Ziggurat!

We are very pleased about Ziggurat being here.  Well, not exactly in Sta. Rosa, but at the border--in Silang.

It occupies a corner of the ground floor of Stanford Suites in Bgy. Inchican. Right across the St. Scholastica's College, and St. Benedict's Church.

I don't know how Ziggurat is related to the Destination Hotel (a few roomswithin the building), but they gave us discount vouchers for the rooms after we paid for our meal. Oh, the building is a condo-tel. 
http://www.southforbes.com/house-lot-laguna-cavite-philippines-stanford-suites/
I am not connected in any way to the owners or staff of this restaurant.  We simply just enjoyed it in our previous city, and now here it is in our next one.

We are very, very pleased...

...having lived in close proximity to the main Ziggurat in Makati prior to here.  We didn't know we had missed it.

OKAY BEFORE I CONTINUE...LET ME SAY WE ARE LOVING PERI-PERI CHICKEN IN SOLENAD NUVALI. APPARENTLY SO DO MANY PEOPLE, AS THAT PLACE IS ALWAYS FULL! 

ZIGGURAT IS A JUST LOCATED IN  NICE QUIET CORNER NEAR THE CHURCH WITH CUISINE WE ALSO SAVOR.

I will leave a few not-so-great photos...but the menu, the extensive menu of North African, Middle Eastern, African, Meditteranean Indian dishes....I will leave for you to peruse in detail when you visit.  Extensive as the menu list is, not all the dishes are available at any one time because of ingredients on stock.  I am happy as long as there is lamb!
(and hey, prices are reasonable)

couscous!

https://www.facebook.com/Ziggurat-Cuisine-Restaurant-125013094177654/

Lent

Candles at St. John Bosco Parish, Santa Rosa

     One of my rituals, not only during Lent, is to stop by the Perpetual Help Candle Sanctuary at the St. John Bosco Parish Church in bgy. Don Jose.

     If I am lucky and the candle drawers are newly replenished, I go for all the colors available, regardless of their symbolism. There is a poster enumerating the colors and what they symbolise.  Red is for birthdays, anniversaries, and white for general intentions.  I do not memorize what the other colors represent, as I light any or all available.  I do know that the one most often out of stock or low in supply, is the one for finances.

     Now that's not really a surprise, is it.

     You can opt to donate cash in the adjoining box, and I do have an amount set per candle.  From 1996 to 2007 I used to stop by to light candles at the St. Andrew parish in Bel-air, Makati, and pray to Our Lady of Czestochowa. Now, it is here, and not regularly.  Lighting a candle and praying while gazing at its flame is meditative and brings me instant peace.

     While being in the parish after the morning mass and when the place is empty makes me wary these days...(the new fences and gates have enhanced my insecurity), I find it is still quite neighborly and comforting enough to see the parishioners leaving or hanging around chatting.   
     
     Options for Bisita Iglesia in the vicinity are St. John Bosco in Bgy. Don Jose, and in through the Inchican Road (which intersects Laguna Blvd), is St. Benedict in Ayala Westgrove.  I do not think the Oratory at Xavier School Nuvali nor the Chapel inside Montecito will be open to the public for this activity.  Farther toward the Santa Rosa SLEX toll, past Greenfield is the Laguna Bel-air chapel.  Another route is to go up towards Tagaytay, where starting in Lumil, Silang is the San Antonio de Padua church, relatively new, but already having seen many weddings.  Indeed it was built for those, in my opinion.  Angel Fields' Holy Family Pavilion is not a church, but the place is a retreat place, with cottages to rent.

    And then of course, up toward Tagaytay for the rest of the churches.

Laguna Very Gingerly

Okay I'm a hypocrite. Ranting about the new malls in town...yet seeing two movies since their Cinema opened a month ago, and enjoying the fact that they are new and nearby.

At the second movie today,  something happened to me.  I felt what seemed like a tiny bug crawling on my leg.  What happened was, it reminded me of where I was.  Happy to be in a cozy new cinema with only about 15 other people in the audience, five minutes away from home.  Then wham! my chest suddenly went heavy remembering what stood there BEFORE the mall was built.

Just five years ago these were fields of cogon...where we watched shrikes perched on thin branches.  Further into Nuvali, fields where in March kites were flown.  Actually, there were kites being flown yesterday, and I'm not sure if it was an event open to the public, but it was certainly not in the same scale as the kite-flying events of five years ago.

There were many children in the malls' play areas, the parking lots immediately filled by dusk.  So many people. Just mid-week there were press releases by the POPCOM (Population Commission) about...overcrowding in Metro Manila and the move toward Calabarzon.  Here we are.

I still find it a bit ironic...to have to have fitness gyms and equipment in a place where people (used to, some still do) enjoyed walking, running and biking outdoors.  I remember thinking about a correlation between the existence of malls, and obesity---because a lot of the people I first met here were fit and enjoyed the outdoors versus in the more urban areas where, really...fat people were in the indoor malls.

I know...I'm not making that much sense again, with disconnected statements.  I am just ranting again, and calling myself...a hypocrite about this.

Things are just not the same anymore. And you know what? Everybody is coughing, right? Suddenly, kids whose asthma allergies have not occurred since two years ago, are suddenly sick again.  And I have a theory.

CONSTRUCTION DUST.

Well, I will end with this shot, not a particularly great shot...taken at a cafe on the ridge.  Where I stared, very cold due to cold winds even at 11 a.m. The Taal lake was visible but not in this photo. A waiter came and said "Ma'am, nakakamangha diba", referring to the view... I asked if he probably was not from the area...and he said he was from there,  from Cavite.  It was nice that this waiter, with artista looks, admired the view as much as most of the customers...and paused to stare himself.  Then he said..."Ganito yan ma'am...'pag heartbroken ka, sigaw ka lang dyan..."

Well, I guess I AM heartbroken...torn...appreciate the paved paradise, do I?  I seem to have no choice.

PAF rescue chopper

0800H  today, at the Nuvali field. For Solenad's Emergency Drill.

     The Philippine Air Force (PAF) helicopter passed low over our home at around 7 and upon hearing it, my child asked "..airplane?".   Which reminds me how different her childhood is from mine.  At least where identifying aircraft is concerned.  

    You see, I grew up and spent around a quarter of a century, the growing up years of my life, living in military bases...the air force ones in particular.  A huge asthma trigger for me was the smell of airplane fuel,  I knew the dawn was coming when the commercial airlines' engines would warm up, or being tested, at the hangar nearby. And with my father having been a pilot, I did hope to learn to fly too.

   And here, in Sta. Rosa, save for the occasional private helicopters heading South usually over Tagaytay, and the airlines soaring very high above, my child does not hear aircraft.

   Which is probably a good thing, as the noise and air pollution must have done a number on my brain.

  

    Still...this sight is something I do miss. I could not help but take photos.  Ayala Mall Solenad cinema is in the background, on the right.  The white structure on the left is the new S&R.

Now Brewing in Laguna

I now appreciate the fascination for craft beer.  Friends have started brewing these in the neighborhood  (their capacity and the facility is large, to my mind, I hesitate to call it "home brewing").

They had us sample them, and I enjoyed the first one I tasted. (We happened to have spicy chicken wings along with the surprise bottles. Good timing!)

Tuff Tuko with every sip somehow brought me back to Baguio...Baguio just last January.  I couldn't put my finger on it, but there was certainly something "woody" about it. 

Then my friend sent me this flyer, and I also then read the label..."pine hops"...no wonder...!

So what do I appreciate about their beers? Fresh tasting, just the bitterness of beer but no bitter aftertaste.  I've had pilsner in Prague and aside from Baguio memories...this reminded me of the Czech republic. Really.

Merry Christmas friends and family...these are coming your way when I see you!

S&R Nuvali

Sorry I have not taken a photo just yet.  S&R opened last November 14, and it was an insane weekend on the road to it.  Luckily, I was not one of those stuck in the jams on either days.

I heard...residents from the Westgrove side of town (who take the Nuvali blvd, which should go through the intersection to Solenad), were stuck for around 45 minutes just on that road, and so decided to turn back, and head for the S&R in Alabang instead.

I happened to be at Shopwise, where I overheard a cashier muttering that the reason their store was empty was that everyone was at S & R.

Nuvali via Silangan Exit

    Past the now famous Eton/Asia Brewery toll exit, shortly after the Cabuyao exit, is "Silangan".  To get to Nuvali from here, you will have to enter the Carmelray Industrial Park or Carmeltown.  That road is a wide avenue bordered by many big old trees.  Beautiful trees.

   In the middle of nowhere, surrounded by cogon,  surprise! A branch of San Sebastian College stands, its architecture gothic to mimic the original basilica in Manila.  Wow, San Sebastian here, who knew?

     Then you arrive in Nuvali, and if you have one of the appropriate car stickers, you take either the left or right side of the road. The right turn leads you alongside Avida Settings, and directly across Treveia and Xavier school.  The left one leads to this mass housing development, Avida Parkway I believe, or another Avida.  It is also next to the Venare development, which, if I remember right, is an "Alveo" development.  

    Heck, Nuvali's just too big and has too many villages within it, too many names keep cropping up!

     I can rant and rave about the loss of grassland (sugarland) "till the cows come home" (sorry!had to!), but there's no stopping "development", is there.

       Will they really still have a "home" in a few years...

     My seven year old asked..."are they free-range cows!"  I don't know if she realized how loaded this question actually was...because really, their "range" was just the other side of the road, where many houses stand.

     After the Republic Wake Park, straight on leads to Miriam College, while to the right is the main Nuvali blvd. Montecito is on the left, and straight on to the end is the Sta. Rosa-Tagaytay road.  And, sigh, the Ayala Mall.

     Ah...Canlubang.  So different now.

   *If you do not go through Carmeltown (and pass its Morningfields village, The Mills Country Club, you will go through busy streets through which there is Ceres village, a PNP camp, a Puregold, Jollibee...  and end up at the Canlubang rotunda, the one between two gates of Nuvali...on the pot-holed street where Camella Homes Dos Rios, and Wyeth, Universal Robina, are located.  This rotunda is NOT really under Nuvali's jurisdiction, but there is cooperation in securing it.

     I proved this once when I saw two men with what looked like homemade cannons climbing into the grassy hill along the rotunda.  I told the gate guard who said they will send the roving team, and they did.  

      The other street leads to the Canlubang Golf and Country Club, AND a route, albeit rough, up to Tagaytay, where the People's Park/Palace in the Sky and Tagaytay Highlands are.  Along the way is also an old Marcos mansion...it still stands, in ruins.  There is also a "Japanese tunnel", which I think I mentioned some years ago...and which was a destination among students looking for thrills (I believe there is a pool of water they swim in?
I would not feel too safe going through this road in the evenings though. It's quite isolated.