I took advantage of the holiday on Tuesday to book a stay at Valero Grand Suites for the week. I liked the idea of walking to and from work for both office days, and I could spend the rest of the time on personal writing projects and ordering in from places I’ve always wanted to try since the area gives me a wider range of choices.
Finding out about their half-off offer has been dangerous for me since I want to stay there all the time now. I love the double rooms since the beds are huge, and one is always set against the window, where there’s this elevated space wide and comfortable enough to be a desk if you sit at the end of the bed. It offers views of the Lepanto Building, flanked by my own office building at Ayala Triangle Gardens. There’s also a full-size fridge that comes with an ice tray and a microwave, which is perfect for making sure I get to eat without taking too much time away from the stuff I want to get done.
On the first day I walked to the nearby 7-Eleven after checking in to stock up on drinks and some of their ready-to-eat meals. It started raining on my walk back, but the sidewalk is fully covered so I got to experience the downpour without getting wet.
Stuff I tried from 7-Eleven through my stay: the black forest cake slice, which was really good and full of cherry flavor; the breakfast sausage patty with rice, eggs, and mini pancakes; the cheesedog onigiri; and the crispy shrimp balls with garlic aioli.
On Wednesday I got up at 9:30 (the usual time I arrive at the office, from having gotten up at 6:45 at home!) and showed up to work at a little past ten. Before heading back I stopped at the Marketplace downstairs, where I ran into a high school classmate and found this adorable red panda popsicle—the dark brown is hazelnut, light brown is coffee, and the little pink peaches are of course peach-flavored.
I ordered in from Flipside Burgers and got the one with bacon jam, cream cheese, and fried onions, which might be my favorite burger in Manila right now. I also got some sliders for snacking or later meals. I got a cookies and cream cake and seafood cream pasta from Sweet Inspirations. Again, I’m a little too particular about cream-based pastas and it’s much more likely that I end up not liking something I’m trying for the first time, but this one had a good texture and flavor and I’m glad I had it.
I had to take on double (honestly, triple) duty at work and it wasn’t very fun. The day ended at around seven or eight, and we had dinner at Purple Rice in Salcedo. I got the grilled angus beef belly with nutty Thai BBQ sauce, and I’m obsessed with it. I finished half and got the rest to go, which I had for breakfast the next day.
It was nice to walk back to the hotel at night. I haven’t been journaling by hand for a while, just writing about my days in my mood tracker but I’ve been too lazy to be detailed about it, so I wanted to put some of my feelings here. This week kind of left me feeling lonely and grasping at notions of belonging. Work has been a lot since last June and there are a lot of frustrations. I have friends to commiserate and carry it with, but at dinner I was listening to them share about how they’ve been talking with their parents or how their parents have been supporting them and it just struck me: I used to have that too, and now I don’t anymore, and never will again. It was so easy to imagine what my parents would’ve said, and how comforting it would’ve been. But I’ll never know for sure.
So my supposedly chill workcation week got clouded over with some fun little depression side quest that didn’t really subside for a couple of days, but getting to do what I wanted and get some good food helped.
Friday I didn’t have to come to the office anymore, but it was still a work day, so I set up a desk on the large counter space next to the TV and drew the curtains for lots of natural light, which I don’t get a lot of at home. For the rest of the day I watched Something Very Bad is Going to Happen in one sitting, since we just got the screeners for work.
On Saturday, my last full day, I ordered Umi Sushi as a final treat for myself.
I think it’s pretty affordable since you get eight huge rolls per order. The first kind I got was the salmon aburi, with cream cheese and chopped cucumber and a topping of torched salmon, a creamy sauce with aonori powder, and tobiko. This one was really fresh and filling and sated the part of me that’s been craving salmon for a few days.
I found the dynamite roll adorable with its tiny panko-deep-fried topper roll of minced unagi, kani, and cream cheese. The main roll had torched fresh salmon and cream cheese, with chili mayo.
See what I mean about the desk-esque space by the window? I spent Saturday doing some reading for research, and at night I turned out all the lights and sat facing the night sky and the beautiful buildings while I organized my notes into a semi-coherent outline. This story has been haunting me for a couple of years and I’ve been so scared to touch it since it features sports and it’s important for me to strike the balance of making sure it’s well-integrated into the plot while knowing next to nothing about it. I didn’t get as much done as I’d been planning, but I think I finally know what to do with it and most importantly how. It’s definitely progress, and I can’t wait to go further.
I checked out early the next morning and went over to Ate Inah’s place so we could go together to where we’re having her birthday lunch.
Was it just a ploy so I could execute my ulterior motive of seeing Fifi and giving him all the pets? Who’s to say.
This time he actually laid still and let me pet him after giving my hand the perfunctory sniff test. When I got up he kept stopping at my feet and rolling around, showing his stomach to me! And later, when I got out my bag of Chips Delight cookies to snack a little, he climbed onto the couch to beg for some, but of course I had to turn him down.
My favorites from our meal: all the paellas, the lengua, the truffle penne, the pork belly with aioli, the toasted baguette with compound butter, and the churros. It was nice to close off my week alone with my larger nuclear family.
(Less nice when I got home and finally counted up the damage on my expense tracker. I don’t want this to be a habit, but maybe it can be a seasonal thing.)
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