Moving to Cavite...

  The subject line had been drafted some months ago, but I never had the time to actually post about this subject. Heck I have not had the time to post anything period.

   Still none now, except to maybe post this photo of Buffy's buffalo milk and ice cream store's porch wall*.  No direct connection to the subject other than Buffy's being located in bgy. Lumil, Silang, Cavite (on the road to Tagaytay), and my childhood fascination with bamboo and interior design, added to the interest in cottage/flea market/vintage coming together in this place.

   

    Buffy's sells fresh carabao milk and really delicious carabao's milk ice cream. They also have pastillas de leche ...one of the best I have tasted. I have made my own pastillas using carabao's milk and I love my own, but I bought theirs rather than mix up a batch. Again, I have little time (or poor management of it), and if you know how to make pastillas, you know how long and how much arm muscle it takes.

     Back to the porch wall, and Buffy's interiors in general.  I especially noted today, that Buffy's Lutong Bahay Filipino restaurant on the second floor actually is able to combine style elements I have had percolating for some time. That is...  

       ...it has their basic white, white wooden tables and benches, picket fence, farmhouse, cottage, dairy look...but upstairs, bamboo-lined walls, Filipino windows, and bamboo vases on the same white wood tables and chairs.  

      The only thing I'm not sure about is the plastic greenery, flowers, and random little plastic birds lining the walls...but really, they're consistent all over, that I can overlook the fact that I prefer real leaves and flowers.
It gives the place a lot of originality anyway, and hey, less upkeep all around!
Their flourescent light bulbs are bordered by bamboo, too.

      I've always felt it seemed a quaint place to take little children for ice cream...   

      Now I see how I might be able to achieve those two design elements after all---whitewashed cottage and natural color bamboo/native materials.  It is doable.

      Their milk and ice cream are enough for a stopover or ultimate destination.  But it is nice that the owners still took care to make the place pretty too.
     
*  Those birdhouses? They are sold along the road to Tagaytay too by one seller...

Drive through Nuvali Blvd August 6

Views from Seda Hotel Nuvali

The Monochrome Events hall far right; Mt. Makiling in the background

Nuvali blvd.; Tagaytay ridge on the horizon; Nuvali's playing Fields;
construction of more commercial spaces on the right

Southern Luzon Hospital in the background; two hours later, visible flames, fire trucks, and thick smoke in the Greenfield Development area AGAIN.  As in every holiday and weekend in the summer.

Yes their windows need washing; will forgive them this at this time

Easter Sunday sunset over Solenad 2

Crown Asia's Valenza village; Cathay Land's South Forbes Chateaux de Paris village in Silang in the background

Lounging by their poolside in the morning is refreshing...cool, breezy

If only I could post photos of the hotel staff...they were all friendly, accommodating, professional... and I have to make special mention of the Night Supervisor who actually spent the next day going around checking on guests in his very perky, sincere manner.  Its people are most important...and this hotel's went about their duties in nothing less than we expected of an Ayala hotel.  Hopefully it's not just because they just opened last month. The lifeguard on duty was vigilant, looking out for the safety of guests as some dangerously traversed the higher edge of the pool, and strictly requiring the proper attire. I observed how staff treated the other guests too.  This is probably why I am forgiving this place the imperfect finishing on the interior walls...the dirty windows...

Bucal, Calamba

View from main entrance of Sol y Viento resort

IMHO only, a waste of mountain, space & spring water pool opportunity; design?! while awesome in size, position and certainly unique, the man-made waterfall is...well...too man-made for my liking I guess

Well, couldn't this town have been much more...quaint

Okay...adequate showers & they look alright imho; but do swimmers use them pre-plunge?
at least they, the guests, weren't in cotton t-shirts and shorts unlike in most resorts here

along the national highway

Oops why is this photo here...Tom Yum Goong made by Indonesian neighbor; two weeks ago, surprise Kimbap made by Korean neighbor. I don't ask! They give :-)  All masarap 

Pho Hanoi restaurant along the way to Los Banos

simple, clean, straightforward, so you know focus is on the food, which must be good; note palochina furniture of which there are many along the road. The pho and some other dishes we ordered were delicious, fresh, in a home-cooked Vietnamese way; but we were slightly put off after realizing the special Pho Hanoi did not contain the ingredients as pictured...and we were only told after we asked about it (and after we had eaten it all, in hunger) that it was all beef, and with added beef as the other ingredients were out of stock. Sadly, the cold dessert (Three Colors--bean, gelatin, with shaved ice and milk) was not available as the gelatin imported from Vietnam was out of stock. Oh prices are alright too. Reasonable.

Earth Hour

   It is this weekend.  We've participated these past four years by turning off our lights for a little longer than the hour.  Back in Makati, the whole village participated. Here, in this village, all lights remain on, there is no notice, and the Earth Hour project seems unheard of.  Lights are out in homes that are mostly empty, and it doesn't really matter to me...I admittedly haven't given much thought to why I participate, except it would not hurt anyway. It is good.  

    These were shot last December.  The last photo, with the vast Indian Ocean front and center, seems poignant now, in the light of MH 370. We may never really know what really happened...and it's one of those mysteries I need an answer for from God.  May their souls rest in peace.

Hope, Birds, and Flowers

      There is! Hope.  I open my front door to see a long-wavy-haired teenage boy turn back, stop his scooter in the middle of the road outside our fence...and look down. I thought he was going to pick up the brown object...maybe something he dropped?  But he sped one direction, and returned quickly, with another boy behind him.  They both looked down and the second boy picked up a little maya (Sparrow) bird...

      I asked..."...alive?".  Wavy-haired kid turned to me, and nodding said "it can't fly...we'll take care of it".

      He looked sincere and their discussion was serious...I trust that they were taking it home to heal it. What else?

      At this hormonal, cranky and cynical phase of my life, when I have begun to mutter "teenagers" whenever I find some irritating, I pause. No, I bonk myself on the head.  There are many good kids out there, and the world is still a good place.  Heck, they are better than you, I tell myself.   

      And no, this isn't a maya...it's a sunbird. It sang from 5-6 pm, also today, directly overhead. Watch out for the droppings, my kid warned.

    A year ago...or maybe even more than a year ago...(I really ought to resume a gardening journal), I cut a small stem off the hydrangea (milflores) pictured in the first March 2011 post.  Now, finally, blooms from that cutting.  I am pleased, because I didn't think it possible.

   I've also just learned they are pink because the soil is alkaline. Apparently they are originally blue and turn pink depending on the soil (or water?).

   We don't have Spring in the Philippines. But if we did, today would probably have been it. Just today. I bet tomorrow the hot Summer begins.

Narra Showers

Coming full circle from the first post 3 years ago...

I will never tire of these...after March 2014 showers...perfumed air yesterday

yellow carpet today

Makopa (Malabar plum?)

  ...and I find I have nothing more to say.