I’ve heard one of these before. I just didn’t think it’s already available in the market.
Just recently, I came to purchase a product called Fresh Malunggay Juice. I bought it out of curiosity since malunggay, though a very popular vegetable in the Philippines, isn’t commonly processed for beverage manufacturing.
If you get to visit the City of Naga in Cebu province, don’t you dare leave without tasting the city’s most celebrated foodstuff: siomai.
Siomai is actually the localized version of a Chinese food known in Japan as shūmai. The city of Naga, on the other hand, is not the first place to promote siomai on a large scale. Tisa, a village in Cebu City wherein a famous siomai entrepreneur once lived, was considered as the place where the siomai craze initially kicked off.
To indulge yourself in this meaty dumpling, just go to the Naga’s seaside plaza and look for stores offering it. Two of the most renowned siomai stores there are JB Siomai and Flor’s Siomai which, are adjacently situated just at the entrance of the plaza.
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Date Taken: October 23, 2011
Location: JB Siomai, town plaza of the City of Naga, Philippines
Siomai with Hot Sauce
Siomai is best dipped in its special hot sauce. The hot sauce is made of certain spices, which I’m still about to find out (LOL!). This is then mixed with soy sauce and calamansi extract to further enhance the flavor.
The seawall at the town plaza of Naga (not to be mistaken with Naga City in Camarines Sur) is perhaps the most familiar feature of the city. Fronting Cebu Strait, the place is mistakenly called the “baywalk”, probably due to its resemblance with the more famous Manila Baywalk in Luzon.
The seawall is popular among locals who seek some time to unwind in an inexpensive way. Most of the visitors come during late afternoon when the sun is at its low. After each mass at the nearby Saint Francis of Assisi Church, mass goers also flock the place usually after a hearty meal featuring Naga’s popular food: siomai.
Above all, the seawall is a chief nighttime destination for families, friends, lovers and the lonely. :D
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Date Taken: October 23, 2011
Location: Seawall at the town plaza of the City of Naga, Philippines
Seaside Scene
This is how the walled seaside of Naga looks like during nighttime. Aside from the beautiful by-the-sea scenery of moored ships and streetlights of adjacent towns, colorful lamp posts along the seawall are also fun to watch.
Found at the southern tip of Negros Island, Dumaguete City serves as the provincial capital of Negros Oriental as well as one of the chief port cities in the Visayas, being linked by sea routes to nearby provinces like Cebu, Bohol, Siquijor and Zamboanga del Norte.
Last week, I went there, but not according to plan. I was actually going to Siquijor from Cebu City, but the fast craft that I was supposed to ride in cancelled its trip due to heavy waves. And with that, there I found myself in Dumaguete, taking the only chance I had to reach my destination.
Unfortunately, the last boat bound for Siquijor that day had already departed by the time I arrived in Dumaguete. And so, I had no choice but to stop off and spend the night in the city, and wait for tomorrow for the next earliest trip.
Though it was evening when I came, I somehow managed to find time to roam around the city and look at some interesting sights. The first that I checked out was the city’s wall-protected seaside.
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Date Taken: February 9, 2011
Location: Seaside of Dumaguete City, Philippines
The Moon, the Sea and the Seaport
It was a moonlit night then, and this was the scene from the sea wall near Dumaguete’s main seaport. The weather slowly shifted from fair to so-so as dark clouds started to drift by and waves forcefully hit the embankment.
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Date Taken: October 23, 2011
Location: Carcar Rotunda, Carcar City, Philippines
This rotunda (rotonda) found in the city of Carcar is a famous landmark which serves as the gateway between Metro Cebu and southern Cebu province, and a symbol of the city known for its rich cultural heritage, native delicacies and shoe industry.
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Date Taken: December 30, 2011
Location: In front of Gaisano Grand Panabo, Panabo City, Philippines
Though identified as a city since 2001, there are still things in Panabo that remain unchanged which make people reminisce at how the place used to be—a humble municipality of Davao province. One of them is the huge number of public utility pedicabs and trisikads that still rule the streets of the city, serving as a major means of transportation.
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Date Taken: October 22, 2011
Location: San Fernando Central Elementary School, San Fernando, Cebu, Philippines
My present employer, Taiheiyo Cement Philippines, Inc. usually holds a series of medical missions every year as part of its Social Development and Management Program (SDMP). In collaboration with its raw materials supplier, Solid Earth Development Corporation, these activities are strategically carried out to any of the barangays being identified to experience impacts of our plant’s operations.
In 2011, four medical missions were conducted and one of these took place in Barangay North Poblacion, San Fernando, Cebu. With the active participation of the barangay council, barangay health workers (BHWs) and volunteers, the event was positively received by the residents.
And with my Sony NEX-C3 camera, which was new and just about to be used for the first time at that time, here are some of the catchy pics I had taken.
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Date Taken: October 22, 2011
Location: San Fernando Central Elementary School, San Fernando, Cebu, Philippines
Blood Pressure Check
There’s definitely no medical mission in history in which, the checking of vital signs was excluded. One of the significant points of this checkup is the use of sphygmomanometer and stethoscope to check the patient’s blood pressure (BP). The woman who does it in the picture is actually my officemate, and you have to know she is not a nurse but rather a hardworking employee of our purchasing department. Competitive!
I think a lot of my friends have been waiting for this since I started generating buzz as early as 3rd quarter of 2011. Well…feels right now. Ha!
Being Lady Gaga’s most successful track, and a song covered by a lot of artists and artist wannabes, not to mention the inspiration it has brought to listeners esp. the LGBT community, “Born This Way” really deserves to be in the spotlight for quite a time upon its release. And the moment it went #1 in almost all charts and achieved uber-popularity, I was like, “this has to have a Cebuano version”. Then, the translation process went right away, which didn’t take so long.
