Jovi Prado-Linga, a high school classmate of mine, had been looking at me from a distance, wondering what on earth was I doing along these corridors of our office building.

As she was still busy talking on her phone, Jovi Prado-Linga couldn't come near me to poke me from my deep immersion over my cell phone.

When she finally came off her phone, she approached me and asked me what had I been up to snickering all by myself over my phone. I told her that I was updating with our other high school classmates on Facebook, and currently, Ruel (Makati), Joe (Houston), Remia (L.A.), Winnie (Kuwait), and Antoinette (Laguna) were exchanging comments about the Ilonggo/Filipino food I have posted yesterday, and everybody agreed that they miss this home cooking so much.

Then suddenly I had an idea: since Jovi Prado-Linga is familiar with everybody else, I asked that we have our picture taken so that I could upload it, blog about it, and post it on Facebook, for all our other classmates to see.

Apparently she likes the idea so much that she kept on giggling as we were having our little impromptu pictorial, both of us admittedly not having combed our hair, powdered, and were perspiring from the afternoon heat!

But I think these minor discomforts did not show as our smiles beamed through.

Imagine a tough bank manager doing credit investigation in the hallowed hall of justice taking a break and being like it was high school days again.

Filipino Billiard Greats

Filipino Billiard Greats of the world's formidable Team Philippines started out in billiard dens such as this. There are just about billiard holes in every corner in the Philippines that no wonder there are several players who rose to become Filipino Billiard Greats.

Like boxing and bowling where Filipinos have earned several world titles, billiard is one game the Filipino can excel. It doesn't need the height and build other sports require. Skill and cunning is what make Filipino Billiard Greats in this game.

Efren "Bata" Reyes, Dennis "Surigao" Orcollo, Ronato "The Volcano" Alcano, Rodolfo "Boy Samson" Luat, Francisco "Django" Bustamante, and Alex "The Lion" Pagulayan are six fearsome names that have made it to become six of the awesome Filipino Billiard Greats.

Filipino Food: A White Lunch at Tito Paeng's

Filipino food at its finest: what I call a white lunch at Tito Paeng's.

It just so happened that everything served on the all white Paderna studio-cum-gallery during an impromptu lunch get-together were all white Filipino food.

Tita Sony, Tita Dolly and I met at my office earlier this morning and thought of calling another fellow artist, Rafael Paderna. He invited us over for coffee, but since it was nearing lunch time, he invited us to lunch -- Filipino food in mind -- at his newly built studio-cum-gallery. We then called Tito Rodney to join us as well.

He asked Tita Sony to bring a vegetable dish, laswa, but when we went to 18th Pala-pala, the all-green clear broth Ilonggo veggie dish was out, so we opted for a relative Filipino food, another Ilonggo veggie dish: tambo^ or bamboo shoots in coconut milk.

When we arrived at the charming white-washed bungalow, Tita Fe and Tito Paeng graciously welcomed us at the door. We were then greeted with artworks all around, in oil, pen and ink, charcoal, chalk pastel, brass, etc. But the center of attraction that day is Tita Fe's culinary art, Filipino food that just happened to be all white!

For our entree, we were served with kinilaw nga rabanos, and lumpia with fragrant vinegar dip.







Our main dish were all white Filipino food! KBL (kadyos, baboy, langka), ginat-an nga tambo, and of course, rice.







For dessert, we had galletas in white wrapping and buco juice. To liven up the conversation, we then had brewed coffee with creamer, just to make it white.







Now that's what I call a white lunch of all Filipino food.