Oh, SCUBA… How I Adore You

Hey guys,

Right now I’m in a resort in Anilao, Batangas, Philippines waiting for breakfast to be served. I have a cup of coffee on my right and am typing this on my netbook right now.

The view at this time is pretty amazing. It’s 7am and the water looks pretty calm and the sky is pretty blue and the cloud are flying by. We have another dive trip soon, and will be making a total of 2 today at different sites.

SCUBA diving is pretty fun and yesterday I completed 2 regular dives and a night dive! It was pretty cool, but also pretty crazy since there were 10-20 divers at a time… got kicked in the face a lot actually… haha…

Anyway, my friends are starting to show up at the breakfast table and I just wanted to update you all on what I’ve been up to lately. I will update this post with pictures later once I get them.

Hope you’ve all had an amazing weekend!

If you had a few days to relax, what would YOU do?

The Joy of Becoming 25

This past Saturday, November 20th, was my birthday. My 25th birthday to be exact.

I didn’t mention this fact in previous posts because I initially did not really want to make my birthday a big deal. The fact of turning a quarter of a century did not seem like a big milestone to me… in fact, I kind of was embarrassed since I was getting so old.

But I realized that it was still something to celebrate and that getting another year older wasn’t something to be totally sad about. Getting older just means becoming more mature and also getting to experience new things. Just like what happened during my birthday.

I was assigned veterinary junior clinics the day of my birthday. So I had clinic duty between 8am and 5pm that day. I was a little scared to start duty again since we had a large break between duties at Diliman and I was worried that I had forgot something, but it was great. We had a new supervising doctor there, Dr. Oronan which added to my worries a bit. But work turned out great! The pace of the clients coming in was steady enough so that I always had a case to take care of but also not too many clients at a time that I felt overwhelmed. I also did a lot of x-rays which was great. I saw the x-ray technician do pregnancy diagnoses, help take shots of heavily broken bones and also see quite a bit of collapsed tracheas. And Dr. Oronan happened to be a really great, understanding doctor. And it happened to be his birthday that day too! We got along really well.

After work, it was off to the Fort where I offered some of my friends dinner to celebrate my birthday. We went to Texas Roadhouse Grill for some steak and fried food (which I had been missing for awhile) and celebrated with my friends James, Kamille, Juca and Chat.

When dinner was over, James and I said good-bye to the girls and went off to celebrate in a slightly more mature way for my 25th birthday at some bars and clubs. From the Fort, we traveled to Fiamma and then Icon, both in Makati City to have a couple of drinks and celebrate with my friends Isabelle, Omar, Charlotte and many others. Here are some pictures from the party.

The next day, I had lunch with James, headed to M Cafe (the Ayala Museum Cafe) for coffee and drinks and then headed to Alabang. I arrived back here to Los Banos later Sunday night.

An overall tiring, but totally enjoyable experience, my 25th birthday was definitely memorable. I just wish I could’ve had my family, friends and girlfriend here personally to celebrate with me.

But thanks to everyone who wished me a Happy Birthday. I really had a fun time.

What’s the most fun thing you’ve done on your birthday? Let me know… I’d love to hear about it!

Mediterranean Salad Courtesy of Lynn

Hey guys!

I’ve gotta lot of work to do, but I wanted to share a recipe that I found from Lynn over at the Actor’s Diet. Check out the blog when you have a chance! In the last few days she posted about a wonderfully simple but really delicious Mediterranean salad, and so yesterday I decided to try it out.

You can read the blog about her making this salad here, but I wanted to show you my version of the recipe that she posted.

According to Lynn, her recipe includes the following:

Lynn’s Mediterranean Salad
Heirloom cherry tomatoes
Persian cucumbers
Zest/juice of another big lemon
2 tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO)
A handful of chopped fresh Italian parsley
1/4 tsp. salt and pepper
Cut up a bag of Misto alla Griglia and added (with all their oils) to the mix

Basically grilled eggplant and zucchini in a special marinade, only available in the US.

I went to the local supermarket here in Los Banos (Robinson’s) to try and see if they had any of the ingredients. They had most of what I was looking for except for the specific Heirloom tomatoes or Persian cucumbers. However, I found out that just the regular small native tomatoes and cucumbers sufficed. I of course couldn’t find the Misto alla Griglia that Lynn used in her recipe since that’s only sold in the US, so of course I decided to see what I could do with 2 extra large eggplant. (Surprisingly, there was no zucchini to be found in the store which was sorely disappointing).

Since I didn’t have any of the already prepared eggplant and zucchini I decided to grill and marinade the veggies myself. Since I only had eggplant that’s all I used. And it turned out like this!

Lynn's Mediterranean salad, my way.

After mixing together all the ingredients I had a zesty, refreshing and totally scrumptious salad. Best part was, that it was all totally healthy and it tasted great! Here’s what I used to make the marinated grilled eggplant my way.

Marinated Eggplant
2 extra long eggplant, cut lengthwise and then cut up into 2 inch pieces
6 tbsp. of EVOO
3 tbsp. of Balsamic Vinegar
1/2 tsp. each of finely minced oregano, thyme and basil
1/2 tsp. of salt and pepper
Mix them all together and grill for 8-10 minutes a piece, while turning.

Some marinated eggplant is the best part of this dish.

And there you have it… a perfectly simple, easy, but delicious and refreshing salad. Lynn sure knows what she’s doing when it comes to food! Now I’ve just gotta figure out how to get some avocados so I can try out her ultra simple guacamole recipe at some point…