Sunday, August 31, 2008

Pictures from Jeddah Corniche

The humidity level at the Corniche was way off the chart, never in my entire life have i ever experienced that humid before, I swear!... Well anyway, it's nice to experience things like that sometimes. And here are some of my pictures taken along corniche road this afternoon by a friend of mine.



Beside a lamp post....


...with a whatchamacallit at my back ?



On a foot bridge...



......on my super, extra, muy pequeno car... LOL!!!



Beside the lamp post... again! (and i'm getting good with it.)

See more of my photographs from our Corniche adventure. Click HERE.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

An Unexpected Job

Our boss called yesterday and he asked me a favor, if we could help him decorate the door of a hospital room because the wife of his friend just had a baby boy, since we are not doing anything yesterday night and we're kinda bored, so i replied positively on his request. And so we bought the materials and asked a few tips on how to do this project, we then went straight to the Hospital A.S.A.P and started cutting, assembling, blowing, sticking and walahh!



Now what do you think? Do you think it's professional enough? We did this in less than 8 minutes. And would you believe this was the first time we have ever done this and we got paid for it. This was at room 209 in the United Doctors Hospital here in Jeddah. Not bad Huh!

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Food Trip: La Paz Batchoy Restaurant (Jeddah)



Bacolod Chicken Inasal


Buko - Pandan Salad


My friend and I came home very early from work yesterday, and we were feeling kinda bored and so,....We went on a food trip! There are not so many Filipino restaurant in Jeddah, but there is this newly opened restaurant along Macaruna street, corner Al Imam Al shafeia called La Paz Batchoy Restaurant and we often just pass by it going to Aziz Mall. Since my friend came from Bacolod in Negros Occidental, and he is familiar with Ilonggo food, we both decided to try the restaurant.

At first, when you enter the restaurant you'll immediately notice the beatiful interior, it's like a diner style restaurant. It's clean and spacious, the waiters are all in uniform and they will quickly usher you to your seat then take your order. We decided to try their famous Batchoy, Chicken Inasal and for Desert, the Buko - Pandan Salad. It didn't take long for our order to come, in fact it was so fast we didn't even have enough time for us to think of what topic to talk about.

We first tried their specialty, the La Paz Batchoy, then the Chicken Inasal, down to our desert, Buko - Pandan Salad and it was all so delicious and not heavy on your pocket too. But there is just one thing that I've noticed, the air conditioner inside is not cold enough, especially when you sip the hot delicious soup of the Batchoy, it'll not take long for you to sweat to much and realized that it feels so uncomfortable, you would want to go home and take a bath. And i hate it when that happened. From 1 to 5 , I give this restaurant a rating of 3 for the excellent food and services. Yummy!

UPDATE!
January 2010

The last time we went to La Paz Batchoy Restaurant was a week ago. I love the fact that the temperature of their airconditioner is pleasantly cooler than before. We don't sweat too much this time when we ate their famous La Paz Batchoy.

And speaking of La Paz Batchoy. I wonder why they change the chicharon ingridient of their Batchoy to kropek?, even the sound of it is not so appetizing. And for that, I will down grade their famous soup's rating. They should bring back their original recipe, and use chicharon, please!. Kropek is for Indonesians!

Another thing, I hate the fact that everytime we finished eating in the restaurant, our clothes smelled like we've been cooking in their kitchen. Everything just smelled so bad. I think they should do something with the ventilation of the restaurant.

And because of those things that I've just mentioned, I give the restaurant a rating of 2 out of 5.

Note: I hope the management of the restaurant could do something with the way they spelt La Paz. They should have put a space between La and Paz. Just a thought.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Agua por favor!, Agua...!



It's been 4 days now here in this part of Jeddah (where i live) without water and our containers are almost empty (we usually stock water in big plastic containers to go around this problem). If you think that this is an isolated case, think again! Sometimes we don't have water for 2 days and sometimes even for 5 days in a week, but the longest days without water that i have ever experienced in my almost 10 years stay in this country was 7 days, a whole week, it was horrible and unthinkable. But I can understand why this thing happened, oh yes i do, simply because we live in the desert and that they still have to dasalinate sea water before even people can use it, but longer than five days without water is crazy! You might say, why i'm still here or why shouldn't i go home if i don't like something here. My answer is simply because they need me and people like me (Expat), as much as we need them. This is Jeddah one of the primier cities in Saudi Arabia with more than one million people living in it, we are not in Darfur. This is a Mega City having a problem with their water supply. And beside, it's not just Expat who are suffering from this problem but also the Saudi Arabian People, who happens to thinks that it is just "normal". There is always room for improvement.