I feel full.
Just came from a lunch out with my boss and my department-mates to celebrate a colleague's birthday. And where did I get my fill of the celebration? From KrazyGarlik, one of the newer eating establishments located at Greenbelt 5. It's actually at the end of GB5 where GB5 meets with the old Greenbelt 1.
While aswangs and bampiras might shy away from the place for obvious purposes, after eating a hearty feast there, there is no reason for the rest of us not to try the delectable delights that they offer. And lest you think all the food is garlic-flavored, surprisingly most are not especially if you take the time to pick off the garlic bits.
But what's the Krazy Garlik experience if you don't take in all the garlic? While we didn't go garlic-crazy with our orders, there was more than enough garlic to go around. And rather than smother the tastebuds and the olfactory with garlic, the smells and tastes weren't too garlicky.
The bestseller seems to be the Garlicky Cripsy Pata -- just your average crispy pata order but peppered with labuyo and what else, roasted garlic (with one big whole garlic on the side)! We also ordered a curry seafood dish which while it had garlic bits surprisingly didn't taste like garlic. For starters, we had a raw salmon appetizer with garlic and caviar on the side along with their bestseller pizza flavor -- Garlic Snowflakes, a thin-crust pizza with creamy cheese-tomato sauce showered with garlic flakes. Then the rice we ordered was a group rice entitled Hara Kiri -- super spicy and garlicky yet delicious. Then another round of pizza, this time flavored Garlic Lovers. The earlier pizza was, in my opinion, a better option. They had four other pizza variants on the menu.
Their drinks and desserts didn't have garlic in them (which surprised me honestly) but I've tasted better apple tarts and cheesecakes else where.
The bill was surprisingly affordable, rounding out to P520 per head. Though it's probably not a good idea to dine there alone.
KrazyGarlik is located at the 2F of Greenbelt 5, besides California Pizza Kitchen and Chilli's.
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My favorite Starbucks coffee alternative -- the gourmet coffees of 7-11 -- just increased prices by P5. And while that doesn't seem too much, it's already somewhere near the vicinity of other branded gourmet coffees that made me feel like I was being had.
Until yesterday, the 7-11 gourmet coffees (currently French Vanilla Capuccino, Cupcake Vanilla Capuccino, and Hershey's Choco Loco) for small, medium, and large were priced P35, P45, and P55 respectively. I usually get the largest size which at P55 still costs at least a third of tall order of Starbucks. When I went to 7-11 this morning for my usual, I was surprised to find out that the largest cup now costs P60! I ended getting the medium for P50 which was bitin (I only had exactly P55 with me when I went out).
Now I'm deliberating whether it's still affordable to buy the large at P60 or I just stick with the office brew, which to be honest, I'm starting to get tired of. I might have to stick to instant coffee for the meantime (either I do my own instant thing or buy those coffee sticks).
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Update on Anathem ...
I've finally gotten some groove into reading this Neal Stephenson novel and I'm now somewhere in the hundreds of pages. Yay!!!
After the slow built up wherein my brain had to first adapt to Stephenson's writing and the non-stop influx of information that you have to absorb, assess, and assimilate (to get a better grasp of the world of Erasmas, the protagonist), I'm now able to somehow smoothly "go with flow" in that I am now dying to find out what will happen to Erasmas now that Apert has come and gone with him doing the "book penance" at Apert's end. The action is just building up, folks. Got a thousand more pages to go.
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The deadline for submission of your fiction masterpieces to Philippine Speculative Fiction 6 is just around the corner.
Sadly, I don't think I'll be able to submit this time around as I can't find the drive to work on any spec-fic at this point in time although story-ideas have been cropping up every now and then.
But don't let that hinder you from submitting to this great annual antho. Who knows, maybe your piece might just get picked up by co-editors Nikki Alfar and Kate Aton-Osias.
Reprinting the guidelines here:
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: PHILIPPINE SPECULATIVE FICTION 6
Editors Nikki Alfar and Kate Aton-Osias invite you to submit short fiction for consideration for Philippine Speculative Fiction volume 6.
Philippine Speculative Fiction is a yearly anthology series, which collects a wide range of stories that define, explore, and sometimes blur the boundaries of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and all things in between. The anthology has been shortlisted for the Manila Critics' Circle National Book Award, and multiple stories from each volume have been cited in roundups of the year's best speculative fiction across the globe.
First-time authors are more than welcome to submit; good stories trump literary credentials any time.
Submissions must be:
1. speculative fiction—i.e., they must contain strong elements or sensibilities of science fiction, fantasy, horror, magic realism, alternate history, folklore, superheroes, and/or related 'nonrealist' genres and subgenres
2. written in English
3. authored by Filipinos or those of Philippine ancestry
Submissions are preferred to be:
1. original and unpublished
2. no shorter than 1,000 words and no longer than 7,500
3. written for an adult audience
In all cases, these preferences can be easily overturned by exceptionally well-written pieces. In the case of previously-published work—if accepted, the author will be expected to secure permission to reprint, if necessary, from the original publishing entity, and to provide relevant publication information.
Submission details:
1. No multiple or simultaneous submissions—i.e., submit only one story, and do not submit that story to any other market until you have received a letter of regret from us.
2. All submissions should be in Rich Text Format (saved under the file extension '.rtf'), and emailed to kate.osias@gmail.com, with the subject line 'PSF6 submission'.
3. The deadline for submissions is midnight, Manila time, November 15, 2010. Letters of acceptance or regret will be sent out no later than one month after the deadline.
Editors' notes:
1. Please don't forget to indicate your real name in the submission email! If you want to write under a pseudonym, that's fine, but this can be discussed upon story acceptance. Initially, we just need to know who we're talking to.
2. If you'd like to write a cover letter with your brief bio and publishing history (if applicable), do feel free to introduce yourself—but not your story, please. If it needs to be explained, it's probably not ready to be published.
3. We advise authors to avoid fancy formatting—this will just be a waste of your time and ours, since we will, eventually, standardize fonts and everything else to fit our established house style.
Compensation will be Php500 for selected stories. In previous years, we've provided contributor copies of the book, as well as small royalty shares, but we are strongly leaning toward shifting Philippine Speculative Fiction to digital format, so we're shifting to outright financial payment as well.
Please help spread the word! We'd really appreciate it if you'd publish this invitation on your blog, e-group, etc.
Thanks,
Nikki Alfar & Kate Aton-Osias, co-editors
Dean Alfar, publisher
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My little daughter turns four next month. Just can't believe how fast she's growing.
Plans on how to celebrate are very fluid at this point but it's looking more like we'll be having a couple of celebrations -- one at her school on a Friday, November 19, and the following day, a smallish party at our apartment with just a few of neighborhood kids around.
While her birthday is actually on the 18th, we just learned that Ikai's school has scheduled their field trip on that day. It has become sort of tradition that whoever is celebrating his or her birthday should have a pakain of sorts for the whole class. Nothing fancy, mind you, as we're saving up for our wee one's first birthday on December (Issa's birthday is on the 13th of December). Probably something from either Jollibee or McDo that the kids will love (spaghetti, no doubt!).
Meanwhile, our boy bugoy, Mark (our daughters' cousin who's staying with us) will be celebrating his own birthday this Friday. We will celebrate his birthday, of course, but again, nothing fancy.
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Off-hours (by which I mean off-office hours), I am busy with pushing content for The Gaming Daily and again recently, our family's little side-project PinoyHomes4You.
Future family plans have stimulated me to direct my focus on getting TGD going in hopes that it'll be generating income soon. Hopefully, frequent content updating (it's a niche market news site) will drive traffic to it as well as direct potential advertisers to it.
My previous gaming site, The Big Gamble, was a Wordpress.com blogsite that didn't support any form of advertising. TBG attracted about three potential advertisers but the site's inability to host ads turned them away. That prompted me to switch to the Blogger platform (where I've been personally blogging for about four years now) which allowed customized themes and layouts and allowed the user to edit HTML code. Blogger also allowed you to publish via custom domain hence, my gaming site is a .com site, not a .blogspot.com site like The CoffeeHouse Chronicles whose full URL is ramragandan.blogspot.com.
While I'm no coding genius, I am able to get by thanks to a quick 'net search for specific HTML coding tricks. All themes' HTML (I'm using a free theme for this blog, PinoyHomes4You and on TGD) can be edited via the 'Edit HTML' tab on the Blogger user interface so it's not building an entire website from scratch (that I can't do) but by modding it with "bells and whistles".
Both TGD and PinoyHomes4You are works in progress so expect changes every now and then on those two.
