Wednesday, June 28, 2017

June Hodgepodge

June proved to be another full and productive month for me. First, I got to meet up with several sets of friends. I had dinner and drinks with my college friends at Wine Story in Serendra. For food, they only serve cheese and cold cuts there but they are partnered with other restaurants in the area like Chelsea, Mamou, and Abe so we all actually ordered dinner from those places. We ended up going through a few bottles of wine, all of which were very good. It was an expensive evening but it's not that often that we get together for wine. As if that wasn't enough, I also had another expensive evening with some ex-colleagues at Tomatito. None of us had eaten there before so we didn't realize until we got there that the menu items were pretty pricey. Thankfully, the food was good. The favorite that night was the Salmon TNT, bite-sized smoked salmon with honey and truffle. Our waiter highly recommended this and it really was delicious. For my main meal, I ordered Churrasco de Buey, slow-cooked boneless short ribs with truffle mashed potatoes, potato chips and demi-glace sauce. The serving size was on the small side considering the price (P925) but it was also very good.

Churrasco de Buey from Tomatito

For the first time in I don't know how long, I entertained a few friends in my pad. One of my friends installed The Jackbox Party Pack 3 from Steam on my laptop. This is an interesting compilation of games that require participants to use their mobile devices as their controls. Despite the use of phones, the game is highly interactive and, depending on the group you are in, wildly entertaining. I personally enjoyed Trivia Murder Party the most even if I didn't win any of the rounds we played. Tee K.O. was interesting because you come up with drawings and slogans and you have to mix-and-match the random drawings and slogans you get from the others. The cool thing was that all the t-shirt designs that were in contention for the win had either my drawing or my slogan on it (or both). Of course, the winner is the one who put the drawing and the slogan together so I actually didn't win but the winner had one of my slogans. :) Fakin' It was probably the toughest and most stressful game to play because it was very hard to fake an answer not knowing what the question was LOL. As challenging as I found this game, I somehow ended winning one round and I accumulated the most points in all rounds so I won it overall. Cool.

My winning moment in Fakin' It from The Jackbox Party Pack 3

I also had a few tabletop and board game nights in June. My friend Mich celebrated her birthday in Linden Suites. I got to try Eldritch Horror for the first time and this cooperative game can take several hours to complete. Unfortunately for me, our game master (who also owned the game) had to leave at a certain time so we weren't able to finish. A couple of weeks later, I played tabletop games again with Mich, Myna and Archie at Ludo Cafe. I finally got to try Scythe which I had been very interested in because of all the good reviews it had been getting. I have to say, it lived up to the hype and I really enjoyed it! I ordered it online and it is on its way to Manila from the US so I am looking forward to getting my very own Scythe game and playing it with my friends.

Playing Scythe in Ludo Cafe

I also organized my own game night, also in Linden Suites. I invited a few different sets of friends who are all into gaming so I could play with all of them in the same night. I tried Histrio for the first time (it took a while for me to figure out how the strategy works in this game but once I did, I actually quite enjoyed it). I also finally got to play my own Dungeon Petz game (the first time I played it, we used the game of my friends). I've played this twice now and I haven't won yet but I still really love it and want to keep on playing it.

Dungeon Petz

I also got a few things sorted out this month. I bought my very own HP DeskJet Ink Advantage 3775 All-in-one Printer a couple of months ago but it was only this month that I finally set it up. It took a few hours for me to get it working though; the installation and set-up instructions weren't that straightforward and since it is a wireless printer, I had to connect it to my home wifi for it to work and that wasn't as simple as I expected. Nevertheless, I managed to get it to work and I've been able to print a few things using it already. I also finally upgraded our internet at home. We had one of the slowest internet speeds so I decided to bump it up a few notches. We are now on 16 mbps and my nephews have told me that the improvement has been quite significant. Cool! And finally, I got to have my shoes professionally cleaned. I had a couple of pairs that somehow ended being muddied and I couldn't really clean them that well. I stumbled upon ColorWash one day and I decided to try this place. The cleaning service is quite expensive actually - P700 per pair - but at least my shoes look a lot better now.

Not sure if you can see how much cleaner my shoes are now but they really are

One more highlight in June: I went Bacolod for a few days for vacation. I will, however, be posting about that very fun and relaxing trip separately.

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