I love Max’s Fried Chicken. I think every Filipino does. Max’s Fried Chicken is one of the country’s legacy restaurants, a food establishment that has been a part of every Filipino’s life since the end of the Second World War. If you go to a Max’s restaurant you will see their walls decorated by their old menus, prices that pique the imagination all signed by the closing salutation “forever amber”, something that I am still trying to figure out the meaning.

Through the years, people who frequent Max’s have gone their for various reasons, not necessarily just the chicken. Their kare-kare has been a staple in large gatherings, along with the boneless Bangus and Lechon Macau. Aside from a whole chicken, Max’s meals are made more complete with the Pancit Canton and Fresh Lumpia.

So if you are taking Mom out to Max’s for a special Mother’s Day lunch or dinner, Max’s has added something special for World’s Best Mom. For every 1,300 pesos bill, you get free Body Shop item that Mom can surely use to pamper herself. Don’t forget to ask for your free Body Shop item. This promo is valid from the 7th of May until the 12th so drive over to the Max’s branch nearest you and make Mom happy and proud.

So thinking about what to do for Mom on her special day? We may not have much of a premium on this supposedly American holiday of sorts, but I believe everyone is in agreement that our mothers deserve uber-special treatment at least once a year. What better to do it than on the second Sunday of May? Here are 5 top tips on where to take Mom for dinner on Mother’s Day.

Top 5 best gifts for Mother’s Day

1. Breakfast in bed. Because it is tuition fee season, May is usually the time for belt-tightening and frugality to save enough for school fees. Cook for her. Bring her breakfast in bed. You may not be the best cook in the house, but your effort will sure bring smiles, if not tears of joy. Don’t forget to clean up afterwards.

2.  Make her a gift. The best gifts are those that are made by the hand of a son or a daughter. A picture frame of the family or something sewn by hand is also a good idea. Whatever you give your Mom will always be treasured and appreciated.

3. Surprise her. Is there something that she has been nagging you about? Something that you know she has been concerned about? Do her a favor by giving her what she has been asking/wishing for. Most Moms want only the best for their children. So go ahead and clean your room, do the dishes without being asked, stay home on Mother’s day and spend it with her rather than with your friends. Give her this one day that will make her smile the most. She deserves it.

4. Flowers and candy. Unless she’s allergic, almost all women appreciate flowers and candy. If she’s diabetic like yours truly, the flowers will do nicely. Whether you picked these from the garden or bought it from a flower shop, your Mom is sure to be pleased with flowers surprising on her special day.

5. Take her out to dinner. If you are already working and earning your own money, Mom will be most pleased with a dinner that she doesn’t have to cook and clean up after. Treat her to a wonderful full-service restaurant serving only the best steaks in town. Melo’s Restaurant is one such option. You can call us ahead of time so we can prepare the food and keep it warm until you arrive.  Wagyu and foie gras are some of the most exquisite ingredients available in the Philippine restaurant industry. Treat Mom no less than a Wagyu steak dinner of Steak Ala Mom’s at Melo’s Restaurant. Mother’s Day smiles will never be the same.

 Mother’s Day comes but once a year.  Why not spend it on giving your Mom a most unforgettable dining experience? Bring her to Melo’s and show her that you love her very much.

That’s Elmo Magallona, Magnolia’s new brand ambassador. Elmo is the new face of the ice-cream loving Filipino youth. I remember how Magnolia Ice Cream had become the cornerstone of my childhood memories. Truth be told, a visit to the Magnolia House was my motivation for going to church on Sundays. Every Sunday, until I was about 10 or 11 years old, my family heard Mass at Sto. Domingo Church, in Quezon City. After Mass, we trooped to the Magnolia House, an imposing structure along Aurora Boulevard built by Philippine architectural titan Leandro Locsin. Honestly, I was kinda when the place became Nestle Cremery. Commerce changes over time, but Magnolia was never just ice cream to me. It was a part of life. With the new flavors, I’d say Magnolia has managed to creep back into my life.

Tourism secretary Jimenez has implemented a partnership with Magnolia Ice Cream in promoting the beauty of our islands by helping launch the new Best of the Philippines Ice Cream Collection. Magnolia now officially uses ingredients native to specific provinces in the Philippines, such as Guimaras mangoes, kapeng barako and tablea from Batangas, ube, macapuno and langka from Laguna. The tubwraps are especially designed to showcase the country’s best tourist places.

Huwag maging dayuhay sa sariling ice cream (don’t be a stranger to your own ice cream brand), has become the unofficial tagline for Magnolia. And it is true. Enjoying Magnolia Ice Cream will do a lot to further local tourism. I personally want to encourage you, dear reader, to buy local and return to Magnolia for your ice cream crravings. Bring back your childhood memories and make some new ones with the people you love, Happy Mother’s to you all……

Breakfast, lunch and afternoon snacks were provided along with games and wonderful prizes. Nothing seriously competitive, just serious fun.  Highlights included:

1. Games.  Shiela Munez and her team worked hard to make it all happen. The games were successful in heating up the fun and the laughter. Newbies got the chance to know the rest of the Hummingbird crowd and the oldies got to know them too.  Grand prize winning team got cash prizes and gift certificates from Sariwon Bulgogi Restaurant.
2. Singing. Arvato Hummingbirds wowed the waterpark crowd with their excellent singing voices. Glen’s renditions of “Better Days” and “Hanggang Ngayon” were moving and awesome. Enough said. He should be singing in the Christmas party.
3. Swimming. Fun, fun, fun in the sun! Amana’s famous giant wave pool was just right beside the view deck and the summer heat made it more inviting.  Employees got the chance to don their swimsuits, show off some skin and cool off in the huge waves of the pool. The park had other swimming pools and also had a zipline.

So what are we waiting for? Here are the pictures. Grab what you can. If you have any questions, leave a comment and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

When you buy or sell online, you need to remember some important tips to keep your money and merchandise safe.

Top 4 tips to remember when buying and selling online:

1. Make sure that the site has seals of approval.  It is easy to buy from just about any classified ads website but it can be quite a chore in finding the right site to buy from. As an initial layer of protection, only trust sites that have some kind of third-party seal of approval. Several online companies seek accreditation from trusted independent reviewers and display their seals prominently on the site.  Trust only the online marketplaces that have a third-party security seal for your protection. 
2. Practice courtesy. When you contact the seller, it is always best to treat the seller/buyer with some measure of courtesy. Good manners show your sincerity in seeing the transaction through. Inversely , antagonistic behavior will tend to send a different message to the other party, that maybe you intend to rip them off and run away with the product without paying. Whether you are buying or selling, put your best behavior on and maybe this will not the last transaction with the other party. You might win a friend and a possible extension to your growing network of business associates.
3. Beware the meeting place. You should never meet the other party in his/her home. Never lose sight of your security, no matter how cheap the product may have been advertised. There have been several documented incidents involving meetups from online marketplace websites that have led to robbery and assault. The best place to meet is always midway between your place and the other party’s. Meet in a public enough place where there is ample security and a good proximity to police stations.
4. Buy/sell from a respected and trusted website where the keyword optimization is excellent and where everybody else buys and sells with convenience and safety. Advertise your products at www.sulit.com.ph  I have advertised with Sulit for three times in the past and each transaction turned out to be safe and expedient. Be sure and be safe. Buy and sell online with Sulit!

The pursuit of knowledge is the primary motivation which drives us to outdo ourselves in whatever we do. However, the traditional school system in the Philippines hasn’t always been successful in cultivating this desire to learn in all students. Because of the unyielding system of grades and categorization, there is a large group of learners that have been alienated by the traditional educational school system. Many of these marginalized students hold great promise and immense talent, but are largely neglected and unrecognized. As a result, we have rebels who insist in doing things their way like salmon swimming against the current. As Eton International School’s leader Jackie Marzan-Tolentino explains both rebels and generals are leaders in their own right. Harnessing the leadership and brilliance of the rebel is not an easy task but can prove to be as rewarding as finding a gold mine in the middle of nowhere. This belief has fueled Eton’s desired to continually find innovations in bringing out the brilliance and genius in each one of their students.

Recently, Eton International School has introduced the use of 3D glasses in their math and science classes. I personally sat through a sample of their 3D science and math lessons and surprisingly, it made the Pythagoras theorem a whole lot easier to understand within the first two minutes of the lesson! These 3D animated presentations, help explain math concepts in a way that even a 10-year can comprehend. I keep telling myself that if only they had these types of lessons during my time, I would have been a faster learner and a more intelligent professional now.

Aside from advances in curriculum, Eton International School has some of the most secure learning facilities. Each classroom is monitored by closed circuit cameras to ensure that teachers and students are where they should be. No one is ever missing because the extensive security monitoring facilities will be able to account for everyone at any given time. That’s peace of mind for every parent.

Thanks to the latest 3D technology, Eton International School students will soon enjoy the best instruction and care available. Eton’s President Jackie Marzan-Tolentino is a product of Harvard University and is an educator at heart. Unlike other international schools where owners are mostly business people, Jackie looks beyond the bottomline and invests heavily on the latest technologies and continuous teacher-training strategies that will ensure the most benefit for the students.  For more information, please visit their website at  http://www.eton.edu.ph and like them in Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/etoninternationalschool .

Recently I’ve been spending a lot of time in Eastwood City. The reason? I’ve been stalking and gawking at the goodies sold at the Marketplace in Eastwood Citywalk 2. I personally dubbed it as Midnight Bancetto because they are only available from 10 pm to 12 pm the following day. They are open the whole night and close an hour or so before lunch time the next day. So why don’t they stay open the whole day? Because the organizers are not allowed to compete with the bazillion restaurants that cater to all kinds of employees the whole day. This holds true for people going to the malls. Contrary to popular belief, there aren’t that many 24-hour restaurants open in the Eastwood area, despite to supposed high number of call center employees. According to an Eastwood mall employee I asked, she said (brace yourself for the answer) that the call center crowd were not as many as we thought and that they are not that big a spender on food as they are on beer, cigarettes, load and other consumer items. Enter the marketplace.

This midnight food market caters mostly to the employees of E-Commerce Plaza building inside the Eastwood City. There are ten floors of this building that houses thousands of employees who are working hard in the wee hours of the night, while the rest of the country sleeps. I chanced many employees of the Hinduja Global Support, BPO whose business involves Customer Service and Business Process Outsourcing. Most of the ID laces I see in the area are just that and some from Yell Adworks.  BPOs mostly hire a young and dynamic workforce and, boy, they surely work up an appetite. It seems like the Marketplace is just what they need to satisfy their cravings for delicious, yet super reasonably-priced food. These kids are no fools; they make more than enough for fine dining restaurant meals, but they are very conscientious with their purse strings, which makes the Marketplace quite an attraction. See the photos below.

When you come here, I suggest you visit the following:

1. Mixed Rice. I love the Adobo Rice, but the runaway best-seller is the Seafood Rice. It has a variety of seafood, rice cakes and (hold on to your trousers) CRAB FAT or Aligue. They saute all the mixed seafood in globs of heavenly butter and stir fry mixing the rice, then lastly two large tablespoons of aligue! The smell is overpowering but the rice is very very good. There is a long queue though, but it is worth it. P75 per serving, good for one with a large appetite.

2. Buko Twirl. I almost  couldn’t get my hands on this because the lines are just impossible. There is an ungodly 40-minute wait before you can buy one. It’s coconut milkshake with a twist and it is uber-delicious.  What that twist is, no one is saying, because they are all just patiently waiting in line for their turn. I tried it and true enough, your troubles seem to go away with every sip. Not too sweet and real coconut goodness in every bottle.  500 ml @ P40, one liter @ P70

3. Isaw. Not sure of the name because I never thought I would actually like it. Their isaw (chicken intestines) sell for P20 for the medium length and P30 for the extra long stick. I fell in love at first bite. It is truly delicious. Their isaw is serious competition for Hungry Juan and even the UP Isaw stand near Kalayaan. It is the best I have ever tried and I recommend you have some. There is no long queue, just make sure you are decided before you fall in line to buy so as not to delay the other customers.

That’s it! They will be around until the end of the month I heard but they will be under a new organizer. Though some of the concessionaires say it will still be the same vendors with the addition of a few new ones. The more, the merrier I say.

The Marketplace is located at the CityWalk 2  right at the foot of E-Commerce Building across the Eastwood Richmond Hotel. Onion Bar is your best landmark. You can park at the Eastwood Citywalk Mall where parking is safe.

Jollibee’s Chicken and Mushroom Pasta is a welcome change to the usual spaghetti that we got used to. Not that it’s a bad product, but the chicken and mushroom pasta is something that diners with a more discriminating taste will surely love. It is not as sweet as the spaghetti we came to love, rather its savory taste is quite addicting. For it, this pasta dish hits the spot and is a good alternative to those expensive pasta dishes in some Italian fast food restaurants. The price is quite an attraction, as far as I’m concerned.

Good to know that Jollibee made true their word that this pasta would be available nationwide after February 9, 2012. I was in Tagbilaran City Bohol after the 9th and true enough I got the chance to dine on this lovely pasta dish when I was in a city that didn’t have much to offer in terms of good food.

This pasta dish saved my day when I decided to walk out of my hotel breakfast because of the terribly slow service. Jollibee is such a lifesaver for people who travel to the farthest corners of the country. Because it is as ubiquitous as dust, Jollibee has become very successful in serving clean and affordable meals to all types of diners. My cousin who used to be assigned to different provinces would swear that Jollibee was always his destination for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I follow his example because it is perilous to dine in places unfamiliar to you, especially in places where hygiene is questionable. Food poisoning can be deadly when you are in a place where medical care is wanting. Thus, the safest thing to do is to dine at Jollibee, where the standards of food preparation involves adherence to high standards of cleanliness and hygiene.

With their variety of menu items, you will not get sick of dining at Jollibee continuously for at least two months, in my experience.

(This post is not paid.  I decided to write about this because it got me thinking. This post contains purely my ideas and personal convictions.)

I was browsing the Internet just now and I was mulling over the idea of buying a tablet for myself. It seems like a cool gadget to have and, indeed, there are applications of the tablet that may seem frivolous on the surface but can actually lower cost in the long run and improve overall customer service. So I was surfing and I decided to Google the title of this post. I found out that there are some restaurants in the UAE, Canada and some parts of the United States already adopting the iPad as a viewer for their menu items.

Thinking about this further, I realized that this is not such a bad idea. Restaurants using tablets for their menus can show really good pictures of their food, enticing the customer to order. Because these tablets are interactive, they can do their ordering right there on the tablet. With Wi-fi, their order goes directly to the kitchen staff without saying that they ordered wrong. Tablets can even go as far as entertaining the diners with games, news and other things accessible from the Internet. Hell, they can even send and receive emails.

Schools are beginning to use tablets to replace their books, Vibal Publishing has gone into the e-book age. La Salle Greenhills is one of the pioneers of the use of tablets to replace those huge and heavy bags that kids lug around to school. Other schools are expected to follow suit.

I’ve seen restaurants worry about the timeliness of their menus. Sometimes an incident would push them to do promotions and the ability to change the menu at the click of a mouse can do just that. They can show ads from other establishments, making money on the side. Imagine, advertising in a restaurant’s menu tablet, where you have the diner’s complete attention for a few precious minutes. That could be good enough for a sale. In fine dining restaurants, an advertiser can make more targeted ads, especially if the restaurant is frequented by politicians, business tycoons and movie stars.

The cost of these tablets, of course, are prohibitive as of now. This is the cheapest tablet I found.

Even at such prices, tablets can be quite an investment. They get lost, damaged or toyed with by customers who can’t control their kids. However, assuming that tablets cost the same as a regular color-printed menu, it would be a wonderful advantage to have a tablet for a menu. Significant savings can come from not having to do reprints of the menu because of new items or logo changes.  A restaurant doesn’t even need a high-powered tablet. It just needs a tablet with 8Gb or less memory, a good piece of software that they can use to integrate the tablet into their systems, Wi-fi and other things that most restaurants already have.  At current prices, tablets wouldn’t be a bad investment at all. Personally, I don’t think they need to buy iPads for their purposes. The Android tablet is just as good and powerful enough. Android can do what IOS can. While the iPad is a trailblazer in this technology, their prices are prohibitive and will not be feasible in the Philippines. If there is a restaurant that starts using the iPad, expect me to stay away because I’m sure the prices of their food will just be as prohibitive. That would work against the restaurant. However, a cheaper Android version will do quite nicely for this purpose. I can only imagine the business to be made when restaurants start using tablets.

Imagine sitting in a restaurant, flipping through the menu, which is in a tablet, ordering from there by ticking some check boxes and knowing how much you will pay for the whole meal. With a tablet menu, diners can probably even pay for their meals right there. They wouldn’t need waiters, just people who bring the food to the diners. Now that I’m thinking about it, I realize the tablet can be a game changer in the restaurant industry. They can hire less people in areas that can be automated and put in more people in areas that need them the most, like the kitchen, inventory and maintenance.  Restaurants will then start having an IT department.  The possibilities are just endless when you think about it.

How about you, what do you think?

That’s me smiling after deplaning from my Cebu Pacific flight, which turned out to be quite a joy with hardly any turbulence at all. Tagbilaran is the capital city of the province of Bohol, Central Visayas region. It is also a port city rich in history and has managed to make a name for itself by virtue of the local tourism. Bohol is also known for its beaches and diving sanctuaries, so well that foreigners from the farthest of lands come here to dive and explore the place corals below.

It is also a city of rich history and Spanish colonial legacies. Most of the people here are Catholic. The many churches make it all unmistakeably Catholic as the earliest recorded governments were controlled largely by the Spanish clergy. Prior to the Spanish, there are very few records kept intact.

Loboc was one of the towns I visited in my very short stay. It was a wonderful visit. Here are some tips for those who plan to go to Loboc:

Top 4 tips to remember when going to Loboc, Bohol

1. You don’t need to rent a van. If you are the adventurous type, it is best to take the jeep. Go to the Island City Mall or ICM as they say. Public transportation is very convenient and the open air is cleaner than in Manila. For as little as P30 you will be able to see the country side and mingle with the locals.

2. You can choose which floating restaurant to go to.  However, if you rented a van, you will need to protest to make sure you can choose. Lucky for me, I took the jeep and had the luxury of choosing which floating restaurant to get on. Buffet lunch is P300 and entrance to the river is p100. Don’t fret about the entrance fee. You will see that they use the money where they should. The bathrooms are very clean and fully-airconditioned.

3. Tips are not mandatory but it doesn’t hurt to give a little. When you take the river cruise, the boat will stop at stations that have performers. They are mostly just barangay residents who rehearsed well enough to perform and give you a wonderful time. I enjoyed watching these performers and I gave a little for their effort.

4. Don’t forget to visit the Loboc Church. Originally, this is the oldest church in the island of Bohol, possibly the oldest church there is, if it were not only burned down some decades before the Baclayon Church, which happens to be officially the oldest church in the island.  Loboc Church is the home of the world-famous Loboc Children’s Choir. A visit to the Loboc river will reveal to you how the locals love music.

Stay at the Metrocentre Hotel. I am not recommending this hotel because it is the best I’ve ever stayed at. I’m recommending it because it is the best choice in Tagbilaran. I’m guessing this hotel is the only one with all the standard hotel amenities and services including free roundtrip airport transfers. Their rooms have in-room safes and there’s Wi-fi in most Superior Rooms with a good view of Carlos P. Garcia street. However, this hotel is good is you are staying at Tagbilaran City. I hear Alona Beach is worth visiting. Maybe I will, soon.