New Found Favorite!

We have a new found favorite restaurant/date place here in the island! Woot woot!

Presenting: Hotel Nikko Guam’s Toh Lee restaurant. It’s located at the 16th floor of the hotel. For $15.00 you can go for a buffet lunch of Chinese cuisine. It’s located at the corner of the famous Tumon Bay area, providing you with a magnificent view of the ocean and the hotel strip.

I got to know this restaurant last week, thanks to a lunch treat c/o work. They used to go there because they love the view and of course the food. I couldn’t agree more. So while devouring the good food there last week, I told my husband I definitely need to bring him there for a lunch date soon.

Today is the day. Veteran’s day. Quite fitting to go to somewhere special today.

I am very glad my husband loved everything. From the noodles, down to the Buchi. Though the menu they offer is not as many and as ‘grand-looking’ as most of the buffet lunches that the hotels have in the island; that didn’t matter. Every dish you see there in Toh Lee is satisfyingly delicious. The restaurant doesn’t have a fixed buffet menu; they change it every week, which makes it more interesting. Makes you want to go there again and again. Haha!

Here are photos I took using my husband's cellphone. We'll definitely bring our Nikons the next time.

Now we know where to bring our friends, and our families when they come to visit. :)

[Photos hyperlinked from sources]

Updates Updates Updates

1. Wedding

Been busy planning our church wedding, we went to visit the PI for a week last September, but it was nothing like a vacation. Our schedule was so packed, there wasn’t much time to relax nor spend quality time with our families. We’ll be back there for more than 3 weeks next time. AM SO EXCITED!!! This is the best picture I got from my visit there. How I miss my niece. :(

2. Regarding my previous post (Uod):

Well my calamansi plant has probably been able to produce at least 4 butterflies already. For some reason, the plant became a caterpillar haven. Probably since they don’t have predators flying by in this side of the building.

Then there were around 4 storm warnings during the past weeks. None of the storms actually hit the island, but there was this tropical depression that caused all our things from the balcony go topsy turvy. Our lounge chairs were down; my plants fell and it’s pots are 2 meters away from it, the soil still intact. Hehe. Even the huge calamansi pot fell and got off-potted. Thus, no caterpillars on the plant now, the plant itself is still recuperating from the recent abuse it got from these freakin’ harsh winds.

3. Work

So I’ve been in my work for 4 months now. I have to say I am still adjusting and have got a lot of things to learn about the technical stuff. As all other jobs, there are days when you want to give yourself a pat on a back at the end of the day; and there are moments when you leave office wanting to hit yourself (or some colleague).

4. Air Show

Unlike in the mainland, the US Air Force Air Show doesn’t happen here every year. In fact, there’s no regular schedule. Luckily, they planned one for this year. It was supposed to happen 30 Sept, but due to typhoon alerts, it was cancelled. They moved it to 07 Oct but shortened the show to a half day.

I have been planning to watch the air show for months. Couldn’t miss it for anything. Then October 7 came, I was all set, I already got permissions from the bosses that I can leave around 3:00 PM, right in time for the Thunderbirds Demo. Then at 2:50 PM, the phone rang and I received a message that meant we got a lot of major issues at work. Can’t leave. Can’t go. Can’t watch the air show. :’(

My husband was able to watch the Thunderbirds and here are the shots he did. I did the post-processing but I tell you, my heart was sinking the whole time I was editing these photos. I should have been there. Yes, I cried like a little child.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Uod

A few days ago, I was doing my daily routine of checking up on my plants. I have a few potted flowering plants, chili plants, and a calamansi plant which is becoming really big. I usually check if their leaves look “happy” and if the flowering plants still continue to have buds on them.

Then I saw this:

Was it looking into the camera? Yikes.

Full "body" shot.

I know caterpillars love calamansi leaves. That’s where I got my skin rashes when I was a kid.”Nahigad ka,” said the elders and they washed my arm with vinegar. Mahapdi yun, but I guess it worked.

I don’t even know how it got there. We live on the 18^th floor. Maybe a bird put it there? A butterfly flew 18 floors up and left it there? I can’t even focus right when I was taking pictures of it this morning. I feel an unexplained fear and disgust especially when I am trying to take a macro shot. Ewww.

So far it ate around four leaves of my plant. It’s either I’d ask my husband to take it out, bring the caterpillar to the ground floor, and transfer it to another shrub in the complex or…

I wait for it to undergo metamorphosis and become a butterfly. That’s probably interesting to take photos of too. I wonder when that will happen.

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It must be a childhood thing because all of us siblings (at least all of us sisters, not sure if my brother would agree too) are not very fond of these creatures. My mother had anturium plants back in the 80s and she would tell us to help tend to the plants. And every time, we would see those huge white worms with huge brown/black eyes in those anturium leaves. Not to mention a really big glossy, colored, animal book we had when we were kids, it had a spread page of one macro front shot of the same green caterpillar. We used to make use of that page to tease my big sister, she’d cry whenever she sees it.

Right now my parents live in a house with a bigger garden space. She is gifted with a green thumb that she can even resurrect plants that she just picked from somewhere. She could never kill any plant. That’s probably the reason our friends describe our house as “The Hobbit House” or “a house from fairy tales like Hansel & Gretel or Little Red Riding Hood.” It looked like a hidden house inside a thick forest. Hehehe.