Sunny skies are gone, and rain is upon us again. Today I experienced what torrential downpour is like in Subic. And as I've been told, this is just the beginning of the rainy season.
I decided to face my fears and return to the breakfast place where the waiter had asked for my number. Luckily this time, he wasn't there. I went for a traditional American breakfast this time. Pancakes and bacon. Oh and the mango was extra...extra delicious that is! Since when did people start dipping their bacon in ketchup?
For lunch, I went out to eat with Mike and Dustin at Gerry's Grill in Subic. Of course on our way to lunch, it started to rain. And puddles, large large puddles of dirty water, started forming in the streets, sidewalks and of course, in the entry way to the restaurant. Bad day to wear white khakis and flats Sophia. I had to roll up my pants so high, I wouldn't even consider them flooding anymore, but more like capris.
The restaurant supposedly had AMAZING scallops and pretty decent food in general. So again, we ordered a bunch of items family-style. We were soon disappointed though since there were no scallops available today, as well as other items we wanted to order. Apparently this is a common theme in Subic, to have a ton of items on your menu, but only a handful actually in stock! As we were waiting for our food to come, the torrential downpour came and didn't stop. I saw more rain in this one hour than California's seen all year! Luckily it dried up a bit as we were leaving since our food took so long to come out...
Since nothing exciting happened at work today, I'll fast forward to dinner since everyone love's hearing about food. We all met up again for dinner at a sushi place Mike had eaten at before called Sakura, which he claims is the best in town. Ok, so we walk in and it does seem pretty authentic Japanese, of course, with Filipino servers again. Mike also mentioned that this place had decent uni and the fact that he had never tried uni before and thought it was good probably meant that it was a safe bet. So I had been looking forward to this uni all day and with the price that it was going for ($2.5/piece) I was in heaven. So when it came to my turn to order, I was ready to have some unfiltered sake, uni, hamachi, special roll and some miso soup. The FIRST thing the lady tells me is that there's NO uni and NO hamachi. WHAT?!? No uni?!? I knew all that hype was for nothing. Again, common theme at these restaurants...I almost lost my appetite due to the huge disappointment. And then to make matters worse, I asked what kind of filtered sake did they have. Of course since I don't know my Sake labels well enough and have no internet or wifi to Google it, I couldn't make an informed decision, but neither could the waitress. What a surprise. So I took a chance and chose a random one, which of course, was not unfiltered. But I drank it anyways as usual. My order turned out to be miso soup, sweet potato tempura, 2 pieces of salmon nigiri, and an alaskan roll (mango and salmon but not sure why it's called alaskan). I was thinking I would choose a bunch of side dishes. But when my first dish came out, which was the sweet potato tempura, it was massive! 12 pieces!?!? This can feed an entire family alone...and I had 3 more to go. Once again, we ALL over ordered since it was so cheap and didn't realize the portions here are much bigger than the Japanese restaurants back home. I blame it on the expats who were out here before. They turned everything into ginormous American portions. In any case, my meal still came out to only $25 including tip and the sake! Can't beat that! And I would say the quality was better than at Chef Samurai where I ate on day 2.
After dinner we headed to Paddy's Irish Cafe where I went the first night I was here for trivia night. Since it was Dustin's last week in Subic (and I was taking over for him), he was hosting the trivia night and was responsible for coming up with the questions. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners would each win a different bottle of some cheap alcohol that I couldn't care less about. There we saw the same locals I had met on day 1 as well as a bunch of more expats from the US, Australia, and the UK. There were some guys there from the Navy, some who were working on a Yacht, and then the ABS/SSL folks. The 3 categories from easiest to hardest (though in my opinion this wasn't the case) were sports, the Philippines and sex. And yes, sex HAD to be a category because Simona, the owner of the bar, demanded this be a category. How fitting. Welcome to Subic! If you answered 3 questions correctly in a row, you would get a shot of some cheap tequilla. Each category had a total of 6 questions. I was able to answer 3/6 in each category, but of course, had to cheat off of my Filipino colleague for the questions regarding the Philippines. Through trivia night, I was able to meet a few new people and hopefully have made friends who I'll get to hang out with again soon.
Oh, and I learned something new today at trivia. Arnel Pineda, the current lead singer of Journey, is from Olongapo. I remember hearing that he was discovered on YouTube or something and the first thought that crossed my mind was, how the heck was he able to upload videos to YouTube on this ridiculously slow internet connection?!? I guess for that he deserves to be the singer of Journey.
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