Comfort food

Just popping in to post a very contradictory entry to the previous one.

WEDNESDAY: The aftermath of pizza, isaw, fishballs, and chicken balls

THURSDAY: Round two of everything we had the other day...

...and siomai with chili garlic (no chili for me though!)...

...and more isaw!

FRIDAY: Yellow Cab day! Charlie Chan pasta...

...potato wedges...

...and an 18-inch Four Seasons pizza!

It was 'comfort food' in all sense of the term. :)


Trivia: I didn't get to eat street food until I was in high school! I know there are food stalls in mall food courts selling fishballs, kwek-kwek, etc. but nothing beats the 'street flavor' that makes it sooobraanng sarap!




<3

In which you can say superficial

Let me start off this post by saying I never had weight issues. I was never one of those girls who wanted to have a stick-thin body. I can read through pages and pages of  fashion magazines and not feel a tinge of envy. I guess I just knew that that kind of body was reserved for the high-fashion world and well, I live in the real world. 

I love to eat. There was an episode in my childhood that I rejected all sorts of food. No, I wasn't dieting. I just didn't want to eat. Period. I was rockin' anorexia before it was cool. KIDDING. Needless to say, I got over it and now I can't seem to stop eating. How can a person resist food!?

This 'love' for eating started in college, back when I thought my weight was invincible because I could virtually eat anything and not gain weight. 

2007 - our block's pizza party at the house of one of our professors

That was a year before graduation. Not-so-muffin-top, check. Collar bone visible, check. Back then, my mom would cast long looks at me and ask me if I've been eating because I look too thin in my uniform. One of my professors would even say 'Melai, kumain ka nga!' 

2009 - at Baang Coffee

2010 - at Kopi Roti

I started working just two months after college. Mom cast this 'forecast' that I would eventually gain some weight once I start working - she said every fresh college grad in her first job did. And damn, I did! I wasn't stressed at all in my first job. I had all the time to eat (there you go), I practically sat all day (except for the times I had to go to the canteen to - yes - eat), and the office was so near our house I was brought to and fetched from work everyday. Plus it didn't help that food would land in the Editorial department at any given time. One day there's cake, the next there's a bilao of pancit. 

I did try to diet though. I ate oatmeal for breakfast and dinner, and just had half rice for lunch. I also stopped drinking soda. But when I started to see that the diet was taking effect, I let it all go and went back to eating rice. I haven't been on a diet again since.

2011 - fresh seafood lunch after island hopping

Then Boracay happened. I wasn't going to fool myself into crash-dieting for three months! Thus, the result. 

2012 - after C2 Cuisine's menu launch

Oversized tops and shape wears are my new best friends. But it can only conceal too much. There's still a big difference if at the end of the day you look the same as you do in your photos.

One of my friends has this habit of pinching my arms whenever we pass by each other. The day he called me 'chubby' (I don't hate you for it!) was the day I kind of thought to myself this 'I-love-to-eat-I-don't-care' is getting out of hand. The real wake up call was when my legs began to lock whenever I walk from our office to where I ride the jeepney to Cubao. It's relatively short distance, but I always have this mini heart attack when they lock in the middle of walking. And yesterday at Mass, again my legs felt like they were about to give way - just for standing up for about 10 minutes!

I guess that was my body's cry for help already. Three signs I know I shouldn't be ignoring. This week, I promised myself I'd start running. Then maybe more physical workouts at home since I can't (READ: expensive) go to the gym. Then hopefully, diet.

Too bad I live quite far from my friends who run or want to run, I'm sure it would be more fun if there was a bunch of us. Maybe on one weekend we can plan something. 

I posted this here just so I have a reminder of why I want and have to do this. To remind myself that it's not just for vanity's sake (don't get me started on Lissa Kahayon's abs...) but also because I can do something before things get out of hand. 

I'm still thinking whether I should post a sort of progress report. Is that a good idea?

**FUN FACT: Incidentally, there was food involved in all photos posted here. I only realized it when I was going through the entry already. Added captions! Lol

<3

May the odds be ever in your favor

You'd think Suzanne Collins had an idea of how things are run in Philippine showbiz when she wrote the Hunger Games. Power trips, glamour, scripted stunts, love teams and rumors  - you don't need to look too far to say how you can relate. 

The Hunger Games as a trilogy already has a solid storyline - it all boils down now to how to take that to film.

Over all, I liked the movie adaptation. I was expecting more bloodbath but what the heck - I looked around the movie house and there were kids! But judging from the people's gasps on the Cornucopia scene and when they saw how young were the Tributes that died, I think the movie has made its point. 

I just feel bad though how the friendship between Peeta and Katniss, and Gale and Katniss wasn't strongly established. Even for me who's read the books, I still felt clueless as to why Katniss looked at Peeta in a certain way when he was called during the Reaping. The flashbacks only helped a little. I wish it showed more of why Gale was her best friend - the things they did together, how he watched out for her; the struggle Katniss had to go through selling the game she caught in her hunting trips. I think those parts were important because that's when you'd get to know who and from where are the three main characters coming from. 

Another part that lacked emphasis was Cinna talking Katniss and Peeta through their costumes for the Tribute parade and why they needed to be stone-faced and fierce, compared to the other Tributes who were smiling and waving at the audience. Cinna was my favorite character in all three books. He knows and sees all through the bull that the Capitol pulls, but he still does his job and encourages Katniss.

I had a totally different vision of him and Haymitch in the book, but the actors (Lenny-freakin'-Kravitz!) who played their characters did justice to their parts. Jennifer Lawrence was also perfect as Katniss. And I am torn between Liam Hemsworth's fool-proof hotness and Josh Hutcherson's arresting boyish charms. If Katniss was in some chic flick movie I'm sure she'd have a hard time choosing between them. Lol.

I remember reading through Rue's part for three times - each with more tears than the first. So I guess it's a given that I was trying to pull myself together during the scene that led up to her death. I was most looking forward to that moment and the movie did not disappoint.

I think the movie was OK as a movie, but my suggestion? Read the books too not because it's better, but because you'd get the storyline more since it's not condensed. I understand the time limitations so maybe that's why not everything's explained or given emphasis. 

The Hunger Games is more than a sci-fi flick that showcases violence and tolerates murder. It makes you think how we act as normal human beings. Everyday is a dog-eat-dog world, and unintentionally and not literally, we're killing someone with our actions just to survive for another day. We become someone we're not because a situation forces us to. 

Are we going to be like Cato, who only knows how to kill because he thinks that's what's he's born to do; or Cinna or Peeta, who refuses to be a piece of the game? Do we resist the system or go with it?

<3