Ensaymada

My wife and I are huge fans of ensaymada. We love eating them together with our hot coffee during merienda time. We have been for a long time buying ensaymada's from Mulach's. Actually my brother from the US takes the opportunity to have a dozen pieces bought and brought to the US whenever he can.

It was until one day while we were doing the usual window mall shopping, we came across this small kiosk at the third floor at SM MegaMall A that sells ensaymada specialty, Perfect Endings. We got interested and tasted their sampler. The ensaymada tasted so good and the sales lady was able to convinced us to buy a dozen especially when she showed us a news clip on Manila Bulletin (MB) listing its top 5 ensaymada in the Philippines.

From then, whenever we go to SM MegaMall and we have the urge to buy ensaymada we buy from Perfect Endings. Last year, I brough 2 boxes with me to the US and my relatives there really liked it.

Here is spot.ph's top 10 best ensaymada in MetroManila.

Lately, we were able to schedule a day to visit MB's top 1 ensaymada in the Philippines, that of Diamond Hotel. Their ensaymada is huge and cost about 145Pesos and it is good for two.

And the verdict, it's now the best ensaymada we have tasted so far. You should try it. I believe Diamond Hotel has a coffe shop in Boni St. in Bonifacio Global city where you can also try it.

Tips: Great pastries half the price

If you are looking for cheap and delicious bread and pastries, you can always rely on the panaderia next door. If you want to upgrade to great pastries at half the price and here are some tips for you.

1. Pastries at Cafe France after 6pm are half the price. Their pastries are great and one time we bought about 10 pieces for only less than 200 pesos together with drinks already. What a treat. The best about Cafe France, there is not much people during this time of half the price.



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2. Prices of certain pastries at The French Baker are at 50% off after 9pm. I think they have more selections however even before 9pm people are already starting to line up.



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If you know also any establishment who offers the same please share as well.
Happy eating!!!

NBI Clearance

I never thought I would need to secure NBI clearance. The last time I got one was I had to fall in line early in the morning at 7am and in about 2-3 hours go home with the clearance document. It is good thing there are lots of guide blogs out there to aid us in the process. And it is good to know there is a easier and faster way to secure it thru online payment. Please check out some guides from blogs which I have read and used for getting my NBI clearance:

1. How To Apply For NBI Clearance Online Manila Philippines
2. My first hand experience using NBI e-clearance system


Here are a few things to note:

1. When paying the nbi clearance thru Gcash, don't be confused with regards to some blogs that indicate that the amount should include 20 pesos online fee. You should only send the amounts 140, 190 or 440 depending upon the purpose of the nbi clearance.

2. Please use Google chrome or Firefox when registering and applying online.Otherwise you would get server busy with Internet Explorer. I use Firefox to process my online application.

3. Once you are at the nbi clearance office, you can go directly to Step 3 where you will submit your printed application form.

4. Bring a ballpen along as you will still write information on the printed application form. Please refer to the picture below.

I booked myself 2pm at Robinson's Galleria and it took me about 15 minutes to complete and go home with my nbi clearance.

Mike Francis

I have been a long time fan of Mike Francis and his songs. His songs are upbeat and  they are the music you play on long drives to the provinces. Among my favorites found in his Album Mike Francis Live in Manila:

1. Let me in
2. Suddenly back to me
3. Survivor
4. Dusty Road - my ultimate driving/cruising song




I wrote about this blog as I was shocked to find out that he's gone. He was big in the 80's and 90's. Such a big loss with his unique kind of music. This short quick blog is a tribute to him.

Tips: Moving Itunes Backup to another drive

I am in the situation again that I don't have enough space on my primary SSD on my sony vaio. I recently restored my laptop and I forgot to move my itunes backup to another drive. I lost 12Gb of primary hard disk space to itunes.

Here is a good site that shows how  to move the itunes backup folder to another drive. Itunes refers to its fixed location of its backup at your primary drive Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup. The trick here is to create a symbolic link of that  backup folder and redirect it to a new backup folder of a new drive. So here is how to do it.

1. Create a new backup folder for itunes in the new drive. For my case I created E:/Itunesbackup
2. Copy your existing Backup folder (under your primary drive Apple Computer\MobileSync\)  to this new folder (created in step 1). Delete the Backup folder.
3. Go to start button and in the short cut box type and enter the following:

%APPDATA%\Apple Computer\MobileSync

4. Open a command prompt by holding the shift key and right click on the windows explorer and selecting open command prompt here.

5. On the command prompt execute the following create the symbolic link using the following:

"mklink /J “%APPDATA%\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup” “E:\ItunesBackup”

Note: Make sure you delete the Backup folder.

Micro Fiber towel for your car

If you wash your car like me, you need to invest into car cleaning items. I bought from those cheap items from China to the expensive ones with brands like 3M. Last week I chance upon a micro fiber towel in Handy Man at Robinson's Forum/Pioneer. The salesman convinced me of this new brand from Germany which had micro micro fiber. I decided to buy the micro ultra absorber since my 3M chamois is not as effective anymore. I have also the 3M micro fiber towel which I used to polish and dry.

I tried the new microfiber towel and to my amazement, it dries the car streak free or at least significantly better than the ones I used. It is quite absorbent and you don't need to re-wipe areas. In fact I don't wipe off water but I softly pat off the water.

The microfiber towel cost about 210Pesos. You can check their facebook page here: Mikrofasser.

PRC Renewal

I got the chance to renew my PRC Professional Electronics Engineer License together with my brother's yesterday. Travel from Pasig City took about 1.5 hours drive. It was good thing it was summer vacation and I was able to spot a open parking along the streets near PRC. Park all day was at 30 pesos.
I took notes on the PRC renewal process from the internet. You can check this blog.


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So I brought with me the following items:
1. Filled PRC form downloaded from PRC
2. 3 pieces of passport size picture with name plate and white background
3. IECEP certificate of good standing
4. Photocopy of my PRC PECE license

There were procedures on the PRC form but as soon as I arrived at the PRC main building, I went to the straight to the customer  service reception table area and inquired about the renewal process. Apparently, the procedure today is new versus what I read from the PRC form and from the blogs I read. So here is what I have done for my renewal.

1. Secure a stub from the customer service reception table at the PRC main building.
2. Fill out the stub form and paste your passport size picture. There is an available glue from the reception table.
3. Submit this stub together with the IECEP Certificate of Good Standing at Window 13.
4. Wait for your name to be called at Window 17. At 10:15am there were a lot of people there waiting. Over 1.5 hours, my name was called and I was issued a form indicating the fee to be paid.
5. Fall in line outside the PRC main building at the cashier window 32-34 to pay the renewal fee.
Tough luck, the line was long and worst it was almost lunch time. But it was a good thing though, I was almost near the cashier at lunch time where they had only one cashier processing the payments. As I completed my payment, it was 12:30pm and the cashier line was very long.

The renewal process took me more than two hours. My license will be available for pickup in May  as there is no rush renewal at the moment. I recommend going there early or late afternoon for the renewal as the main bottleneck there really would be the cashier payment.