Omnomnomnom!

Today is Brothers Burger Summer Special Day! After work, A and I trooped to the nearest Brothers Burger joint near our house to get ourselves some juicy burgers at half the price! This year, they only had their Big Brothers Burger on sale at 50% off the regular price of P175.00. Last year, the pounder went on sale as well. According to the girl at the counter, they had a lot of complaints last year due to order delays, so they decided to stick to just one variant this year. Never mind though, their burgers are just oh-so-nom!

Our helper, T, looks forward to Brothers Burger Day every year. She just loves their burgers. Two years ago, when I was pregnant with RL, Brothers had a special close to the Christmas Holidays. We got our burgers right before heading to World Trade for one of the Christmas Bazaars. T tried her best to save her burger for dinner, but she ended up eating the whole burger in the car! Nothing compared to the usual fastfood joints, she concluded. Yup, these burgers are the bomb.

Looking forward to the next Brothers Burger Day. We all know how I can only afford to have so much burgers in a year. Day 2 of killing my diet indeed. :P

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Oh, Starbucks had a special day today as well. Free brewed coffee for anyone who brings in a reusable mug from 10-11am (Save the Earth!). But with all the meetings I had today, from 7am onwards, I missed that. Oh well. Not much of a coffee drinker anyway. I go to Starbucks more for their pastries. LOL! (Just kidding! I love coffee. Dang! I missed the promo. :P)

Happy Birthday, A!

Today, my daughter A celebrates her 8th birthday! We celebrated with a cake and some Blue Bunny Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream for merienda here in the office. Her party's scheduled for May, when the baby has been cleared from Chicken Pox (I am still keeping my fingers crossed that he won't get it). Meanwhile, the small celebration at the office made her day.

It's been a fun, eight years, Sweetie! Thank you for making Momma proud. I love you with all my heart. :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Look'it!

Look at what I finally found today! After visiting the Starbucks Emerald branch for two nights in a row, to no avail, I decided to go ahead and make a morning trip to Starbucks Tomas Morato to check out the newest doughnuts in town - Starbucks' Top Pot Doughnuts! Alas, trip well worth it, because we were able to get our hands on them!

According to Starbucks Philippines' Facebook Page, Top Pot is a family owned business started by two brothers, Mark and Michael Klebeck. Starbucks hand-selected Top Pot back in 2005 to carry their doughnuts in the Starbucks pastry cases of stores throughout western Washington. Now in the Philippines, Starbucks is pleased to offer its customers a unique, old style hand-forged doughnut. Let me tell you, it is reminiscent of deep-fried doughnuts from the corner store! What's more is that it is supposed to be 0g Trans Fat!

I am in love with their Glazed Old Fashioned Doughnut (as pictured)! I am telling you, my diet just died!

Top Pot Doughnuts come in 3 variants - Glazed Old Fashioned, Chocolate Old Fashioned and Top Pot Apple Fritter. We tried both the Glazed and the Chocolate (P55 each). These doughnuts have been launched at selected Starbucks stores. Check this facebook page for details on which branches already have them.

Crazy Meralco Bill!

IT'S BEEN A CRAZY WEEK. What without a nanny to take care of the little boy! I have to take over nanny duties when I get home, not that I mind. Except that it pains me to have to leave him with my helper during the day, who isn't so keen on taking care of kids - being a kid herself. Still blessed to have a helper until end of the month though. After which, I desperately have to find househelp or else I'll have to take time off work! Nyar. And I cannot afford that.

Early this week, I came across Chuvaness' blog post on the crazy Meralco rate increase. Got me dreading my bill! True enough, when I got my bill last night, it was up by 120%!!! What the...???!!! So let's see... We were out a total of 5 days for the previous month, aircon usage has been limited to about 3x a week (normally, as a bonus to us on weekends), and an average of 5-6 hours per day only. We iron our clothes once a week; we have a spin dryer that gets used about 2x a week and it's not the heavy-duty, heater dryers that eat up electricity. I gave away my microwave. We cut off the water heaters. We have two fans. And a refrigerator. Plus we use the rice cooker once a day. And given that the month that had passed gave us rotating brownouts, why is my Meralco bill so high??? Ok, it's nothing compared to Chuvaness' bill, since mine is around P4.2K only, but hey, for a 2-BR Condo Unit with 1 adult, 2 kids, and a teen, plus the fact that we're hardly home all day... ay-yah!

My friends share the same frustrations. Today, most of their statuses on Facebook are about Meralco and the sky-high rates this month. What's pissy is that we can't even do a single thing about it! I feel like Meralco took advantage of consumers and thought the summer months would be the perfect ploy to cover up the seemingly high increase in generation charge. But hey, there are consumers who constantly estimate their bills, given that they live within a budget, how can you explain a crazy increase when it isn't commensurate to usage?

I also read Chuvaness' other post on this issue - the one where Meralco writes back and tries to explain it's way out of charging her more than double her average bill. So their generation charge went up by almost P1.00, that's approximately 15-20% their previous rate. So why, pray tell, are our bills 100-150% up from usual???

It's crazy, I tell you! CRAZZZZZYYYYYY!!!