Flora Filipina 2012

Last week, we went to see the Flora Filipina Expo 2012, a garden and orchid show at the Quezon Memorial Circle.

It featured garden settings and floral arrangements, as well as orchids. Naturally, it's best seen than read about. Here are some of my favorites.

and here's my favorite display.

Introducing the new iPad

Apple®  introduced earlier the new iPad®, the third generation of its category defining mobile device, featuring a stunning new Retina display, Apple’s new A5X chip with quad-core graphics and a 5 megapixel iSight® camera with advanced optics for capturing amazing photos and 1080p HD video. iPad with Wi-Fi + 4G connects to fast networks worldwide, including AT&T’s and Verizon’s 4G LTE networks, and still delivers the same all-day 10 hour battery life  while remaining amazingly thin and light.

The new iPad’s Retina display delivers four times the number of pixels of iPad 2, so dense that the human eye is unable to distinguish individual pixels when held at a normal distance, making web pages, text, images and video look incredibly sharp and realistic.

from apple.com

With iOS 5.1, the latest update to the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, the new iPad has a number of new features and enhancements including: a redesigned Camera app with video stabilization technology; the ability to delete photos from Photo Stream; support for dictation in English, French, German and Japanese; and Personal Hotspot.

The new iPad also supports dictation, another amazing way to get things done just using your voice. Instead of typing, tap the microphone icon on the keyboard, then say what you want to say and the new iPad listens. Tap done, and iPad converts your words into text. You can use dictation to write messages, take notes, search the web and more.

Morrissey is coming to Manila

It may be almost three decades too late but Morrissey, former front man of my favorite band The Smiths, will have a one night concert here in Manila on May 13, 2012.  Since this is a Greatest Hits Tour, he will be doing his songs as well as from his former band.

Venue of the concert is the World Trade Center in Pasay City. Ticket prices are at PhP5,500 (VIP, reserved seats) and PhP3,500 (Titanium, free seating), and are now Ticketworld.

Jollibee's Chicken and Mushroom Pasta

I passed by a Jollibee store this afternoon and I couldn't help but notice something new on the menu: The Chicken and Mushroom Pasta.

It has chicken, mushroom and a spicy sauce topped with cheese in a platter of spaghetti.  Sounds yummy? No.

One spoonful of this new dish and I immediately noticed a peculiar taste.  Maybe it's the herbs and spices in the sauce but it didn't taste natural.  It tasted more like chicken cube or bouillon.  In fact my initial reaction was, "Hello Maggi or is that you Knorr?"  Maybe it would taste better if they put a slice of bread or a bread stick to go with it. Just to neutralize the saltiness and spice of the dish.

What saved the afternoon from becoming a total disaster was the appearance of the Jollibee mascot who greeted the people in the store and even entertained us with a dance number.  

Chowking Chef Bowl Specials

I tried the new Chowking Chef Bowl Special last weekend while on a road trip.  I ordered for the Oriental Beef variant (the other variant is Honey Garlic Chicken) which looked really good on their poster.  It was also reasonably priced at PhP79.

Unfortunately, the actual product was does not only look far from what's on the poster but was also not as tasty as I hoped it would be.

The meal, which is actually a rice topping, consisted of beef in teriyaki sauce, stir fried vegetables and two thin slices of egg in a bowl of rice.

The beef is not so tender. It has those ligaments we call litid in Filipino.  There's also very little sauce and the picture above would show that.  The vegetables were done right though as they were crisp and not over cooked.  The rice was just enough for me though the other guy in our group who ordered the same dish said that it was not enough.

Honestly, I ordered this dish to try it and see if it's going to be a favorite.  Well, it's not going to be one of my favorites.