This entry is late. Very, very, very late. It's almost been a month since these events occurred, but, yeah, better late than never. I don't remember the timing of events, so this will be a mess.
I was in Baguio with my family for the new year. I think Baguio is awesome right now, no matter what the purists and haters say. They can all kiss my ass while I enjoy sitting around the COLD NORTHERN MOUNTAINS.
I spent quite a lot of time being bored and lame at SM. I know. Malling in a place like Baguio is pretty stupid, but I couldn't really go anywhere else. Our lodge was booked so we couldn't sit around there, and the lodge WE booked wasn't very comfortable. It was really really cold in Baguio that time, too, and the wind was brutal (at least for a tropical-island dweller like me), so walking around was a bad idea. “Hey, I could try their coffee. That's always fun.” I thought to myself.
My brother found this little coffee shop called Saint Cafe somewhere on the second floor or so. He and my dad thought it would be a good idea to have some caffeine, and asked me to join them. I did, of course, because I cannot resist caffeine, especially when it comes from little-known coffee shops like these. Unfortunately, their coffee was utter garbage. It was really, really bad. If you need a comparison, I'll give you one: it was worse than Starbucks. Coffee fail aside, my dad was playing Tekken on the PSP, so I was at least laughing my ass off. That was both surreal and retarded, but definitely more retarded than surreal.
Mocha Blends used to be my fallback option in case I accidentally consumed bad coffee (which happens quite often in Baguio, unfortunately), but both branches have been closed! Lame. Figaro coffee, though not quite to my taste, was still readily available. Better than nothing, I guess.
A little later in the after noon, I was once again left with nothing to do at the mall, so I decided to read a book with a large Figaro capp to drink.
The keen observers among you may have noticed that I READ A BOOK. This very rarely happens, and the fact that I was reading the second book in a series made me question my identity. (It was The Subtle Knife, second book of the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman, by the way.)
And the coffee was surprisingly horrible. I didn't think Figaro's capps were very good to begin with, but they weren't exactly bad either. This cup, however, was just awful. Baguio's coffee must be cursed or something.
Disappointed and annoyed, my brother and I walked down session road to try to find Sunshine Lunch, a chinese restaurant that supposedly served great siopao, among other things. It was about 8 or 9pm. We couldn't find it with the directions I took from the internet, so we decided to walk down to Rose Bowl to try that place instead.
As we were about to turn left to Rose Bowl, I spotted Sunshine Lunch to our right. WTF? Weird. It was closed, anyway, so we had no choice but to continue towards Rose Bowl.
Rose Bowl is a three-story restaurant at the bottom of Session Road. It's a THREE-STORY RESTAURANT. No one builds a three-story restaurant. It must have slowly expanded into its current gargantuan state by earning so much, so I assumed the food was good. When I stepped in, the first thing I noticed was the fact that all of the round tables were large enough to accommodate ten people. That wasn't much of a problem, really, but it didn't make any sense until I saw the menu. They only had huge servings for sharing, and nothing to offer often-solitary diners like me. What the fail. We ended up choosing some soup and fried dumplings, which were the only things offered in serving sizes that we could actually finish. The food was pretty good. Not made of win and gold or anything, but pretty good. Our waiter, whose hairstyle role model was obviously Mr. Clean, was emotionless and robotic. “Oo. Hindi. Marami yan, 15 pieces. OK. OK.” This is precisely the kind of service I'd come back for. /sarcasm
I've forgotten what happened next, but I believe it involved large amounts of going home and sleeping.
The next day was pretty much the same thing, except that we bought some stuff to eat and drink for New Year's Eve. It was the eve of a new decade! That felt so weird. It made me want to do something epic the next day, something that I would never forget. Of course, I didn't even get anywhere close to doing something like that, but at least the next morning was funny.
My dad formed a childish tantrum within hours of waking up, completely obliterating any hopes we had of having fun on the first day of the year. He does this very often, and I'm so used to it that I can find sadistic humor where everyone else finds fear and frustration. However, the comedy of watching him damage his car twice during that tantrum was hilarious and somewhat satisfying.
That's the only thing I remember about the first day of the decade. Pretty shitty way to spend it, I know, and I'll be 34 by the time the world gets another one of these. Thanks, dad. :S
