All I Can Handle

I have heard of the restaurants in Poblacion a few times from vlogs in YouTube but have never been to any of them until now. Poblacion is a neighborhood in Makati filled with hotels, spas, bars and restaurants. My friend, who was visiting Manila for a meeting, told me that she wanted to eat at a restaurant called The Filling Station because she used to eat there when she was still working in Manila. She was one of the many office workers in Manila who trooped back to their hometowns when the lockdowns hit and work from home became a thing. We went to Filling Station on a late afternoon on a Saturday. The guard outside had a radio that he used to check if there were tables available inside. Fortunately, we were able to get seats right away.  We were greeted with retro decor as soon as we entered Filling Station. That was when I realized that I had seen this restaurant featured in a vlog before. If I remember correctly, the theme of the vlog was "Americans eating at an American Dine

When local news networks posted an article in 2020 that the central bank was going to start actively trading its gold reserves , I saw someone in the comments section ask if the Philippine peso had now been turned into a fiat currency. I was very amused because the entire world has been running on fiat currency since the 1970s when the US went off the gold standard. But I really should not have been surprised. When I was in high school, a classmate of mine asked our economics teacher why we couldn't just print money. Our teacher answered that we needed gold to do so. At that time, I had already read Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad so I knew that her information was outdated. She was probably twice my age back then so I'm pretty sure we were already off the gold standard when she attended college. A gold standard means that currency is either convertible to gold or can only be issued based on a country's gold reserves. Prior to the 1970s, the Philippines was on a do