit the beach instead. I went with some Italian economics professors to soak in the sun of Waikiki Beach. Later that afternoon, we (Bern, Stenie, Aunty Marge) went to Kuhio Beach Park. Pics below...


Hanging loose by the beach

It's 6pm but no sunset in sight... (Actually the sun doesn't set until 8pm. Wohoo!)

Nakapayong sa beach... Tsk...

Later that evening, I had another dinner at the Cua's. Moreover... I got to wear a grass skirt and dance Hula with Bern's niece...


Innocently watching the girls do Hula...

Innocently trying on the grass skirt...

Innocently trying to do my version of Hula... Parang kulang get-up ko???


Innocently trying on the coconut bra...


And to top it off... I innocently tried on some necklace adornments and a silk flower ala Jasmine Trias

Hmmm, did anybody notice my wonderful tan???

With that, I end this post...