Food Trip: Kiseki Restaurant

Being a food aficionado, buffets have always twisted my belly in delight. Hail to the glory of heavenly smorgasbord filled with varieties of meat, vegetables, appetizers, seafood, and drinks guaranteed for a great taste until the last bite! So when my mom told us she reserved a family dinner at Kiseki Restaurant over the weekend, there was hysteria in the air especially for the fact I would be able to enter the gates of food heaven once again. Last Sunday, April 28, my family and I headed to Orchard Road to breathe the lusciousness of this delicious abode. 

In its official website, Kiseki is described as “the MEGA Japanese Buffet at Mini Prices” and “the uber-buffet of Japanese cuisine”. Since dinner was served at 6 o'clock on the dot, guests had to wait patiently before their tables were served. Surely it was worth the wait as my family and I were able to secure comfortable seats near the window.

Boy, the buffet gave me a paunchier figure when I walked out of the restaurant because of the sumptuous treats it served! The choices were endless: corn tortillas, ebi tempura (my favorite Japanese food), salmon of all sorts,, California maki, yakisoba, crayfish, pizza (no pun intended), potato salad, crisscut fries, salmon fried rice, and a whole lot more. Desserts can’t get any better than hearing and seeing them in the flesh: gelato, marshmallows in chocolate, teeny weeny macaroons, and sprinkles. I have to admit it was in the family dinner when I first found out how macaroons and gelato taste like. Prior to that, I was feeling OP for being one of the few people on Tumblr (and practically on Earth) who have never eaten macaroons or gelato in her entire life. Luckily, Kiseki’s buffet was there to provide me the goods I’ve been bargaining since forever.

In my opinion, Kiseki Restaurant is highly recommendable due to the impeccable taste and feel-good ambience of the restaurant overall. The staff there is also very approachable; I will always remember this old man whose smile is always plastered on his face even though he’s already stressed out from his work. If you’re looking for a buffet offering Japanese and Western cuisine other than Makati Shangri-La’s Circles, then Kiseki is the one! I wish they’d open a branch of this in Manila in the near future. 

Snapshots from the trip at Kiseki:

Welcome to Kiseki! 

A few of the buffet’s finest treats

Tiny cutie macaroons in red, lime green, and orange! I tried the orange one and it was sweet! <3 

Oreo cheesecake + waffles + orange macaroon = God-sent dessert for the whole of humanity! Willy Wonka would probably love that, eh? 

Cookies and cream gelato = INSTANT LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT. 

For more information, visit Kiseki Restaurant’s official website here. 

Sweetest of them All

Started from the bottom, now we’re here.

TERM GPA: 3.500

Words are not enough to express how happy I’ve been since Monday night. You’ve heard it right: I made the first honors dean’s list for the second time in six terms! 

Cue in the celebration!

Many reasons can suffice why I can say this one’s got to be the most rewarding among all the times I’ve been in the dean’s list. To begin with, expectations weren’t so high for me since I only had 12 units and it was also perpetually my last chance to successfully shift to a degree program. Second, my subjects were challenging most especially STATLIT and PHILOPE. I was supposed to take up SPANTWO but I was shifting out so I dropped the idea. Lastly, it was my chance to step up and prove naysayers I can strike on my own. 

In the middle of the term around February, my chances of making into the DL were very slim due to the staggering difficulty of my classes. One afternoon over lunch while stressed out with all the readings assigned to our class due two days later, I confessed to my friend how lucky she was for she got the “chill” professors which could possibly guarantee her being a dean’s lister by term’s end. My remark made her raise eyebrows signaling disagreement towards. Immediately she responded, “You can do it! Come on, you survived Velasco in INTFILO, why not PHILOPE?” Truth to be told, initially I was horrified with PHILOPE when I heard comments on my prof about how she gives low grades despite doing exceptionally well in her subject. Nonetheless, I was able to maintain my academic standing with the help of my peers and professors. The same went for PHILOPE as I was able to reap good fruit from the subject in contrast to those comments I’ve heard several weeks prior.

The bottomline is, an achievement is worth celebrating when you know it was not given to you by the delivery express. Basically speaking, an award is earned not given. A sad reality coming from this is there are people who seek  shortcuts only to be able to bargain the praise of others. Who would you rather be: a student who gets into the honor roll because her professors gave away high marks notwithstanding their mediocre learning experience, or a student who does not have the most stellar marks yet immerses those lessons in everyday life? 

In line with my words, this is a living proof that nothing is impossible. Never ever rely on first impressions. Looking terrific on paper pales in comparison to showing the world how passionate you are with something. All those sleepless nights, little to no social networking involvement, once a week blogging in Tumblr, and hours of counting sheep - everything was worth it. Cheers. Bad times aside, I would love to repeat this school year over and over again. I am so looking forward to my junior year. 

Best School Year Ever?

They say that sophomore year would be a total slump, but for me it was…at first. Ten months of triumph, heartbreak, strength, laughter, and sweat all rolled into a ride of the lifetime. What turned out to be a prospective year for my majors became what became a year of rediscovery. A lot of “what if’s” surrounded the decisions I made, but in the end I didn’t have any reluctance for any of them.  

Ten months, three terms, hundreds of people came to my life. This is AY 2012-2013.

After much consideration including a chat with dad, I deleted the most recent post about my exasperations. Thank you dad for making me reflect on my mistake this whole time. Next time I will be much more careful with what I write for the public audience.

There you go, goodbye angsty blog entries. You shall not return ever again.

Braceface No More

After two years of painful mouth sores, constant worrying about eating sugary treats and toothbrush woes, I can now call myself a proud graduate from being Little Miss Metallica with power chains and colorful elastics included in the mix. To be straightforward, my braces are finally off!

Here’s a cast of my teeth pre-braces: 

This is how it looked like when I first wore them. Once I got off the chair after the application of my dental braces, it hurt so much like hell I could not bite a single piece of fish crackers.

I had my braces in February 2011, a month before my high school graduation. Can you believe it? While many of my batchmates had their braces removed, mine was just at the start of the crazy journey. So the following week after the procedure, everyone in class was shocked to hear me lisping because I wore both braces and a bite block to fix my crossbite. Ask me about how it felt: terrible to the max. Terrible to the point I had to remove my bite block in front of my friends during break times and endure the Mighty Bond-like taste without failing to mention repeating my answer twice during recitation. 

My FB profile picture circa October 2010, three months before my teeth’s extreme makeover.

One of the very first photos of me with my little metal friends. Every time I look at the two photos above, three words cross my mind: 

EWWWWWWW JUST JEJE. 

But my self-portraits with my braces made me feel prettier at times. Like this:

Or this:

And this:

Are you ready to see the before and after photos? Wait for it…

As a result, I am now more confident about my appearance than ever before. Isn’t it great to smile with straight teeth? :)

My aunt’s reaction: “Naku, magkaka-boyfriend ka na nyan kasi wala ka nang bakal sa ngipin!" 

My reaction: