Davao Diary: Day 3

I’m not much of sight-seeing kind of a tourist. I’m more like a traveling gourmand. When visiting a new place, the first thing I check out is the FOOD! Sorry but I really love to eat. Hehe. Eating with gusto runs in our family (in the mother’s side).

Anyway, so on my 3rd day right after I had my wrist treatment at the East Asia Orthopedic & Rehabilitation Institute (see separate blog on this), I met up with my Tita Sally (my mom’s 2nd to last sister, who’s only 9 yrs older than me) and my sister Marla for lunch. Tita took us to her friend’s café Tata Benito’s A WholeLATTEloveCOFFEESHOP at the Paseo de Legaspi compound in Legaspi St. Davao City.



It was quaint and it has free Wi-Fi :-) Great for Internet Addicts like me. Their menu is typical of any coffee shop except that you have everything much cheaper here compared to Manila. At their Paseo de Legaspi branch, you can also find a tiny chic boutique also by the café’s owner, who we found out, was my sister’s old classmate back in grade school.

And then after our lunch, we went to our Tita Raquel's salon and dress shop (the one who made my wedding gown and entourage dresses). We did the usual girly stuff – trying on the newest dresses on the rack and then foot spa, pedicure, hot oil… I also had a blazer and pants set tailored for me.



Then I met up with two of my high school close friends for dinner. Connie came with her husband Julius while Pyrite came alone. Her hubby was home taking care of their 1 year old. Toink. Anyway, my sister and Tita Sally recommended this “secret” restaurant owned by one of her friends, Richie Ferrazzini, heir to the Davao Merco food dynasty. It used to be casually called “Brother’s Kitchen” for the lack of a real name actually but now Richie officially calls it “Belito’s”.

It’s not “really” a restaurant. In fact, it is actually just an outdoor patio of the owner’s residence, who by the way cooks the food himself (most of the time). Going there could be tricky if you’re planning to go at night. The place doesn’t really have a sign and the subdivision where it’s situated in is a bit starkly lit. From Bajada, you have to enter Palm Drive. The most conspicuous marker would have to the Buzz Café. Once on Palm Drive, count 4 “kantos” or street corners to your left. Turn left on the 4th. It’s a dead end but it is here where you will find the Davao’s best kept secret.

Paella Negra

Though they welcome walk-ins, it’s better if you can make reservations with the owner himself. He would then ask you your initial orders. It’s actually very convenient because it saves up on waiting time. My sister advised me to order their famous Paella Negra and Steamed Pampano. And boy oh boy, it was delish!!! It was worth getting lost going there. Hehe. Then we also tried their Crispy Spare Ribs and Sinigang na Isda, which I forgot to take pictures of ‘coz we were already caught up in our conversations and gluttony. Haha.

Steamed Pampano

For 4 entrees, we only paid 900 pesos. Welcome to Davao City indeed! So if ever you’re in Davao City, don’t miss the opportunity to try Richie Ferrazzini’s backyard restaurant “Belito’s”. You may text/call him at 09065721188.

Davao Diary: Day 2

My sister was my “willing” driver last Monday. She ranted about Davao’s new traffic lights that practically mushroomed overnight. Practically every corner has one now making all Davao-grown drivers perplexed. Traffic lights are not usual in the old Davao I know. It is quite overwhelming to see Davao’s traffic almost looking like that of Manila’s. Gone were the days when driving around the city were leisurely and relaxed.

Anyway, my sister and I had coffee at CUPS & LOWERCASE @ F. Torres St (beside Bistro Rosario), one of the popular new cafes here. She wanted me to try their pugon-baked pizza.



And then, we visited the “future mansion” (hehehe) of our Nanay & Tatay (maternal grandparents). This was actually their old residence – the usual meeting place of the Jonson clan every weekends and Holidays. Finally after 40 years, the old bungalow is being renovated to a grand 5-bedroom two-storey house, complete with a large Family Entertainment room and a stage for our Videoke Nights!!! :-)

Before we headed home, my sis and I dropped by the oldest Mall in Davao City, Victoria Plaza ‘coz she needed to buy a cell phone charger. I was amused with an ad that I saw. Davao advertising sure is direct to the point. :-) And then, we saw a bazaar so we bought a few bargain blouses. Hahaha.



Finally when got home, I sweated it out with our Wii. Hahaha. Gosh, ang hirap pala ng Boxing.

Over Cups of God's Word

Last night, Joseph went away to Antipolo for an overnight planning with his fellow board members in our church. Since my calendar was free of any work deadlines, I decided to text and invite several of my “busiest” friends for a night of coffee, hoping that at least one of them would yield. As expected, I had some “sorry, I can’t make it” replies. Most of these friends that I had invited were mostly working for cutthroat industries – the Media and the Call Center – so it was pretty understandable why. I was particularly struck though with one of my friend’s follow-up message. After saying that she had duty that night, she followed it up with this question: “Why mare? Is there a problem?”

I was really stumped… found it funny at first… then it didn’t take long before I got really concerned. I got worried about her connotation of “coffee talk”. Apparently for her, a coffee talk means a session of catharsis, when in fact all I really wanted to do was to keep tabs with friends whom I haven’t seen so much lately.

Nevertheless, I also checked myself. Then I figured that not too long ago, I used to look at it the same way too. Before I had Christ in my life, I remember that coffee with my girlfriends usually meant one of us reporting a full account of a recent love tragedy. Meeting up was always centered on boy-bashing… on lamenting about our love lives… on whining about our impending doom as fag hags or spinsters… etc...

I had a spiritual make-over after I received Christ. I was now Miss Glass-Half-Full. But I would have to say that my conversion didn’t come that easily. When someone receives Christ as their personal Lord and Savior, salvation doesn’t just end there. Receiving Him is just the first step. If as human beings we never get satisfied with what we have in our hands, then the same hunger should be applied to our Christian Life. Once you become a Christian or a person living for Christ, there are five means of spiritual growth: BIBLE, PRAYER, WORSHIP, FELLOWSHIP and WITNESS.

In my early phase of being a Born Again, I would have to admit that I had some difficulty dealing with the FELLOWSHIP part. First let me just briefly explain what the word “fellowship” means. For non-Bible Christians, the word would probably automatically mean Bible Study. Yes, that’s also true but in actuality, “fellowship” for Christians means pretty much the same way how any other person reading the dictionary would define it. It’s basically FRIENDSHIP!

At first, I felt awkward being “friends” with a group of women whom I thought didn’t go through the tragedies that I had. I felt out of place with them. Honestly, I even thought that our personalities might not match. But then I realized that joining my church mates in Bible Study was not merely being part of a “club” or a “clique”. It wasn’t about fitting in… IT WAS ABOUT FOLLOWING GOD’S WORD. It’s not about ME… it’s all about HIM. This was no sorority. So by His grace, I finally found myself immersed in my Circle of Care (our small group Bible fellowship) and that led to my deeper and more loving and intimate relationship with Christ.

Fellowship helped me a lot in getting to know our Lord more. Fellowship made me fall in love with Him. Coffee talks for me now meant gathering together to praise God – definitely the only ONE who will never ever disappoint us in LOVE. We praise Him for the blessings, and even more, we praise Him for the trials that make us stronger in faith.

There’s always a big difference between a professed Christian who commits herself to a regular meet-up with fellow Christians and another one who does not. I’ve been with my small group for two years now and I have witnessed the entry and exit of some members. Every time we have a new member coming in, it was always a delight. On my observation usually the new members are those who are currently having a crisis. Of course, ministering to these ladies is a blessing in itself. However, I just noticed though that once that certain new member’s crisis eases up, we slowly start seeing less of her until she finally drops out of the group.

There’s a saying: Pag gusto may paraan. Pag ayaw maraming dahilan. Humanly speaking we are all guilty of that in some way. With that kind of trend happening in our small group, I feel a bit of sadness that people only need God when they are in need. Although we let them go graciously, and even continue to pray for them (the departed ones, as we joke about it, hehe), I just can’t help but feel frustrated. Our God, yes the God who miraculously extinguishes our problems definitely deserves more than just a simple “Thank you ‘til next time ulit, Lord ha?”

Being in fellowship fortifies our faith. Being in fellowship with Christ is actually having Him over for coffee. When we commune with our friends and talk about Him, and offer our concerns, we are not just strengthening our bonds with our girlfriends or small group members, we are actually bonding with Jesus Himself. Being in fellowship is having coffee with Jesus. And we all know how coffee conversations bear fruits of wisdom and branches and branches of beautiful inspiration.

I am currently praying for a lot of my friends to yield to my invitation of being in fellowship with Jesus. I have also been praying for their salvation; that they finally receive Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior. I know, by God’s grace that sooner or later, my friend’s connotation of coffee talk would be taking a break with friends over hot cups of God’s word.

My Circle of Care @ Country Style

My Life with Coffee

I’m no coffee cognoscenti but I could definitely say that coffee has figured itself quite significantly in my life in different ways and in every facet. Whether it was instant or gourmet, coffee left imprints in my life like cup stains on the pages of my favorite book.

I had my first cup of kapeng barako as early as I can remember. My mother’s family, being from Batangas, was never without coffee during mornings. I grew up with my Nanay Linda (my maternal grandmother) and despite old folk’s tales about coffee stunting your growth she even taught me how to enjoy my coffee by dunking in my pandesal. For a time there I thought it was really true because as the years passed, I started to realize that indeed I never got out of the beginning of the line during flag ceremonies. But of course, other than coffee, if caffeine really did play a role in my “tiny-ness”, there were other more legit reasons behind it. Nevertheless, even if I was being taunted by my family with things like “Hala ka, hindi ka na tatangkad…” they couldn’t budge my cup.

Coffee with my Nanay paints that beautiful memory of blissful breakfasts of champorado with tuyo, pandesal and of course coffee. Our lola-apo tradition of completing the nine dawn masses before Christmas was never complete without a mug of instant coffee that we would share since we always had limited time to catch the 4AM misa de gallo. When I was a kid, I remember that instant coffee at the Jonson household was either Folgers or Maxwell. Back in the 80s, my grandfather was head of the plant quarantine inspection so he always brought home a lot of PX goods.

In High School, coffee was a big punch line that has grown to be a running joke until now among the barkada. Whenever we get together, the story about our group, playing hooky at one of the nearby beach resorts, and getting experimental with gin and tonic is a classic anecdote. We could never forget how all of us, mere (innocent but not quite) 16 year-olds, obviously with no legal rights to drink, went on a major panic as we scoured the place for coffee to revive one of our friends who totally got whacked with alcohol. We were all so nervous that as soon as we got our hands on the coffee, we drank it all up while arguing with each other about whose fault was it, forgetting that there was still an unconscious person lying on the bench. So we had to get coffee again and this time while P (that’s her initial) was already a bit awake, she immediately asked for her cup. We served it right away, forgetting of course to warn her that it was steaming hot. The next scene was a classic slapstick comedy scene. Coffee spraying out into our faces, and the worse part was seeing her throw up all the French fries that she ate that afternoon. I could never forget my friend J’s quip, “Grabe, buo pa yung French fries oh!” She wasn’t exaggerating.

In college, coffee befriended cigarettes, and the relationship lasted for years into my professional writing life until I became a Christian. Yosi break at MTV was always with a styro cup of Nescafe. After which the little puddle of coffee left inside the cup becomes a good cigarette extinguisher. Instant ashtray.

Coffee and cigarettes made perfect sense while I was living the brooding life (kuno) of a Creative Writing student in UP Diliman. I found poetry in the swirls of my cigarette smoke dancing with the steam lazily escaping my caffeine-filled nocturnal elixir. I was mostly melancholic during college. Obvious ba? I remember there was this guy who broke my heart in Social Dance class; swept me off my feet in Tango; wrote me letters (with his hand, ha!) from Bohol that one long summer; then suddenly staled out like a cup of coffee that has been sitting for a day… Oh yeah, he became my husband. =) Hehe. Our coffee love story later…

Anyway, speaking of love, coffeehouses played a big role in my love life. Even though Seattle’s Best has the most painfully sweet coffee I have ever tasted, I had the most bitter and most awful breakup in their Megamall branch. This guy who I have been stupidly and blindly dating for about two years suddenly tells me that he cannot go on seeing me anymore because he was too ashamed to be seen in public with someone “short”. Huuuwaaaat? I swear, in my Ally Mcbeal moment, that steaming hot java would have been burning lava melting his fugly face. Of course, in reality I was just too stunned to speak. I was unable to believe that such evil people exist, and worse I was dating one of them ogres for the past 2 years! Was it too much coffee?

I had better experiences at Starbucks. At least here, I was able to stage the greatest revenge of the love-scorned woman. I remember it was at the 6750 branch. It was a perfect afternoon to make someone pay up for breaking someone’s heart. I don’t want to get into details. Let’s just say, the scheme was a perfect blend that was brewed for about a year. Enough said.

Anyway, I have always been a Starbucks sister. From blind dates to work meetings; from girl bonding to enjoying my short mocha alone, Starbucks has become a part of my lifestyle. It kinda bugs me though that I got caught up with the whole commercialism of gourmet espresso. I find the whole latte lingo too pretentious. Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate the variety of frapuccinos and macchiatos, but honestly I just get lost in the whole decaf-double-tall-hazelnut-non-fat-with-a-shot-of-mocha-latte semantics. Fortunately for us here in Manila, the Starbucks Baristas aren’t as rigid as their American counterparts. One time in New York, I just really wanted a simple short mocha, but it seemed that the barista just couldn’t take that kind of order. He kept asking me for more details. And in my sheer frustration, I just shot him with a “Surprise me!”

I don’t remember having major moments at Figaro, aside from the fact it was my daily coffee during my year-long stay at GMA7. There was a Figaro stall on the 2nd floor of the network’s building so it was the Kapuso’s quick caffeine fix. I also had fond memories over at Figaro Dela Costa in Makati. For a time, back when the Alta Productions peeps, my former colleagues, were still aplenty, that coffeehouse sort of became their version of Central Perk. And speaking of such famous TV coffee joint, of course I had to blame my café culture infatuation on the show FRIENDS. Believe me… I have watched EVERY episode – all 10 seasons. Yes, I am a FAN!



If coffeehouses were bat caves for barkadas, I also smelled the aroma of romance in a café called Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. Remember that guy who broke my heart in college? Well, nine years after his last latte-flavored letter left the taste of latak on my mouth, we met again. This time, the bitterness was gone and I was actually looking forward to our first coffee chat, which went through several postponements before finally coming through.

So we had our casual reunion “date” at Coffee Bean. When did coffee ever become romantic? I mean seriously, I have gone through several books and internet sites about coffee, hunting for a Romeo & Juliet type of story that revolved around maybe an Arabica bean, but there was none. Tell me if there’s one, will you?

Anyway, as I was there sitting across Joseph over cups of mocha and chai latte, it just felt comfortable. I couldn’t even feel the pain anymore. That night was just filled with stirring conversations about everything and anything, EXCEPT about college. Hehe, we obviously intended (and probably agreed without telling each other) to skirt around the issue. That night at the Coffee Bean opened that proverbial door that led us to NOW. Of course like any love story, we had conflicts (lots of them) that runneth our cup, to the point that we even had our major break up YET AGAIN in the same café where our revival romance brewed. It was August 23, 2006. I wrote that on my Bible because it was also the day that I finally, really seriously, surrendered my life to the Lord. That break-up at Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf led me to Christ.

God was indeed faithful because he brought back Joseph into my life – the 3rd time. So I guess the saying is true for me that the 3rd time’s a charm. Joseph and I value Coffee Bean’s significance in our love story, well COFFEE as a whole for that matter, that we decided to use it as a theme for our wedding. Hence, the brown & pink color motif. Our wedding tokens were coffee beans in jute bags for the guests, and coffee scented tea light candle in glass cup votives for the principal sponsors. Aside from UP, we had our 2nd pre-nup pictorial over at Starbucks too.



Actually, it was supposed to be Coffee Bean but unfortunately that day, it was Maundy Thursday I think, the Coffee Bean Tomas Morato branch (our café) was closed. So we ended up trooping over to the nearby Starbucks who indeed was the king of capitalist caffeine. The fact that they were open on Holy Week while nobody else was making business says a lot. Hehe. But that aside, Starbucks still turned out to be a blessing. We had to do the shoot that day or it’s bust. Through the lenswork of my good friend Arleen Bacay, our coffee romance was captured perfectly in black and white snapshots.



Our friend Avie gave us 14 kilos of coffee beans for our wedding giveaways so we certainly had a lot of extra to bring home to our new abode. Now that we’re married, our day always begins with freshly brewed kapeng barako sipped through early morning smiles and laughter. By God’s grace, we’ll still be able to do this ‘til we’ve become old beans ourselves.