Down the Rabbit Hole

After watching Lincoln , I wondered what were the other movies considered in the Top 10 by the National Constitution Centre . All the President's Men  happens to be the first, the top-ranked film about presidents. So I decided to watch this film when I saw it on Netflix. At first, I thought that this Alan Pakula film was just a different version of The Post . After all, Ben Bradlee was there and Katharine Graham was mentioned because All the President's Men  is also about the Washington Post. However, Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman portrayed journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, respectively. These were characters I haven't heard before. And then I realised that this movie was really about their coverage of the Watergate Scandal! It began small enough; Woodward, a relatively new journalist in the Post , was covering the trial of the burglars who broke into the Democrat office in the Watergate Complex. However, things escalated really quickly. When Bernstein,...

One morning, I was digging through Mommy's latest grocery purchases to see what I could cook for lunch. I ended up retrieving a curious pack of spinach fettuccine and decided to cook it up with a tomato-based sauce. I wasn't guided by a cookbook so the proportions were all based on how many vegetables I could get my hands on. Note that this recipe has been adapted from pasta I've cooked previously (which contained tomato, garlic, and basil), typically when I arrived home hungry from doing my groceries at S&R. Ingredients 1 pack spinach fettuccine 3 large tomatoes, brunoise (or a close approximation) 1 large white onion, brunoise (or a close approximation) 3 tbsp shredded chicken (pre-roasted) 2 tbsp olives, cut in half 1tsp garlic, minced 1 tsp grapeseed oil 1/2 cup tomato-based sauce (in this case, pizza sauce) Cooking Instructions Just sauté the garlic, the onion, and the tomato in grapeseed oil. Add the olives and the chicken when the onions ha...

Tita Babie loves to prepare for her annual Easter egg hunt where her guests (but mainly the children) could run around her backyard and find plastic eggs containing chocolate or money. We were excited because it's Gabriel's first Easter... even though he wouldn't understand what was going on. Biboy and Barbara were even more excited: they even got Gabriel his own basket! Biboy did most of the hunting, of course, while carrying Gabriel. He was more interested in looking at the trees and smiling at people. After a few minutes of hunting, Biboy's stash filled Gabriel's basket and called it a day.  But the egg hunt was not finished. Rowan and Aleia proved to be the expert egg hunters, collecting more than 50 eggs apiece! They were able to fill shopping bags with their hauls.  And then it was time to open the eggs. The mothers and grandmothers were busy counting the children's loot. The titas were all on the side taking photos. And Gabriel? S...

Anna insisted that we try this restaurant in Calistoga she had spotted on an earlier trip to the city (while Val and I were in D.C.). So right after seeing Old Faithful , we dropped by Lovina , whose sign promised great food and whose building promised of a cozy dining experience. We just wanted to have a light snack before we drove back to the Bay Area. Lovina was good on all its promises. Though the restaurant had a low ceiling, it didn't feel cramped (but also may because we arrived just before the dinner rush). The spring sunset made the interiors and the food look pretty as well. The staff were friendly too. Most importantly, the food we ordered was delicious.  We started off with a jar of kimchi, which was kind of a surprise because I didn't expect to find Asian influences to Lovina's offerings. It was not as spicy as the kimchi I've tried in Korea  or in the Philippines , even. However, it was a great appetiser since the rest of our food were sav...

Meryl Streep starred as Katharine Graham who helmed the family-owned Washington Post  and Tom Hanks portrayed the newspaper's executive editor, Ben Bradlee in The Post , a movie about the efforts of the Washington Post in publishing the Pentagon Papers (confidential government documents about the Vietnam War ) in 1971. The movie obviously had political and historical themes in it. But aside from these, it can also be said that The Post  is also about women empowerment. Graham was the first woman publisher of a major daily newspaper. The movie showed how she struggled to keep the newspaper afloat despite being seen as a typical member of the "women-who-lunch". Yes, she was portrayed to have flinched a whole lot during the movie, but who wouldn't? Her family legacy and her friendships were at stake if she chose to publish the controversial news painstakingly gathered by her staff. Graham was the woman with all the power but not in the spotlight. That spotlight ...

We didn't get a chance to go snowboarding this winter because I was in school and Gabriel was just born. When Barbara's mom, Solange, arrived, Biboy invited us to join him in touring Solange to Lake Tahoe... it was her first time see snow. From the East Bay, it was a three-hour drive to the Sierra Nevada. Because it's already springtime, we didn't have to drive on black ice (which is definitely not  a good experience). The freeway was largely dry, except for patches where the snowmelt was dripping. The mountains were picturesque, as always. Snowboarding was an option, as Biboy had our gear in the trunk. But when we got to Boreal Ski Resort , I knew that I wouldn't like snowboarding in the current conditions. Some people do say, however,  that springtime is the best time to hone in snowboarding skills. So, instead of snowboarding, we just drove up close to the snow mounds and took photos.  And because we didn't spend much time in the ski res...

Ten years ago, I heard that there's a geyser in the Napa Valley region that erupts roughly every five minutes; however, it took me more than 10 years before I could go there to visit. Val, Anna, and I went there after our wine-tasting tour at Castello di Amorosa ... it was so close! Because this geyser erupts like clockwork, it's been tagged as "Old Faithful" geyser of California. Wait, what?!? There are other old faithful geysers in the USA? The more famous and much bigger Old Faithful, of course, is located in Yellowstone National Park (which sits in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming).  The Old Faithful geyser in Napa is also known as "Little Old Faithful" because it's small. But we were warned by posters not to get fooled by the size. This tiny geyser can pack a painful punch because it's surrounded by boiling hot water, just like Mount Makiling 's mud springs . The area surrounding the geyser was turned into a picnic area in...

"Castello di Amorosa" in English is "Castle of Love". It's a good place to go to tour a medieval period-inspired Italian castle, to taste some wine, and to see some unusual animals in Napa Valley. Anna, Val, and I drove all the way there one morning. The skies were not cooperating so we didn't see the castle in the light of the bright California sun. Instead, I remember my brief visit to the Nottingham Castle in England during winter... cold and cloudy. The castle offers a great view of the Palisades mountain range, which is beautiful even with its cloud cover. The exteriors of the castle reminded me of Château de Chillon , a castle on an islet in Lake Geneva. Guests to Castello di Amorosa get greeted by winged gargoyles chained to stone walls and then enter the castle through a drawbridge. Once inside the castle, visitors get to see the quadrangle or. The arches reminded me of those in the University of Sydney .  In one corner of ...