Another Thai Food Trip

Day 111
19 January 2012

A call from one of my friends at 4-ish in the morning (call extended until 5:30am) made me catch up on sleep and unfortunately, it was already near 7am when I woke up (thanks to Mr. Pipoy's call - or else I might wake up later than that time). I wasn't able to walk that morning, but I did do my Hip Hop Abs routines, just to make the day count.


I left the house around 4pm to attend an event at the TriNoma Mall. Traffic was very light, and some 45 minutes after, I was already at the mall. Since the event was at 6pm, I took the time to roam around to make up for the lost time that I didn't walk this morning. Although I walked at a very leisurely pace, walking around not only helped me do something for my fitness, I also saw some cool shoes on sale. I plan to buy a pair of sandals I can use for events, but at the moment I sort of feel buying a new pair of running shoes as the pair I am using now is showing signs of wear and tear.

Near the cinema of the mall is an open garden, and since the it wasn't really dark yet, I checked the place for some photography subjects. The faux waterfalls (not that big - more of a flow of water that looked like waterfalls) caught my interest, and it sort of reminded me of the photography video Mr. Pipoy let me watch the second time we met. I forgot what the aperture should be, but I remember keeping the shutter speed at 1/4. I tried using this concept at Wawa Dam, but it was so bright that day - putting my shutter speed at 1/4 sort of gave me an all-white image. The sun already set the time I took the picture above, gave me the kind of waterfall effect I was looking for - though I know I need to improve on it; zooming my camera at 12x with a shutter speed of 1/4, I really need to have sturdy arms and hands or a tripod. Hmmm... maybe I should attempt this when I travel to Hinulugang Taktak (Antipolo) or at any of the waterfalls in San Gabriel, La Union in the future.


photo by Rain de Ocampo
Yesterday, I was at the Silk Thai Cuisine. Today, I went to Mango Tree Bistro - also a Thai restaurant. It was for a "mystery event," which was by GlaxoSmithKline. It was the most unusual event I attended and sharing the story to my sister made us both laugh about it. Anyway, it sure was attended by a lot of bloggers around the Metro - some I already met before, others I consider good friends / pals, some I recognize because of their blog, some are friends at Facebook though I haven't met them yet. They served quite a lot of dishes, but I did share the dishes to other bloggers at the table. What we ate for dinner:

• Tom Yum Goong - I scooped out 1 shrimp, 1 of that unusual fruit (which at first I thought was mushroom) and some broth. I didn't finish the broth, I just ate the shrimp and that other ingredient.
• Thod Mun Goong - Ate one piece of the shrimp cake, with minimal sauce.
• Yum Som O Goong - This wasn't served at our table, one person at the other table just passed it to us when he noticed we didn't have it (hence the not-so-good plate). I only gave it a taste - just a chunk of pomelo with some grated carrots.
• Pad Thai - After mixing all the ingredients on the plate, I rotated the serving fork thrice, and I ate whatever amount of noodles was on the serving fork.
• Lemongrass Tea - Drank half of it.
• Gai Tha Krai Yang - Each lemongrass skewer had 3 pieces of chicken and I ate just one piece of the chicken.
• Talay Prik Thai Dum - Plate contained three kinds of seafood; I ate one piece of fish, squid, and shrimp.
• Gaeng Kiew Wan Nua - I took one paper thin cut of beef, one piece of eggplant and about half a tablespoon sauce.
• Dessert (Name I forgot to jot down) - Slurped two dessert spoonful of the iced water mix, 3 chunks of water chestnuts, and itty bitty piece of jackfruit.

I think even if I am on a food trip, I still kept my diet intact - I just treated it like sampling some food. I also ate 1/3 cup of rice for some of the dishes.
Other food I ate:

• 8:13 am - 1/2 cup garlic rice; 3 pieces fried dried fish; 1 cup Nescafe brown n' creamy coffee
• 1:45 pm - 2 tablespoons rice; 1 tablespoon Beef Picadillo (ground beef, diced potatoes, diced carrots, minced bellpepper, tomato sauce)

Total Cups of Water - 10 at home; 3 tall glasses of water at the event
I got home around 10:30pm. It was a fun-filled day, but here are some of the things that brought me joy:

• Fun phone call with Mr. Pipoy - sharing laughs about old songs (para-pap-para... a-rico mambo).
• Fitting into my mom's Chinese-inspired blouse.
• Saying hello to Teacher Julie, she hugged me tight and exclaimed, "Oh my gosh, you lost a lot of weight!"
• Middle of the event, I got up to take pictures of the event's hosts and bumping into Alex (another bloggy friend), he told me, "You lost weight!" I answered, "Just a little," and he said, "What little? You lost a lot!"
• Receiving a box of Tikoy and some GSK dermatology products.
• Getting home safe.