Archive for May, 2005

bottomless drinks

Wednesday, May 11th, 2005

Bottomless drinks have been introduced in just about every restaurant nowadays.  And for the thirst-quenching individual who may find one 12oz. or medium drink "bitin", this is great !

Iced tea is my favorite followed by Lemonade and then any other juice (I stay away from softdrinks when ordering bottomless).  A favorite as well but only offered at the Filipino restaurant Sentro in Greenbelt is the bottomless sago.

There have been some observations though I noticed with various restaurants when it comes to serving bottomless drinks:

1.  They fill up your glass even if it’s half-full.  So you don’t have an exact count of how many glasses you’ve actually consumed.  (I like to count them to bring about a sense of satisfaction for my money’s worth.)

2.  Some restaurants have a code or scheme for determining if the customer ordered a bottomless drink or not.  For Pizza Hut, they use a bigger glass for bottomless drinkers.  For Max’s restaurant, they give you a white flexible straw as opposed to a regular stiff red straw… oooohh ergonomic !  For Burger King, the cup will actually say "single serve" or not.  For TGIF and Don Henricos, I think they’ve almost eliminated single serve drinks in their menu cause it’s just about the same price as bottomless drinks, so no need to distinguish who ordered what.

3.  For some strange reason, if they feel you are a big gulper (translation: you can have your glass refilled in a minute after refill), they stop offering you for a refill after the 3rd or 4th one.  I have a feeling they are instructed to refill up to 3 times or else you’ll be getting more than what you paid for.  If you insist on getting refills, they won’t be giving you any more ice.  So you’ll be getting iced tea that’s not really that cold (ironic since that’s why they call it ICED TEA!).   

4.  You can’t go into a restaurant and just order bottomless drinks.  Now this is an unwritten rule.  You won’t find it in the menu but they’ll tell you that you need to order food.   Now that’s unfair.  It’s not like you won’t be paying for the bottomless drinks.  And there are those people like me who are happy with just drinking bottomless iced tea without eating anything.  So bummer… I did discover a place where you can order bottomless drinks without any need to order food: Nacho Fast.  Praise you !  Another tip:  for an limited time only, Karate Kid Japanese restaurant is serving bottomless Hawaian punch (or at least it’s very close to the actual Hawaian Punch taste) for P20. Wow !

5.  If you hang around the restaurant long after you’ve finished your meal just for the bottomless iced tea and try summoning a waiter for another refill, they suddenly seem all busy and far from your table. 

My personal records are 4 full tall glasses at Friday’s (if you know how big their glasses are, you’ll be impressed) and 6 small glasses at Max’s restaurant (and 2 trips to the restroom).

Oh and for those coffee lovers there is a coffee shop at Marikina Riverbanks that serves bottomless coffee for P40 !   Now that’s a good marketing strategy for them.  I doubt anyone going beyond the 3rd refill without getting a caffeine overdose.  I think anyone who can do 5 will be wide awake for the next 2 days.

Cheers to that. Bottoms up !

McDonalds is off the foodchain

Wednesday, May 11th, 2005

I must say that I haven’t eaten in McDonalds for over 3 months now.  I think I got grossed out by watching the infamous and revealing Supersize Me exposing what their fastfood may do to your precious body.  I know that you can’t make any exact conclusions from their experiment and it was conducted in a US-based setting. 

I can’t help though but scare the living hell out of myself enough to accept that I don’t want to include McDonalds as part of my foodchain.  Thus, I’m cutting it cold.  I guess the only thing I may even consider buying from McDonalds is an apple pie but even that is depressing knowing what their apple pies used to look like and taste 10 years ago.

So goodbye McDonalds. 

Now Wendy’s, that a different story. :)

succumbed by sushi

Wednesday, May 11th, 2005

I’ve attended 2 events last week where different kinds of maki was served.  I dunno why but over the weekend I voluntarily ordered 4 pcs. of california maki.  It’s not like I didn’t have a choice.  Uhoh, could this be an acquired taste or could I be getting used to eating sushi from events that I was subconsciously looking for it ?

And guess what ? Earlier this week, I passed by the supermarket 30 minutes before closing.  I was there to pick up some batteries for my radio and some drinks.  Suddenly the voice over in the supermarket announced "Greetings our dear shoppers, we are pleased to announce that all our items in the sushi section are now 50% off. Please visit our sushi section.  Thank you."

Hmmmm…. 50% off ? And I was hungry that time.  Oh well, the hell with being overexposed to sushi, this is 50% off !  To good a deal to pass by. 

So basically it seems I’ve been succumbed by the wonderful world of sushi. 

backlog updates

Monday, May 2nd, 2005

I can’t believe that my webcontent is overflowing now, both online and offline.  It’s getting a big harder to manage.  Years ago, all my website files used to fit in 1 CD and had much much space left for more.

Now it seems I need to backup my website files onto 4 CDs on a weekly basis.  Files are getting bigger.  Uhoh…  I really hope I’ll be able to make all these website updates.  Ang daming pending ko pa ! So so much to do and so less of me to do that so much to do.  heheheh ! You got that ?

Gary V. & South Border Classics

Monday, May 2nd, 2005

Lately, I’ve been buying copies of Gary V.’s albums released in the ’80’s and ’90’s when I was a kid (yes, kid!).  I used to have these albums "Moving Thoughts", "Faces of Love" on cassette and I loved playing them.  Now I have them on CD. Yehey !

I also love South Border’s previous song releases and I brought back my South Border The Live Album back to my major rotation cd stack (just a stack beside my computer).

I guess listening to the current hits over and over again made me look for my old stash of classics. :)