Mechanical Pencils, Shrimps, Movies and Rings

Last Friday, April 22, Dionne and I went out with our friends Benj and Richie for Benj's very early birthday celebration. He will finally join the 25+ age bracket! (Advanced) Happy Birthday Benj! =)

We went to GB3 a little early than the appointed time. Not surprisingly, Benj was already there. Where? At the arcade. Realizing it was still early for dinner, we used some of the free games from the movie tickets. First game: Air Hockey. Benj and I went head to head on this one. I was down early, 2-4. But after some tenacious D and some diesel-powered offense (hehe), I was able to pull a come-from-behind win: 7-5. Ginebra-like, if I may say so.

Next up: Some Korean game for kids. I really don't understand why the shop owners didn't even try to get a English-translated version of this one. We wouldn't be able to play it if not for the how-to-play's at the beginning of each round. Plus point: It's a game for 3 players. First round, 3 cards would be flashed on the screen; from which, we need to choose the card with the highest value. Second round, a cellphone would be lifted from our "hands", and then we had to "catch" it before it passes through our waiting grasps. I would say that the next round was hands-down, the most exciting round... Third round, we had to eject the most number of lead sticks from a mechanical pencil by clicking ALL the 3 buttons successively, in no particular order. Right after the signal for start was given, we were pounding away on the buttons. =) Fourth round, a sequence of characters is going to be displayed on the screen. We only have to follow the sequence of colors and tap the corresponding sequence on our buttons. It took me some time to realize that a multi-line sequence was read from top-to-bottom, left-to-right... Dionne lost this round... Next round, we were supposed to catch falling bottles by tapping the left or right button depending on where the bottle was. Sounds easy right? Yup, it seemed so at the start. But when I lost my internal clocking, the bottles began to crash. We were supposed to catch 83 bottles; I got 30+, while Benj got a little higher (only because he kept on pressing BOTH buttons). Both of us were eliminated at this point. I would reccommend playing this game once, because it's a relief from the fighting and shooting games dominating the arcades. Plus, it's free from the movie tickets. =)

At this point, we still had a lot of time to burn. Dinner was at 730PM, movie at 930PM... We decided to look at the expensive stuff at the stores in GB3. We went to this hobby shop turned coffee shop. Dionne and I saw some puzzles made of wood: pyramids, cubes, chessboards. Ting! We could use these as tabletops at the reception while the guests wait for us to arrive. 2 to 3 puzzles per table. Now, we just have to find similar pieces at much lower costs. The ones at the shop cost 180+ each. The 180-peso piece being the keychain puzzle cube (1" to a side).

Dinne time! Benj decided that we have dinner at Bubba Gump. Richie arrived after the first set of food was delivered. We were quite surprised that the food did arrive early. We had pasta with shrimp, shrimp with bread and oil and the ultimate combo (grilled shrimp and pork with mashed potato and coleslaw. Richie ordered fried shrimp, with fried lobster and fried fish in a bucket with fried fries (hehe). Pardon me if I can't remember the names of the dishes. Anyway... The food was... Délicieux! Magnifique! Bye-bye diet! Just for that night. =p

We rarely watched movies at the big screen these days, because of our austerity measures. So this movie had to be worth it. Apparently, Richie already saw the movie the night before, but he still wanted to watch it. It must be a really good movie then. At 930PM, The Interpreter started. Two hours later, my heart was still pounding... Wow! Ang ganda pa din ni Nicole Kidman! =) Besides that, the movie was great! ;)

Still not over the movie, we went to a coffee shop beside Italliani's. I think it was Segafredo's. There, we discussed some points regarding the movie. Benj and Richie raised a very good point... If you haven't seen the movie, don't do this! If you have... Click to see spoiler.

Why did Nicole Kidman, an interpreter, have such a high level access, including the holding room?

What do you think?


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Saturday, April 23 - Dionne and I were supposed to go to Ongpin to look for rings, then to SM Manila to look for rings again, buy our groceries and pay my cellphone bills. Early morning, Andrew MD2B, texted Dionne, asking her if we had plans that afternoon. He wanted to catch a movie and buy some stuff since he rarely was able to go to the mall. We agreed to meet him after lunch.

We were at SM by 130PM, Guess Who? was to start at 3PM. Andrew arrived at 2PM, so we still had time to do some shopping. First stop, Bench Body. Andrew bought 3 pairs of... Hahahaha! Anyway, we had a blast showing Andrew some of the thongs from Bench. I'll stop here. If you know Andrew well enough, you'll know what he picked. =)

We then went to Ideal Vision to get Andrew a new set of glasses. He wanted to get something that would make him appear credible enough in giving out prescriptions and other stuff for his upcoming internship. As if his MD-fashion-sense isn't enough to convince the patients. (Just kidding dude!) It was past 3PM when we finished here, so we decided to do our groceries and watch the next screening instead (515PM).

We bought the usual stuff for our daily salad, and then some chips for the movie. Cheat-weekend! We then went to Bench for Andrew's new jeans. Presenting Andrew, the latest Bench model. Since we were reserving the chips for the movie, we went to Plato Wraps for a light snack. Dionne and Andrew got the delicious Chunky Chicken, in pesto wrap this time. I tried Ham and Cheese, still in wheat wrap... The verdict: I'd still go with Chunky Chicken any day.

We then went to Oceanic to look at some wedding rings. Unfortunately, they only had 1 pair in stock... But, what a nice pair it was! Simple band like the LOTR One Ring. Unfortunately (again), they said that that design can't be adjusted to fit our fingers. Haay. At least, we have a design to compare to.

Fortunately for us, Oceanic also had other items. Dionne was able to look at some boxes for our rings and unity coins that are not that expensive and would fit our motif perfectly. We'll try to look around for some similar items and will try to post some pics here.

At 530PM, we saw Guess Who? Funny movie, though it took lot longer than it should have. It's about a dad meeting his daughter's boyfriend for the first time. The main punchline of the movie is in the poster already: His daughter's Mr. Right just turned out to be... Mr. White. During the movie, I kept on wondering what it would be, the first time I meet Dionne's dad... I would have to wait until next year to find out. Abangan. =)