LURPAK is to the British

CERTAIN SCENES in movies stick in your head long after the credits have rolled.  I saw The Iron Lady before the Oscars – among other nominated films – and that one scene that played on and on incessantly in my head at work involved, of all things, butter.  Not her analytical intelligence, not her being a master tactician during the Falklands War, not the one when she stated her “non-negotiable”.  Butter.

 

“There’s a perception, Margaret, rightly or wrongly, that we are now completely out of touch with the country.”

“Really?!  How much is a pack of LURPAK?”

“LURPAK?”

“Butter, Francis.  Forty-two pence.”

“Anchor Butter is 40 pence.  Flora Margarine, still the cheapest, at 38p.  I can assure you I am not out of touch.”

 

LURPAK is to the British, as what “galunggong” (mackerel scad) is to the Filipino.  Hehe.

"How much is a pack of LURPAK? Butter. Forty-two pence." Nowadays, it's at S$ 7.15 at the grocery behind my block. It's always on my shopping list.

But what actually struck me about this “LURPAK” scene is that it reminded me of my mother.  She loves LURPAK very much – and yes, Anchor Butter is the runner-up in her books – that when I moved here in Singapore, I always make sure that I always, always have one pack stashed away in the deep freeze.  Times come when I need to pull it out, literally in the middle of the night, and slather it on high fiber white bread.

It’s such a comfort.

 

(Side Note:  For the first time, I wasn’t able to observe my annual Oscar tradition because I had to go to work – really swamped but lovin’ it.  Good thing that I was kept posted by my brother who shares almost the same time zone as the Kodak Theater.  I got seven for seven – Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress.)

 

Copyright © 2012 by eNTeNG  c”,)™©’s  MunchTime™©.  All rights reserved

Paul Frank

Paul Frank on the display window

I KNOW exactly when I realized I needed to start wearing prescription glasses.  It was one hot Manila day, June 1991.

My trigonometry professor gave us a 100-point quiz on the first day of class.  We didn’t know why, except that he said it was to assess where the class stood.  On the next day, he handed back our papers telling us they were to be the basis of our seating arrangement.  I got a perfect score and was made to sit at the last seat in a corner.

It didn’t help at all that there was half a pillar obstructing the view of the blackboard.  What made it ultimately feel like the loser’s seat was that even if I’d move my head to get a clearer view as I took down notes or copy the questions to a quiz, the view wasn’t getting any clearer at all.

I knew I needed glasses.

My glasses through the years have run a whole gamut of sizes, styles, colors, and price range.  The most I’ve had were a number of rectangular-shaped black acetate frames – from the cheapest that literally cost me nothing to those that you’d need to save up for.  My more recent ones have included a blue acetate from a Japanese brand, an all-titanium pair that cost about US$ 580.00 that I got just because the insurance covered everything except twenty (I’ve since passed this frame on to one of my brothers), an Emporio Armani, and a brandless plastic frame in a wood finish.  (Louis Vuitton’s latest campaign features frames in wood finish.)

My current favorites happen to be my Ray-Ban Classic Wayfarers – in white and in black.  The red one is waiting for me in the Philippines.

My Ray-Ban Classic Wayfarers in White

 

I got the one called the "Rare Print" edition that has multi-color designs printed on the inside.

I bought the white on one Duty Free shopping date I had with my family.  After Mama had her fill of inspecting the very limited Le Pliage offering at Longchamp – she did walk away with a huge “Tree of Life” scarf that she would tie to her limited edition “Tree of Life” Le Pliage in small, short handle – we all went to the Ray-Ban counter.  Everyone got the pair of sunnies they liked the most.  I knew right there and then that I wanted the Classic Wayfarers.  But in white.

A trip to the optometrist and my Ray-Ban sunnies became my new daily spectacles.  I love it so much that one of my brothers got me the black pair as a “just because” present.

The one in black

Lately, I’ve been considering getting a pair of Paul Frank.  I’m so loving their designs, having seen them on my friends Wai Hon first and now, Yu Chen.  I’m seriously thinking about it but would often have the perfect excuse of not having the time for it, especially after every time I would check my wristwatch at work.

Then I turned around, after doing groceries at Cold Storage, and there it was – Paul Frank on both the display windows of the friendly neighborhood optical shop.

 

 

 

Copyright © 2012 by eNTeNG  c”,)™©’s  MunchTime™©.  All rights reserved

Afternoon delight

Peekaboo... The freshly baked perfect scones – plain and cranberry – tease from underneath perfectly folded cotton napkins.

I’M THE first person to acknowledge the fact that many personalities make me up.  I mean, I could go profound and say I’m multi-faceted.  But I’d rather go straight to the point – many personalities make me up.

That’s the reason why I do believe that one person can have quite a few “best friends.”  Not just one, but not many either.  Just a few.  Each of them share with me a “world” that sometimes I was surprised to find out existed, something I got cognizant of only when they arrived – when they came into my life and arrested my collective consciousness.

Two of them are Friendship and Partner.  Each of them – totally independent of the other – has been sort of bugging me to consider moving to Singapore for a while now.  They were bugging me but not annoying me, allowing me to take my own sweet time.  The inevitable happened and I did find myself eventually having to move.

So it was just fitting for the three of us to come together and hang out.  Friendship does make wonderful plans, and she has had a stellar record in my book when it comes to her restaurant choices.  (We have yet to start on our “Miele Guide” restaurant tour.)  So when she asked, “Afternoon tea at The Fullerton Hotel on Saturday,” Partner and I, breathless in anticipation, could only say yes.

The Courtyard, The Fullerton Hotel, Singapore.

 

The imposing lobby dwarfed me.

Afternoon tea is particularly English and steeped in tradition.  And judging from its presence in restaurant and hotel menus here, it’s quite Singaporean too.

The Courtyard at The Fullerton Hotel – cavernous and imposing with its unbelievably high ceiling, lush indoor greenery, and glass roofing that let in natural light that bathed everything it touched with an ethereal glow – keeps this tradition alive by offering “something hot, something savory and something sweet” from Monday to Friday, 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM, and on Saturday, Sunday, and public holidays from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM.

For something that’s meant to be a precursor to the main meal of a day, The Fullerton Hotel’s Afternoon Tea menu proves to be quite substantial, boasting a wide array of tea choices – all TWG! – with pastry towers that beautifully showcase a selection of savory sandwiches and sweet tea cakes.

Our first tower of savory and sweet treats!

 

Partner and Frienship were quick to spot their favorites from this wide array.

For my “something hot,” I asked for the Fruit Mountain, a fruit blend tea concoction that is “scattered with fresh flowers” and has a “honeyed aftertaste of exotic sweetness.”  My “something savory” turned out to be the scrumptious homemade scones – warm, creamy, flaky, and crumbly – with clotted cream that would melt and slide down the glistening crust.  And to put a sweet ending to a leisurely afternoon spent with real friends and amazing conversation, I felt that the chocolate macaron was the perfect “something sweet.”

My tea is served in a lovely pristine white tea cup with a gilded handle.

 

A choice between white and brown sugar cubes to sweeten the tea.

 

I stuffed myself crazy with these amazing homemade scones!

 

Ending on a sweet note with a chocolate macaron...

The hotel staff’s service was attentive without being invasive to personal space and the many conversations that were transpiring all at the same time.  And the best part?  They meant it when they said, “please ask for your favorites to be replenished.”

It came to the point when I would perfectly understand if they would have asked me if I was eating for two.  That, or telling me that they have run out of scones while not attempting to hide the fact that they would serve the same to other customers with the typical human appetite.  Hahaha!

A place to go back to – The Courtyard at The Fullerton Hotel

 

 

Copyright © 2011 by eNTeNG  c”,)™©’s  MunchTime™©.  All rights reserved.

Something old made something new, made something borrowed by someone blue

I SAW Jessica Zafra’s “public service announcement” on her blog this morning.  Apart from getting who the letter is addressed to – the Manny V. Pangilinan – I didn’t get much.  Especially since the hyperlink at the bottom of the post routed to a long list of articles that just didn’t stand a chance against post-holiday workload.

But the evening news has clued me in.

Being someone’s speechwriter sounds cool.  Now, being a famous someone’s speechwriter…  that would be really cool.  But I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of whoever wrote MVP’s commencement exercises speech that he delivered on March 26 and 27 to the Ateneo de Manila University graduating class.  Funny that while most of his listeners are most likely to join the workforce anytime soon, whoever wrote his speech is about to lose his job.  That is, if he hasn’t already.

I’m no MVP.  But I’ve had my fair share of speeches in my life.  It’s quite a blessing that I love writing my own because frankly, I wouldn’t be able to afford the services of a speechwriter.  (And being a nobody means I have time in my hands.)  But it was a different story when you were in kindergarten and what people expected to hear from the top of the class was something cute.  Still, practice was required.

It becomes a tall order when you have to prepare your valedictory address in high school.  I remember excitedly delivering mine during the dress rehearsal, only to be told by the Assistant Principal that it wasn’t on a par with the best she had heard in decades.  I went home, turned the TV on, and flopped on to the floor and wrote another one from scratch.  I delivered it on the final rehearsal and she (the Assistant Principal) stood up and greeted me with applause.

A couple other speeches have remained imprinted on my mind.  There was this speech on youth and world peace that I delivered in the 1990 Student International Peace Festival and Asian Children’s Summit.  My eldest brother helped me put that together and it ended up well-received by an audience that had delegates from India, China, Japan, the States, and Russia.  I also sang a song in that summit and was approached later by an Austrian violinist for a possible scholarship on voice.  If you could hear me now, you would know that I turned that offer down.  Hahaha!

A surviving copy of my speech in the 1990 Asian Children's Summit. I think I was already on board the plane when I made the last minute corrections.

I scribbled my speech "guide" while I waited for my turn. This one was delivered at the Ishikawa Primary School in Japan on October 23, 1990.

A few "best speaker" buttons from Toastmasters International. I won these for speaking on topics as commonplace as "the rain."

In that same gig, I found myself the designated spokesman of our Manila delegation and I had to think and speak on my feet.  I still have pieces of paper on which I scribbled and doodled until it was my time to speak.  I would say I got trained well, enough to win best speaker in Toastmasters International chapter meets years later.  It was for impromptu speaking, one topic of which that I do remember was “the rain.”  Still much later on, I found myself in front of ECE graduating classes two years in a row, and on one time, in front of a national delegation of ECE graduating students meeting up for a convention at La Salle – Taft.

Stage fright and clammy hands notwithstanding, it feels great to speak before a graduating class.  So in spite of the unfortunate incident that was MVP’s “borrowed” speech, I hope those who went to listen to him, left inspired by his story.  Now that part was most likely not plagiarized.

Copyright © 2010 by eNTeNG  c”,)™©’s  MunchTime™©.  All rights reserved.

Two presidentiables and confusion

I CAME to work wearing this today.  I won’t charge this ensemble to nueral traffic gone haywire because I guess, I actually thought about balancing everything out.

The shirt I’m wearing is for Mr. “Sipag at Tiyaga” (industriousness and perseverance) while on my wrist are baller ID bands for Mr. “Hindi Ka Nag-Iisa” (you are not alone).  And oh, the blue is for Mr. “Padyak” (pedicab).

Gosh, I’m confused!

Sipag at Tiyaga... Hindi Ka Nag-Iisa... Padyak... all rolled into one!

 

Copyright © 2009 by eNTeNG  c”,)™©’s  MuchTime™©.  All rights reserved.