All I Can Handle

A week ago, the first ever gold bars minted in the Philippines were introduced by Cebuana Lhullier. They all come at a steep premium with the lightest gold bar priced at four thousand pesos. Currently, the spot price for 18k gold is at 2,668.90 pesos. One-gram bars will have the greatest utility in a situation where we need to use gold for bartering. Gold bars that are higher in grams may be used for one-time, big-time purchases but are typically for wealth preservation (savings). Hopefully, more pawnshops will mint their own gold bars so that the prices would become cheaper. Amid the uncertainties in the world today, demand for gold from the public has been very high with HSBC becoming the first to offer tokenized gold and Costco reporting gold bars to be sold out within hours. News articles like these are a tell-tale sign that we may be approaching a time where gold will be remonetized by the government.  Only a week from being introduced and already the first ever gold bars minted i

I'm not sure if there is a proper term in Tagalog for this state of coconut cream but one of the popular brands of coconut cream in a pouch claims this: “nagmamantika” when cooked. What I did not know and what they don't tell you is that there is an additional process to turning coconut cream or gata into oil. I accidentally found out the secret to this when I watched a video that was not at all related to cooking but where the vlogger said that he asked his mom how to turn canned coconut cream into oil and apparently, the secret is not stirring the coconut cream and boiling it until it turns into oil . This reminded me of another cooking trick that I learned as an adult here in Manila. At home, vinegar in Adobo is just for flavor but when you search for Adobo recipes online, they use copious amounts of vinegar. What they don't tell you in these recipes is that you are not supposed to stir the adobo upon adding the vinegar. You have to boil it until it is cooked. Apparently

Today, I received a text message from Smart asking me to visit a link to be able to receive special offers.  Upon checking the link out, it turned out to be a page where users can tweak their privacy settings. It wasn't presented clearly so a lot of users would probably ignore the text and unknowingly have their privacy compromised.  Create a Personal Profile about you  Consent to analyze data about you, such as the websites and apps that you may visit and use and your location information (historical and real-time location), to get a deeper understanding of your personal needs and interests.  The following options were enabled by default (very sneaky). If you are a Smart user, I recommend visiting the link to understand what your options are in relation to your privacy. For digital natives like myself with a lot of transactions being done online such as banking and shopping, perhaps a VPN would be in order.

Since I don't have a job and I am glued to my phone almost all day, I am able to be on top of all kinds of news happening globally. Last year, when news came out about a cooking oil shortage in Indonesia and a looming  sugar shortage in the country, I decided to stock up on cooking oil and sugar. True enough, after a few months, the prices of cooking oil and sugar doubled. Today, we are hearing news about India, Vietnam, and Thailand, three of the biggest rice exporters in the world, restrict its rice exports. Is it time to stock up on rice? No less than the president himself has said that rice prices will go up even as the country prepares to import rice. http://www.cnnphilippines.com/news/2023/7/30/marcos-rice-importation-el-nino-egay.html We should all position ourselves in such a way that whether we are right or wrong, we do not lose.  I am old enough to remember the rice crisis of 2009 when overnight, the price of rice shot up. I have a feeling we will be experiencing the sa

Visiting the Ayala Museum in 2023 was not something I planned but a few days ago, I received an invitation to a sponsored event at the museum which gave me an opportunity to visit it once more. I've been to the Ayala Museum twice in the past but never since the lockdowns and its recent renovation. We started with a guided tour of the Juan Luna painting “Hymen, oh Hyménée!” (Roman Wedding). This painting has not been seen since 1889.  Contrary to popular belief, it wasn't "Spoliarium" that launched Juan Luna's career but “Hymen, oh Hyménée!”. The painting was an entry to the World Exposition in Paris in 1889 and won bronze. It was at that same fair that the Eiffel Tower of Paris was unveiled. What sets this painting apart from the Spoliarium is its festive theme which is in contrast to the dark and morbid one of Spoliarium. Looking at the painting from different angles will make you appreciate the technique of the painter even more. The painting is owned by Jaime P