Spidey

Netnet Camomot

KUYA J opened at SM CDO Downtown Premier on Thursday last week. And—Surprise! Surprise!—no need for this resto to have a soft opening. It hit the ground running on its first day.

There are newly opened restos that could test your patience—some dishes on the menu are not available, and the available ones are blah. Add to that the waiters who don’t know the dishes’ names, and whose attention can only be caught by you jumping up and down on a chair. Or table. Or the resto’s counter right beside the cash register.

Kuya J, on the other hand, was running like a champion basketball team on its first day. Each waiter was alert, attentive, with one even advising us to drink hot water after ingesting the yummiest crispy pata, something to do with hot water pushing the cholesterol to down under—no, not Australia.

We also tried the baked scallops, tuna belly, mongo soup, and mango cheesecake.

And, no, J doesn’t refer to Jericho Rosales, he’s merely the resto’s ambassador.

I always order baked scallops whenever it’s in a resto’s menu, and Kuya J’s version is the creamiest so far, the kind that flows down both sides of your neck. If Gina Lopez were to comment on that, I’m sure she’d say, Wooooo!

The Cebu-based resto is finally in CDO, and here’s the Cagayanon desperately sipping cups and cups of hot water, not exactly guilty over feasting on the crispy pata.

After dinner, we rushed to the cinema for Spidey. Only to find out that the tickets we bought weeks ago, won’t work for us this time because the time slot and cinema we picked had morphed into a block screening for the movie. Now, why would the ticket counter sell tickets at regular prices if the cinema had been reserved for the block screening? That’s the question. The ticket counter lady explained everything to us, but with the crispy pata and baked scallops still flowing deep in our veins, all we could think of was, We bought these tickets weeks ago to get the best seats at this time slot, and here we are now, fighting for those seats. What the…?

After attempting to transfer us to side seats, the same lady solved the problem eventually and fast—that is, if the usual Pinoy pace is your gauge, that was fast. We were able to watch the movie in another cinema but on the center seats that we initially reserved for the first cinema.

No one wants to be stressed right before watching a movie. But that happened to us and I hope it won’t happen again. We forgot to buy popcorn, no thanks to the confusion. A Spidey movie is a popcorn movie—something to munch on while watching the young superhero swing around New York. Oh, well.

Like any Marvel film, Spidey requires waiting till the end for the credits scene. This one has two, so, you have to sit and stay inside the cinema after everyone else has quit waiting.

A friend commented that we were “downgrading” from Director’s Club for “Wonder Woman” and Mega Screen for “Transformers: The Last Knight” to a regular cinema for Spidey. Well, “Wonder Woman” was definitely a “Director’s Club” movie.

Meanwhile, the Cagayanon now has more choices for his movie-viewing pleasure: the two SMs, Limketkai, Centrio, and Gaisano. Except for SM City CDO which is located uptown, the rest of these cinemas are in one neighborhood, so close to each other, which may inspire you to ask, Friends mo?

A friend now prefers watching movies at the uptown SM where there’s less competition for seats. She watched “Transformers” two weekends ago when she invited me to watch it again. I said, That would be my third time! I don’t think third time’s a charm for this “Transformers.”

Watching these movies makes us wish transformers and superheroes can save Marawi. But Mark Twain once said, “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.”

Some displaced Marawians are now buying houses elsewhere, outside of Marawi, otherwise, they may have to wait for years for the government’s reconstruction to be complete. It has been more than a month, time to move forward.

Leyte also has to move forward after an earthquake hit the province last Thursday. Obviously, a natural disaster couldn’t wait for a man-made disaster to be over. But has this earthquake allowed us to see what makes it different from the siege? Hmmm.