I've never been a fan of shabu-shabu (Japanese-styled hot pot), mainly because it sounds like too much work and I'm hopelessly lazy. But I also like free food, so I attended last Tuesday's Shabu Shabu 101 session at Healthy Shabu Shabu, Shangri-la Plaza Mall.

The concept of shabu-shabu doesn't seem that complicated. Sit down in front of a small stove....

Order some foodstuff....

And dump them all in the boiling water....

Yay! Oh wait. Apparently, that's the wrong way to do it.

The owner of the restaurant patiently explained how to do it right, but unfortunately, the sound system they used for the event was too echo-y. All we could hear was something like, "blah blah blah-ah-ah... blah blah shabu-shabu-bu-bu...."

So instead of straining my ears to listen to the instructions, I went with a different strategy: I acted all confused and slightly retarded until the nice waitress came over and did it for me. Yay! (If playing the helpless retard card isn't your style, you can download the step-by-step instructions.)

Overall, my shabu-shabu experience was surprisingly pleasant. I particularly enjoyed the thinly sliced beef and lamb--they tasted amazing after getting dunked in boiling water for a few seconds. Also, I didn't knock over the hot pot or get any third-degree burns, and that's a win in my book.

Healthy Shabu Shabu generously gave us some gift certificates for future visits. Unfortunately, the ones I got are good only for the Alabang Town Center branch, which is far far away from where I live. So if you're an Alabanger and you have GCs for other branches, please contact me for a swap.

Healthy Shabu Shabu is a fun, safe, healthy and interactive way of dining that utilizes state-of-the-art dining facilities and equipment. Healthy Shabu Shabu has branches at Powerplant Mall, The Podium, SM Mall of Asia, Robinsons Galleria, SM North The Block, Alabang Town Center, Robinsons Midtown and Shangri La Plaza Mall. For inquiries please call 627-3721 or 672-3290.

According to a friend's friend, all you have to do is print and present this coupon and you get a regular-sized tea latte free! And he insist that this is not a joke.

Now, while I'm not one to shy away from freebies, I think this one sounds suspicious. It looks like some Catch Me If You Can wannabe's work. Of course, sillier things have turned out to be true, so I've decided to put up a dare to any enterprising spirits out there.

The terms are simple. All you have to do is print the coupon out and present it at any Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf branch.

Possible outcome #1: You actually get a free tea latte. Congratulations! You get a free tea latte. That's your prize.

Possible outcome #2: It's a hoax, and you end up making an ass of yourself. Congratulations! You get a free tea latte. I'll actually buy you one. How to claim your prize? Just email a photo of your attempt to philos [at] chickenmafia [dot] com on or before July 31, 2008. Include the barista in the picture and also tell us the branch so we can confirm that it really did happen.

UPDATE! It's true!

Chinese restavrants have the strangest condiments.

I had been excited about Diamond Hotel's Cake Club event pretty much since the moment I got the invitation. Why? Because I like cake. Duh. I mean, who doesn't like cake?

The last words of Marie Antoinette

So how did last Friday's big Cake Club event at Rockwell go? Um, I don't know. I missed it. Yeah, I suck.

The event started at 7 PM, but Lizz and I got there at a bit past 8:30, just when everyone was about ready to pack up and go home. How did that happen? Well, it's a long story that involves confusing streets, art, and veggie meat--I'll tell you all about it some other time. ArsenaL, who is usually quite punctual, was also late. I'm not sure what his excuse was.

Fortunately, the nice people there were kind enough to feed us anyway. And, to my surprise, the "Dessert Buffet" was still overflowing with all kinds of cakes and pastries even after an army of bloggers had already rampaged through it. Yay, cake!

I asked ArsenaL about his Cake Club experience, and this is what he had to say:

The cakes looked pretty, like the ones you see on the Lifestyle Channel. I'm not a food connoisseur, so I don't have hifalutin words in my arsenal to aptly describe the deliciousness of the cakes. I'll just say that they were yummy, and I sure would like to visit the Cake Club again.

It was a wondrous affair. I was eating cake in the middle of the posh mall and discussing art with fellow guests. With my Lacoste shirt on, I felt like I was in England relaxing in the clubhouse after playing a round of croquet. I was tempted to carry a British accent to top off the experience.

My word, I bloody should have done so. Two lumps on my iced tea please.

Um, okay. By the way, ArsenaL's little sister was the emcee of the event, and he didn't even know until he saw her there. What a useless big brother.

Because I totally missed the part where they told everyone what the Cake Club is all about, I can't really tell you much except that they have delicious cake. Good thing they gave me a neat little press kit. Go check out the attached document if you're interested. You can also email indulgence [at] diamondhotel [dot] com if you want more information.

Now please excuse me while I go take a closer look at the box of cake they gave me. Hmm, I think I see chocolate in there. Score!

Okay, not really.

I've been planning to write a serious essay about the rice crisis for the Philippines Issues Writing Project, but I'm procrastinating as usual. So for now, I'll show you this and call it a blog entry.

Save rice. Eat spaghetti.

That's nonsense of course. But I guess it's a fairly clever ad. And because I worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster, The Old Spaghetti House is one of my favorite restaurants--they have all the right stuff to make my tummy happy and turn my poop black.

Oh no, I'm getting hungry now.

Last Wednesday, over a hundred hungry bloggers invaded TriNoma (Hate that name. Why is the N capitalized and the M not? Drives me nuts.) for a food tour organized by Yehey. Since free food was involved, of course I showed up.

We were divided into groups and herded like sheep along rows of restaurants. I normally don't like to be a sheep, but they were feeding me all kinds of food, so... baaah. I didn't take enough pictures or remember enough details to give you a useful recap, so I won't. Other bloggers have said enough about it anyway. Yay for laziness.

Check out this sad scene from Bubba Gump....

We did get to sample some of their other food items, but that photo op table was pure mental torture. It should be illegal to make people look at food that they can't eat! The Bubba Gump people were very nice though, so I forgive them.

Niceness is important. Three years ago, I invested a large chunk of my savings in a restaurant/bar. It has been a very bumpy ride, but the experience has taught me a lot about business. One of the lessons I learned is that customer service is king, and I got reminded of it again here. Many of the bloggers raved about Bubba Gump and La Maison's friendly staff. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Cabalen got negative publicity thanks to its rude and grumpy manager. Ouch. Someone needs to be fired.

What else do I have to say about the food tour? Oh yeah, I won a box of Krispy Kreme donuts in a raffle. Yay! Ate three that night and couldn't sleep until 7 AM... longest sugar high ever. I spent most of the tour with some kids from UP: Hello Kitty girl Tiffy, her sister Thea, two-time Palanca Award winner Hannah (Yes, two Palancas... and she's only 16! I told her to quit school), hungry guy Don, and Hello Kitty guy Bong. I also got to chat briefly with Jeff and Lalon and said hi to Shari, Benj, and Karlo.

Whoa, so many links. Might as well squeeze in one more huh. This is unrelated to the food tour, but... has anyone noticed anything different about our little shoutbox over there? Anyone? Paolo Mendoza paid to have it upgraded. Now it has all kinds of awesome features that I don't know about. Yay! Thanks, Paolo. You can have Jessica Alba when the Chicken Mafia takes over the world.

For the rest of you, Jessica Biel is still up for grabs, so... give us money now! Free food works too.

In one of her blog entries, 宝茹 mentioned lucid dreaming. A lucid dream is a dream in which you're aware that you're dreaming. It's something that I've desperately wanted to experience for a long time now.

Some people use lucid dreaming as a tool for overcoming nightmares. Others see it as a way to explore fantasies. I'm interested in neither. For me, it's really a matter of life and death. Let me explain....

Earlier today, I was having lunch in a nice Japanese restaurant. The buffet table was loaded with all kinds of sushi. Yay! I love sushi. I was going back and forth, piling food on my plate and quickly wolfing them down. Fun! But after five rounds or so, I realized that I was still hungry. What the hell? So I kept eating, but all the nice-looking food somehow felt empty to me.

Finally, I woke up. What a horrible dream! It was 2 PM, and I had missed both breakfast and lunch! Crap. I did have my alarm clocks (yes, two of them) set to 11 AM. Unfortunately, I have the wonderful ability to shut off alarms without waking up. Yeah, I know. Worstest superhero power ever.

And things seem to be getting worse. For the last few weeks, I've been regularly having these realistic dreams about all sorts of food, causing me to miss quite a few meals. I think it's a dirty trick that my lazy subconscious mind is using to keep me asleep for as long as possible. One of these days, I would probably starve to death in my sleep. And that would be so sad, right?

That's why I need to learn lucid dreaming quick. It's important for me to know if the food I'm eating is real or imaginary, because dream food doesn't have much nutritional value you know. Like I said, it's a matter of life and death.

I'm usually a joyful chicken, but I do like to rant once in a while. You know, just spreading a little negative energy here and there. I think it's healthy. At least it is for me. Living things around me tend to wither and die when I get angry. Yay.

Going into random rant mode now... grrr....

>:(   >:(   >:(   >:(   >:(

What the fuck? That makes no sense. If I really can't read, I wouldn't have a fucking clue that I'm supposed to click there, would I?

>:(   >:(   >:(   >:(   >:(

If you're gonna make me wait 7 minutes for it, don't you dare call it fast-food. 7 fucking minutes! You know what I can accomplish in 7 minutes? That's enough time for me to prepare 3 1/2 cups of 2-minute instant noodles! 3 1/2 fucking cups! OK, maybe just 3 cups. Being the klutz that I am, I would most likely spill the third one and would have to start over. But you get the point.

>:(   >:(   >:(   >:(   >:(

What the fuck? Why are there tiny seeds in my seedless grapes? Yeah, yeah, I know. The English language is retarded. How can "flammable" and "inflammable" mean the same thing while "seedless" and "less seeds" have different meanings, right? But hey, if you're going to put an English label on something, better make sure that you understand what it means. "Seedless" means no fucking seeds, not just less seeds, damn it! Comprehende? Good. Now you know exactly what I mean when I call you "useless."

>:(   >:(   >:(   >:(   >:(

Oh wow, I think I feel much better now. Yay! I should do random rants more often.

:-)

I woke up late this morning too lazy to go out and eat. When I opened my cupboard, this is the only food I had left:

Hmm... Buddha Jump Over the Wall?

Buddha Jumps Over The Wall is an expensive Chinese stew containing meats and other stuff so delicious that even Buddha would jump over the wall to steal a taste. Buddha was of course a vegetarian.

I bought this canned Buddha Jump Over The Wall (the Chinese aren't particularly good at subject-verb agreement) around 8 months ago curious to find out what it tastes like. It didn't matter to me that this is a vegetarian version as I had been addicted to some really good veggie meat at one point in my past. I have seen the dish on a couple of restaurant menus (meni?) and was unfortunately too much of a cheapskate to try one. An order of the real thing could set you back around $40. This canned one costs around $1.

As I was heating it up, I realized something. If this is a vegetarian version, shouldn't they have called it Buddha Stayed Within The Walls? Talk about irony. I was even thinking how dumb the manufacturers were to miss that.

But after tasting it, I saw the logic behind the name. Buddha sure would need to jump over the wall to escape eating this one! Yuck.