SM San Pablo City: Things That Customers Should Be Aware Of

Before the SM City was built, San Pablo City is a small town with lots of small stores and malls. Having a mall that will provide an easy access to all things that we need sans going to the Metro would have made it a perfect place to live. You see, San Pablo is a peaceful city. Not a zero crime zone but still peaceful enough to raise kids and stay during weekends. The only issue that keeps people from staying here for good is the transportation within the city. 

photo from here

  An honest tricycle driver would charge you P20-25 if you are going to the subdivisions from the bayan or vice versa.  We have some suki that we trust and they are always happy to have us as passengers because we are their regular clients. They charge us P25 when we give them larger bills and when I have exact money with me, I give them P30, the P5 is a tip.

With the SM City around, we were pretty excited to do some shopping. The only issue that keeps us on patronizing the other supermarket, PureGold, is that the they have a better public transportation terminal than SM. And the fact that it is very far from the main business district of the city. 

Here are the things that customers should know:

1. If you are coming from the bayan area, tricycle driver will charge you P20 to bring you to SM. You can take the jeepney (SM-Bayan route) and pay for the regular fare of P8. 

2. There are two atms at SM (currently): BDO and Chinabank. The Chinabank can be found found near the escalator. Both charges P10 per transaction for other bank's atm.

3. They have terminal  on the right side of their building (if you are facing the main entrance). You can choose between jeepney ride and tricycle ride. If you choose the tricycle, you will not know how much they will charge you when you get to your destination. As far as legal fare is concern, they will have to charge you P25 for special trip plus an additional amount per additional kilometer. If they are honest workers and follow this, they will not be asking you for more than P50. 

4. Just to give you an idea of how much a P30 will get you: if you ride a jeepney from San Pablo to UP LosBanos, you will pay P30. That far. Compare that to P30 from bayan to your respective subdivision.. 

5. Puregold sometimes offer free rides to bayan from their store. 

6. To be fair with SM, SM Bicutan and other SM stores offers free rides as well.

photos from here

My issue here is not about whether SM gives their customers a free ride or not. I was charged P60 from SM to our home. The P60 is already a round trip fare for someone going to UP Los Banos and back. It means passing through several towns like Bae (or Bay), Calaun, Wawa (not sure if I missed other towns). It would also mean a roundtrip fare from San Pablo to Sto. Tomas Palengke via aircon bus that offers a free wi-fi!

I have the money to pay for my fare from San Pablo to Manila everyday, and what pisses me off is that the driver of that tricycle swindled me by overcharging and he reasoned that the SM management is charging them at the terminal! Is it true? I think, the management should regulate the fare from the terminal, just like how they do it with the taxis on metro manila.

I encourage you to buy somewhere else if you do not have any means of transportation to bring home your groceries because those swindlers of a driver at the SM terminal will probably overcharge you.

I already emailed SM about it and hopefully they will do something. If not, I will encourage others to boycott their services because according to the swindler/driver, it was the SM terminal that is burdening them with payment hence they have to overcharge us. At the back of my mind, I know that that as*h*le of a driver is lying at the skin of his teeth but still, SM have to do something to stop these swindlers. 

About the driver, karma is just around the corner. Let's hope his swindling days will be over soon. 

Thinking of Homemade Halo-Halo

There will be some changes on my workload soon. I will probably be starting to work on the new company before the summer is over. There are three offers that I received but recently, I turned down the consultancy job because I realized that working on a Saturday means we have to squeeze in all the activities like shopping, spending quality time together and visiting friends/family in one day. Working on a Saturday is not for me. 

I hope that it will be easier to choose between the two offers but choosing the higher position
is easier if only they keep you away from the guessing game for too long. I just want to have a more focus type of work. To earn, to show them what I have to help the company. Anything else aside from that, I would ditch because I am a very private person.

♥○♥○♥○♥○♥○♥

Now, on the food stuff. I love halo-halo.

image from here

It is a sweet concoction that is available year round on some local fast food and restaurant here in the country. Although it is available yea round, the best time to have them is during summer. And the best place to buy them is from the neighborhood temporary halo-halo stand. If you are familiar with lemonade stands, then this is the lemonade stand version here. You only get to see them in your neighborhood during summer and this is the venue to see old friends and new people living in the community because no one at least once in the summertime, can resist buying a glass of halo-halo. It usually cost around Php 20 (too expensive, actually for that price). If you prefer the quality controlled ones like ChowKing's halo-halo, you will shell out around 50pesos.

If you prefer less textured type of cold sweets and cheaper, you can opt for the ice candy. 

image from here

My favorite flavors are mango and chocolate. 

or 

the all time favorite of my age {and above}, the 

Ice Scrambles

 

you can buy them on the streets, usually on small makeshift stands near grade schools. The good thing about innovation is that there are business-minded people who finds the opportunity to sell them up-scaled. You can now buy them at the malls costing around 8-10 pesos for the plain one. 

What is your favorite summer food/sweets?

 

Homemade Eye Candy

Its going to be a cold summer here in the PI and I love choco + marshmallow combo! I found this homemade recipe today and will probably make one over the weekend:

HOMEMADE MARSHMALLOW

image and recipe from  here.

recipe inventory checklist:

3 packs unflavored gelatin - will buy

granulated sugar - check

light corn syrup - will buy

kosher salt - will buy

vanilla extract - check

confectioners sugar - check

I am a fan of Apartment Therapy. I have been waiting for their small/cool contest this year. Here are some of the early entries at the moment {my favorites so far}.
 
SMALL/COOL 2011

i ♥ white and black motif

 

i ♥ white kitchen with a dash of color 

sans the huge sofas, I ♥ the built-ins.

Special Note:

These past few weeks has been a very busy for me, with job hunting and such. We are looking forward to finishing our payment for the house so that we can start moving in. For the meantime, be inspired by my internet finds.

Basic Pancake Recipe {from Scratch}

We are not into baking lately. 

We have lots of baking supplies but too tired to do some baking {or in my case, asking the hubby to do some baking}. 

But I have been craving for a pancake lately since we always miss the morning visit to one of the fast food chains here because there are lots of things to do on a Saturday. 

So we made some pancake from scratch...err, from what we have in the kitchen. 

We used a basic recipe for this delicious pancake:

HOW TO MAKE PANCAKES 

(for 6-8 people)

You will need the following:

1 and 1/2 cups all purpose flour

3 and a half teaspoon baking powder

1 tablespoon salt

3 tablespoon sugar (or more, if you do not have honey)

2 eggs

3 tablespoon vegetable oil or butter (we used virgin olive oil)

Directions:

1. Mix all dry ingredients. 

Then add milk, egg and oil (or butter, if you prefer). 

Mix until smooth.

2. Heat an frying pan on medium heat (add very small amount of oil). 

Turn to low heat when oil is hot enough (on my weird way, test the oil temperature by putting the hand over the pan five inches high, if you can feel heat then it is ready). 

Scoop around 1/4 cup of batter on the pan. turn when sides are firm but not burnt (this is the indication one side is already cooked). 

Serve hot. 

If only there is a honey or maple syrup...

I am linking this to this link party:

Check ME Out Saturday week 53

Coffee, Cookies and Creative Juice

If you read this blog, you will notice some changes. 

My target of changing jobs by the start of April is a work in progress. Sending out application letters and resume has been a difficult decision but a task that I have been trying to squeeze in everyday. 

I am not referring to day job alone. Plan B is to become a stay-at-home wife and online-based writer. So this is the cause of the series of additions in my blog.

The most obvious change is the header. 

 If you know me, you will probably guessed it right.

I did not use any software or complicated applications. 

That header was created using Microsoft Powerpoint application and the clip arts are from Microsoft as well.

It was not  difficult to create the theme as well. 

It takes time to come up with a color scheme though. 

That is the hardest part of creating the banner. The rest is just a matter of saving it {I used Microsoft 2007} as a jpeg or png file.

I am tempted to promise a tutorial but there are too many promises that were never delivered by yours truly. 

So no promises of any tutorial here.

Hope you are having a great Friday. 

{I will blog later about the other blog renovations done here}