Chocolaty stress buster from Starbucks

When an indaba threatens to push you to the edge of sanity like when your boss suddenly doesn’t make sense or the tape recorder you need at that precise minute decides not to work, there’s no point in stressing over it. Being a new year, I’ve re-learnt, when I woke up one fine morning during my Christmas holiday, that it’ll do me some good to turn to my stress busters instead of agonise over it. A stress buster dovetailed with letting the indaba hang for a while most certainly means a less taxed mind and better health.

One of my former students revealed in Facebook that her sure-fire stress buster is a plate of scrumptious fried hito (Tagalog word for catfish) dipped in bagoong (Tagalog word for shrimp paste). A friend of mine’s stress buster is running or singing her heart out while another gal-pal goes for a couple of glasses of her favourite poison in a hotel lounge.

Going for a hot stone massage is one of my stress busters but getting one during a week day after work isn’t really going to be a relaxing experience. Consider the massive traffic snarls from Bekasi to Cikarang and that’s more than enough to seek an alternative stress buster. There’s always the trusted foot reflexology session yet sometimes it still doesn’t seem to do the trick. And that’s when I turn to my sweet stress busters. Starbucks is one my watering holes and, thank the universe for such small graces, the one I run to is about a 10-15 cab-ride / 20+ angkot-ride from where I live. Sitting down to a nice hot chocolate drink with whipped cream drizzled with caramel and a chocolate cupcake (reminiscent of the cupcake of all cupcakes, Georgetown cupcake) is truly blissful. The calories might send skinny models and Victoria Beckham –lookalikes into a frenzy but, right now, after decades of a body-image problem, I’m at home with a J Lo – butt and Kim Kardashian – hips.

Sweet fruity Banana Meringue of Coffee Bean

If not Starbucks, I run for succour to The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. I wonder if they’ll still have that new cake that settled finely on my sweet palate –banana meringue cake – that was the cake of the month January. The sweet fruity taste, for me, was almost like a caffeine-kick to my lackadaisical day. A slice of A Chocolate of a Thousand Leaves will definitely do the trick if it’s no longer available.

Milo goodness times two!

The last two things on my list of stress busters are Milo Dinosaur and a bowl of longgan and almond bean curd on shaved ice. The first, Milo Dinosaur (something I picked up from Singapore), puts a nice spin to the ho-hum cold Milo drink. On top of the cold Milo in a very large glass mug is a heap, or two, of Milo for you to eat while drinking Milo. Talk about savouring twice the Milo goodness!  The second one is somewhat a concession for the other very sweet chocolaty stress busters when the guilt feelings are getting little too loud to ignore. It took a while for the taste of longgan to grow on me being a banana-apple-and-occasional Mandarin orange person but when I bit into the little juicy round “balls”, I was hooked. There’s no whipped cream or saccharine – sweet drizzles of caramel or chocolate sauce – so feelings of guilt are nowhere in sight ergo stress is banished.

Refreshing longgan with almond bean curd

[Photography by Alvin Tismo & Liana Garcellano]

A good leche flan doesn’t have bubbles inside it and is made from pure egg yolks, not egg white. I’ve reached a compromise with the protestations of health-conscious people that egg yolks are not good for the cholesterol level of people: you only have a small portion and not all the time. Eating leche flan is a test of self-control, as a huge slab of it on your plate can be too cloying among other things. It’s like eating moon cake – you don’t eat the whole moon cake but only get a quarter or a few slivers of it to enjoy the goodness.

Smooth and silky leche flan from Chow King, Ambassador Mall

My father swears by our late grand-aunt’s recipe -  it’s really the best, bias for family aside – but I discovered leche flan in Jakarta (surprise, surprise!), which doesn’t supplant my grand-aunt’s recipe, but comes in as a formidable second. It’s the leche flan served at the only Chow King outlet at the grand floor of Ambassador Mall in South Jakarta. It’s a sweet ending to a satisfying lunch of chicken and rice.

But the meal at Asia restaurant at Ritz-Carlton, Kuningan, was a nice one so not being able to see ourselves in the elevated mirror didn’t mar our dining experience. My mum and I were laughing at the women’s restroom.

And the lead-like cloud

is not raining life-rain

these are clouds of poisonous gas

which are flying beneath you

those many scarlet cuts

are not flames of lightning

-          written by 22-year-old Livia Klein

 (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

How does one begin to fathom the decimation of a race because, as Albert Einstein once phrased, of a strong fanaticism against the ideals of reason and individual freedom? I was rendered contemplatively silent the moment I entered the industrial-like lift holding my “Identification Card” #2633 for the vicarious journey into the night of the broken glass at the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Entrance to the vicarious journey to the holocaust via the Holocaust Museum

It was years ago when I first learned of the museum when I read a magazine article. The image of the victims’ shoes never left my mind or the dream of walking through the museum to know and bear witness to an atrocity that must never happen again. That wish was all the more galvanised when a student gushed over Adolf Hitler unabashedly on his handsomeness. I was gobsmacked at her brazen confession of hero-worship. How can she focus on his “pulchritude” and overlook the mayhem that Hitler unleashed upon the world? Hitler’s belief that it was mission of the German Reich to “…preserve the German’s most valuable racial elements and raise them to a dominant position” is unjust and unacceptable. For Hitler and cohorts, the Germans and other Nordic people were the superior races while the Slavs, Roma (gypsies) and blacks were inferior. The other enemies of the state were the Communists, social democrats, trade unionists, liberals, pacifists, homosexuals, lesbians (labelled as social deviants), Czechs, Poles, mentally and physically disabled, freemasons and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Ranking the enemies of the state, the Jews occupied the bottom of the ladder rung. They were viewed as dangerous by the Nazis because they lived parasitically off other races and weakened them.

My student was ignorant of the three basic principles of Nazi ideology. First, the leader principle highlighted Hitler as the national saviour and the ultimate source of power. Second, people’s community posited that people should sacrifice themselves for the good of the people. And, third, politically reliability equalled anti-Semitism. To enforce the ideology, Joseph Gebbel and his propaganda ministry, according to the explanation board, controlled media; suppressed freedom of speech; conducted endless rallies, parades, speeches, rituals and sham elections; and distributed radio sets (the “people’s receivers”) for free.

The Identification Card

The Nazi assault began with the burning of the books. Libraries and bookstores were raided by party officials and members in 30 cities across Germany on May 10, 1933. It wasn’t a spontaneous act, detailed the explanation board, but a calculated, coordinated to purify German culture. More than 25,000 books were burned, which included works by authors such as Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud (Jewish); Ernest Hemingway and Helen Keller (American);  and philosophers Bertolt Brecht and Karl Marx (German) and Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky (Russian).

Nazi’s racism translated into a public policy of forced sterilization implemented in January 1934, with young children as one of the targets. One explanation board showed a picture of a young gypsy girl smiling. I wasn’t. She was one of the gypsy girls sterilised. It eventually led to a program of euthanasia that saw the physically and mentally handicapped systematically killed.

Visitors to the museum were reminded of the strict no-photo-rule before boarding the lift. After all, the journey was meant to part the veil of ignorance. Besides there is no need for cameras as the images of the train ride to Auschwitz and the other concentration camps, the experiments conducted on the prisoners, the hard labour, the killings, the poems scribbled, the emaciated forms of the survivors etc are ingrained in the mind forever.

I had forgotten I was on holiday as I walked through the museum: Nazi Assault on the fourth level; Final Solution on the third; and Last Chapter on the second. There were no more boxes of collected shoes; the shoes now filled two huge sections of a hall opposite one another, the smell of leather and the past enveloping the area. Suitcases, scissors and spectacles filled other rooms of the exhibition hall as well as a recreated train car. I only peeked into the train car and immediately felt claustrophobic; I imagined the thousands of people crammed into a single car who endured the long ride to the concentration camps without air to breathe, food and water. Which group was fortunate – the ones who passed on en route to the death camps or the ones who survived only to live in fear of not seeing another day or seeing the lives of their loved ones taken away?

Another room simulated the overcrowded living quarters, each bed stacked on top of each other with barely enough space to move around. In another section was a 3D display, enclosed in glass, of the shower of death re-enacted in Schindler’s List. The sculptor took about three-four years (if I remember correctly) to finish the model that detailed the soldiers dropping the gas pellets into columns of the roof of the showers, and the multitude of people at the entrance of the shower: the uncertainty and fear in following the orders of the soldiers; the nervousness in undressing; and, finally, the agonised screams as the noxious gas filled the “shower room”.

One area was reserved for the voices of the survivors: a visitor had to find an empty spot on the benches in the room, pick up one of the booklets and read through it together with the recordings that played on a loop overhead.

Pictures and words plastered the walls. One told of a man who had to suppress all of his feelings as he went about his work: gathering the belongings of those sent to the gas chamber or killed out in the work field. He couldn’t show any emotion because it would spell his death.

A gentle reminder at the exit of the Holocaust Museum

When the tour finished, I’d forgotten my hunger and grievances against the universe. My cousin and I walked out of the museum in silence. We had a lot to process. I hadn’t even read my “identification card” until now. It told the story of Eva Braun Levine from Lodz, Poland. She was the second daughter of five children born to Jewish parents who worked for her father who dealt in real estate while studying history at a small local university. In 1939 she married her boyfriend Herman and then the Germans invaded Poland. Eva, her husband and her family lived in the ghetto of Piotrkow Trybunalski until November 1944 when all the women were deported to the Ravensbrueck concentration camp in Germany.

“When we got off the train Nazis ‘examined’ our crotches for hidden valuables. The work I did in the camp was so backbreaking that I lost tissue in my spine,” detailed Eva’s identification card.

I wondered if me/she survived. Bracing myself for the answer, I turned to the last page: “From the German concentration camp, the prisoners were evacuated to the Bergen-Belsen Camp as the Allies advanced. Eva was liberated (there) by the British in April 1945. She moved to the United States in 1950.”

Throwing caution to the wind being a possible diabetes candidate coupled with the great possibility of considerable weight gain, the sweet crepes were the unanimous choices, but the “healthier” ones, meaning the ones without scoops of vanilla, chocolate or coffee ice cream. Le Magnifiqué was the top order with its lip-smacking blend of banana, Nutella, whipped cream and almonds (PhilP201.50). Paired with a cup of hot green tea and mint, it was a perfect coup de grace to a wonderful lunch earlier on at Banana Leaf, and the mini reunion.

Oui! Le Magnifique crepe is chocolatey good!

An alternative to ice cream is not in dearth either in Trinoma. One of my newest find – courtesy of my folks – is the yoghurt of The White Hat (www.thewhitehat.com.ph), its white kiosk fast becoming ubiquitous in the malls (I spotted one in SM Megamall). One can take the yoghurt naked, or sans toppings (PhilP90), or choose from the several yoghurt combos.  I opted to dig my spoon into a regular-size cup of a combo called The Monkey’s Hat (Phil125), which is a sweet mélange of regular yoghurt, brownies, bananas and swirls of caramel sauce.

Go for The Monkey's Hat at The White Hat

Get your fill of fries at Everything with Fries

That eating places in Singapore are never lacking and the concepts are not commonplace are well-known facts. Having established itself as a master of change, visitors and ilk have, by chance, find themselves uttering “Excite me Singapore” and expecting the Garden City not to fail them. While some places merit a raised eyebrow, some are getting thumbs-up signs and word-of-mouth advertising. In the latest gab fest with my gal-pals, we stumbled upon a place hooked on French fries at the renovated top floor of Bugis Junction. Everything with Fries, which is located opposite the cinema complex, boasted various fries’ flavours and hefty servings. My bowl of regular fries was part of the crusted salmon that I ordered while my gal-pal completed her Thousand-Layer Cake with garlic fries.

Cake and fries combo - give it a try!

The name lived up to its name as the fries proved several notches higher in taste and quality from the fast-food type fries or the ones in the frozen section of supermarkets. The bottles of ketchup and mayonnaise remained untouched because there was simply no need for them. Nibbling on the fries were more than enough to fill one up.

Yes - have your salmon with salad and fries

For the other gab fest with another gal-pal, we followed her suggestion and opted for a brunch place on Middle Road. Making reservation was crucial because the place was always packed to the rafters (even during rainy days I discovered) and there was no guarantee you’ll ever get a table even if you patiently waited outside. Housed within the art venue Sculpture Square, Artichoke is the most popular brunch place at the moment in the city and prides itself in offering healthy meals in portions that fill one up.

Book a table at Artichoke so you can have your brunch

Healthy and hearty no-milk scrambled egg with mushroom for brunch

An interesting feature that I found was the willingness of the staff to accommodate requests like the one I made, which was not to put milk in my scrambled egg with mushroom. The gracious chef even went up to the table to explain what he was going to do, earning him a newfound respect in me. I discovered that it wasn’t that easy to do; it meant that he had to make my one order separately from the huge batch of scrambled egg-with-milk and that was a slight aberration on the work flow in the very busy kitchen. The taste was impeccable – my plate was clean and I wasn’t hankering for anything, not even an after-meal coffee. But it doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t try Artichoke’s cappuccino: she downed two glasses.

Cappuccino by Artichoke

Get ready to dig into caramel goodness with Estrel's caramel cake!

Estrel’s, formerly Estrella’s, is as traditional as Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve. It has graced my family’s dining table countless of times for any occasion – birthday, wedding anniversary, graduation and other successes; in all honesty, we never really needed an occasion to order Estrel’s. Every day was a potential Estrel’s day.

Its business has, undeniably, grown and getting through the phone line to place an order is a test of endurance. One must be determined and persevere to speak with someone to place that order, which I did shortly after Christmas. Lucky for me! They were, to preserve the quality of their products, were limiting the orders they were taking. They closed shops for Christmas and were closing operation on the Eve of New Year and New Year’s Day. Estrel’s does have an array of other made-to-order pastries such as apple squares, leche flan, food for the gods and cookies, but I’m not one to question the wisdom of its stellar seller, caramel cake.

Estrel’s only sells whole cakes. One would greatly be disappointed if she was looking to buy only slices of Estrel’s like this lady who was in the store when I was there to pick up my 8-inch caramel cake with caramel filling (PhilP600).

“Wala ho kaming slices, ma’am,” said one of the store attendants as the lady perused their steel racks. “Pwede pa ho kayong mag-order nang whole (cake).”

Are you ready for your next slice of caramel cake?

Slices of Estrel’s? It was absolutely sacrilegious I thought, as I paid for my cake and made my way to the car. Clearly the woman didn’t understand the wisdom of Estrel’s Caramel Cake. As I said earlier on, one slice is not enough. Try and see how futile resistance is against the caramel cake.

Estrel’s

54 Scout Tobias corner Limbaga

Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines

Tel:  +632 372 2965

Ferragamo's popular footwear invention

Walking past the wedges, you’re in front of the entrance to Titanic: The Artefact Exhibition in seconds where you are greeted by a young usher volunteer who hands you a boarding pass go the R.M.S. Titanic, but forgets to mention the significance of the card. The concept was similar to the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC where I was handed an identification card before entering the exhibit. I had to walk in the shoes of the victim of the holocaust. This time I was walking in the shoes of 50-year-old Mrs. George Dunton Widener (a.k.a. Eleanor Elkins) from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was accompanied by her husband, George, and her son, Harry, and their two servants, Edwin Keeping and Emily Gieger. Her boarding pass had X on the 1^stclass cabin box.

It's a two-hour plus vicarious journey on R.M.S. Titanic

The whole party were returning from a trip to London and Paris where Eleanor had bought furniture for a new home and a trousseau for their daughter, while George conducted business. Harry, meanwhile, had bought rare books. On the evening of April 14, the day before the ship sank, she and her husband hosted a dinner honouring Captain Smith in the ship’s luxurious Á La Carte restaurant.

Pictures weren’t allowed – much like the policy at the Holocaust Museum – except for the official photos taken by the exhibitors at the recreated bow of the ship at the entrance. Yes, you can, for a moment, be like Jack and Rose in the movie Titanic. Another photo spot is the recreated Grand Staircase where Jack and Rose met towards the end of the film. Other sections of the ship recreated were the corridors of the first class cabins, the third class cabins and the long Promenade Deck under a starry night. A piece of an “iceberg” was in the Iceberg Gallery. Almost everyone who touched it didn’t feel the chill until after reading the explanation – the passengers didn’t die of drowning but the cold waters, which were colder than the iceberg that that ship struck.

The gravity of the tragedy didn’t hit until one got to the section that showcased the moment before they struck the iceberg and after they struck the iceberg. The crew didn’t see the iceberg and couldn’t have seen it because there were no binoculars in the ship – they forgot to put one in the flurry of getting the ship ready for the journey. That historical fact felt like a cold slap on the face. The next slap came after reading that the number of lifeboats was cut down because, if I remember what I read correctly, the owners didn’t want the top deck cluttered. The ship only carried lifeboats meant for 1, 178 people. However, the small number of lifeboats only formed part of the reason why many died. According to the explanation boards, majority of the passengers, especially the first-class cabin passengers, strongly believed in the Titanicbeing unsinkable because they were designed by experienced engineers using advance technology, and stuck to their guns.

Gigantic picture-posters of Titanic outside the exhibition

Moving to the section where they displayed the “rescued” belongings of passengers hammered in the thought that kept running through my mind – “They could have survived.” The belongings are numerous and the stories behind them heartbreaking. I couldn’t forget the bottles of perfumes that one passenger was hoping to launch in America when he found a buyer. The bottles were still intact and so was the heady smells of the fragrances. One passenger was “lucky” – he was kidnapped so he wasn’t able to board Titanic. Meanwhile, his friend guarded his belongings and waited for him until the ship sailed and sank.

Laying down the floorboards of the ship

Others were victims of fate – a family was transferred to Titanic because of the coal strike. Most of the ships couldn’t travel because all the coal available was siphoned by Titanic, which used tons of coal per few hours. Captain Smith’s fate took on a macabre twist. He promised his family that Titanic would be his last voyage.

A section in the exhibition gives viewers a chance to look for the names of the people on their boarding passes. Did one survived or perished? Suddenly, you’d hear people shouting, “I survived!” and off they’d walk to finish the exhibition. Like the ones who perished, the others were silent. I, or Mrs. George Dunton Widener, survived, but her husband wasn’t so lucky.

*The exhibition runs until April 29, 2012 and is open from 10am to 10pm daily. Last admission is at 9pm. Ticket is S$24 (adult).For more information, visit www.marinabaysands.com/ArtScienceMuseum.

Climbing out of the pit of gloominess compelled me to push negative thoughts out of my mind every time I woke up, as living in the past can be exhausting. Next, I kept myself busy, focusing on my job and the things I enjoy doing and, like a mantra, reciting the line “Just enjoy, just enjoy”.

While I do enjoy reading, I decided my “Just enjoy” mantra should involve more people and doing things together. It started with having a fun Saturday night out in Kemang one, the street in Jakarta littered with clubs, bars and restaurants that stay open until the wee hours of the morning. Monaco Bar & Club was highly recommended by one of my gal-pals and so Monaco it was to unwind and enjoy the weekend. Located at Saberro House Building on the ground floor, there were a few customers inside when we arrived. The two-storey bar had a minimalist touch to it with the second floor affording clients a clear view of the band playing against the glass window. Two bars figured prominently on their respective floors, first and second, which were bathed in mellow lights while semi-bright lights cloaked the two red high-back semi-circle sofas on the second floor. Service was fast and friendly; the voices of the band wafted mellifluously in the air-conditioned air.

Good ambience and cocktails at Monaco Bar & Club

Next was watching a film – and digging into a huge container of caramel popcorn – after a day’s work. Indonesia, after blocking Hollywood films for several months, has been screening such films, which filled movie places like Cinema XXI and BlizMegaplex to the rafters with movie-goers long deprived of Hollywood blockbusters. Antonio Bandera’s Puss in Boots was a rib-tickler that stayed the stresses of the workday in another dimension. The Adventures of Tin-Tin was a wonderful find – it certainly had the Spielberg touch of continuous action and car chases – and we stayed glued to the storyline from beginning to end (not sure if the other people understood some of the jokes). We thought Breaking Dawn would be packed with screaming girls but we were mistaken. There were a few watchers much to our surprise but, on hindsight, the die-hard fans would either have trooped to the cinema on the first day of showing while we saw a few days later. It was a slow flick and I kept wishing to fast-forward it.

It's well priced combo: Rp35,000 for a huge caramel popcorn and two drinks

Last, but not the least, was walking through memory lane of the fun things I did during the school break such as indulging my huge sweet tooth. I’ve since cut down on my sugar intake so I can only peruse the photos of the tantalizing cakes and pastries that I dug into in such as the Kit Kat cake from Rosine’s in Monterey, California. I have a sweet tooth but even that slice was a challenge I couldn’t really win.

Which sweet treat to dig into?

There are still days when a dark cloud just sits over my head and I can’t do anything about it. I don’t struggle against it anymore – it’s absolutely exhausting and pointless – and just ride that wave of dreariness until it dissipates and the sun finds an opening to shine through. It also helps that I keep reciting my personal mantra: “Just enjoy”.

Just enjoy - have a slice of KitKat cake

Dumbo was resurrected at the National Museum of American History, as part of the rotating exhibition of the National Treasures of Popular Culture section located on the third floor, west side. The Dumbo on display was the Flying Elephant ride or Dumbo Car that flew at Disneyland several decades ago.

He's adorable as ever

On display alongside the adorable pachyderm at that time I visited, which were the months of August – September, was the Cat woman costume seen in the Batman TV series that starred Adam West. While the rest waited for the two crime-fighters to defend Gotham city, I was waiting for Cat woman to purr her way into the city and wreak havoc. The role of the sexy feline baddie was played by Julie Newmar who was very svelte to have slipped into the black body suit that was matched with long black gloves with metallic claws stitched to each finger. Her eyebrow-raising outfit was completed by a gold mesh belt with a medallion of a roaring lion and headband. At a young age, I felt a certain affinity with the dynamic duo’s nemesis because of her confidence, derring-do and unruffled demeanour under pressure. Cat woman made intelligence a sexy trait in women.

Sexy, strong and smart - that's Catwoman

Another icon of my childhood that was on display was the group of the early Muppets, Sam and Friends. Kermit was already a part of the group. That little green frog filled my weekends with laughter and great fun with The Muppet Show, not to forget the witticisms of Kermit and Miss Piggy, Gonzo and Fuzzy the Bear. ^{[Aside: That really worked wonders in mastering the English language.]}

Kermit in his pre-Miss Piggy days

The last three icons I looked at were not part of my generation, but their memories lived on because I’d heard their names from my parents and their friends during their gab sessions and perused them in magazines and books.  First was Judy Garland that I always remembered as the mother of chanteuse Liza Minnelli and who starred as Dorothy in the movie adaptation of the children’s book The Wizard of Oz. I only got to watch the 1938 movie this year after I got a friend to get me a DVD, and now I understand why Garland’s name was on everyone’s lips. Ignore her drinking binge and just focus on her singing, which was awe-inspiring. She made singing seem so effortless and that put me on ease, as the worse feeling that an audience can feel is for the singer to bust a vocal cord anytime in the middle of her song.  On display at the museum was not a wax figurine of Garland but what she wore at the blockbuster movie – the famed ruby slippers that were made out of carefully sewn sequins. ^{[Aside: For my school’s play version of the movie, our ingenious set design and props team opted to sprinkle red glitter on the shoes.]}

You can't miss Dorothy in these shoes!

The last icon was the late Julia Child, TV’s legendary chef. On exhibit until fall at the museum was her entire kitchen – enclosed in glass – that included the gadgets she kept in the drawers and cabinets, as well as the copper pots, pans, appliances and even the sink. It was if the word passion was written in big red letters on the walls. I could just imagine the vibe that surrounded the kitchen as she whipped up easy-to-make French dishes, which, dovetailed with passion and determination, easily made her the undisputed TV chef. Close on the heels of that thought was the number of hours she spent perfecting her culinary skills, which probably numbered around 10,000. That’s the number, according to author Malcolm Gladwell, which spelled the difference between an expert and a mediocre. Bill Gates and Beatles clocked that many hours in perfecting their skills.

The haven of chefs - the kitchen of Julia Child

Ready to cook?

I know there are still a lot of those icons that figured well in my childhood. I can’t really remember them at this point, but I’ll take it as a sign that I need to travel again to the museum to see their latest instalment. Would they have anything from the Electric Company show?