Camwhoring at the Banana Booth

Before, there was Neoprint (which thankfully came at a time when I was in my teens so it was okay to pose in front of those pink machines and look crappy) and there was Foto-me, that instant ID picture taker.  Sadly, however, Cebu doesn't seem to have a Foto-me, so there goes one opportunity to be a camwhore.

Banana Book at the 4th Level of Ayala Center Cebu now offers a better alternative.  Enter Banana Booth. 

Yup, it's a digital version of Foto-me.  At P95, you get two copies of your pic column composed of 4 different poses. Like Foto-me, it gives you around 5 seconds to think of how to pose next and if you're the type who likes to have coordinated poses with friends, then you have 5 seconds to deliberate and pose as you like.

Banana Book actually offers other services for the vain: photo books, photo magnets, photo bracelets, among others.  You can customize ref magnets with pictures of you doing different poses, making different faces, wearing different colored shirts. In fact, you can have the Banana Booth print cut into two -- for the separate columns -- and get a ref magnet (the same size and length of one column) from them for P30. You only need to stick the print into the magnet. 

Banana booth pictures come in sepia, full color, or black and white.

If you have a little one, getting her to stop looking upwards (at the camera instead of the screen) might be a challenge though.

A Banana Booth has also been spotted at the occasional bazaar at the Asiatown IT Park.

You can also cram the banana booth.

This post was written by A.

REDiscovering RED Ribbon

Back when I was still with my old company, the money was not really that flowing and we had to scrimp on dining out.  Red Ribbon was usually a treat that we'd reserve for Sunday lunch (and almost always the Sunday after payday).

We used to take the baby and hie off to Country Mall to enjoy an hour or two eating whatever Red Ribbon had cooked for us.  Char.  And I say it's a treat because it cost us a day's worth of wages to eat there.  That Red Ribbon routine came to a halt when we moved to Lapu-Lapu City.  Other than that, I really don't know why we stopped eating there even if we spend almost every weekend at SM or Ayala, which both have Red Ribbon branches, given that a meal there costs lower than the meals we have at other places.

Fast forward a couple of years later and we found ourselves in line for a Red Ribbon meal.  And so, it was time we REDiscovered RED Ribbon.

Red Ribbon now has cake shakes.  And it's perfect for the summer heat.  I got  the Chocolate version:

It really could have used some added flavor, but it was ICE COLD and that's all that mattered to my parched throat.  

Of course, we just have to order their chicken lollipop...

...which was -- and always will be -- a favorite of ours.  The kids (our three-year-old imp and our niece) shared the plateful of their good-old spaghetti that came with the chicken.

And since it has been roughly two years since we ate at Red Ribbon, we tried out two things on their meals menu that was new to us. One was this Chicken and mushroom dish (for me):

and their tocino meal (for the wife):

Of course, what's Red Ribbon without cake? So we ordered a slice of Tiramisu Cake with one of the meals. Delectable.

All in all, the meals and the drinks for two parched adults and two equally parched kids, were satisfying.  And they totaled LESS than PHP500.  Not bad.  I think we'd eat at Red Ribbon more from now on.

This post was written by A.