Carnitine (L-Carnitine)

According to this site...

Carnitine is a nutrient that helps the body turn fat into energy. It is produced by the body in the liver and kidneys and stored in the skeletal muscles, heart, brain, etc.

Usually, the body can make all the carnitine it needs. Some people, however, may be deficient in carnitine because their bodies cannot make enough carnitine or transport it into tissues so it can be used. Some other conditions, such as angina or intermittent claudication, can also cause insufficient carnitine in the body, as can some medications.

Here in the Philippines, L-Carnitine is widely marketed as a weight loss supplement. Check out the video. Bottled iced tea is as popular as canned soft soft drinks here, if not, maybe even more popular than those sodas. Iced Tea brands included L-Carnitine in their drinks and claim drinking their products regularly will help you slim down faster, with the help of proper diet and exercise. I've been drinking one of these for some time now and I was surprised one day at the office when my colleagues told me that I am losing weight! I was like - "What?!" Yeah maybe it's because of L-Carnitine. I still have a lot more weight to lose, let's see how good L-Carnitine is then.

Eating at the Office

I really thank God for having generous colleagues. If the alignment of stars are right, someone treats us for lunch. Like last time they bought these:

Pancit Palabok, Pizza and Chocolate Mousse cake. Pancit Palabok is a noodle dish topped with shrimp, a few small meat pieces, egg slices, chopped spring onions, toasted garlic, chicharon and a special sauce that is accountable for the yellowish color. There are a lot of variations, actually. The Pancit Palabok was from Goldilocks and it was drenched in sauce but I liked it so much! The sauce was light but flavorful. There's pizza of course. Everyone loves pizza. This one is from Pizza Hut. Bah! Shakey's, Yellow Cab, Greenwich, Mr. Mappy, etc. name it, for as long as it's pizza, I'll eat it. The last one is Chocolate Mousse Cake from Goldilocks again. It was soft and creamy but not too sweet. Someone divided it into several small slices so I took all the corner parts, haha!

Anyway, change topic.

I sometimes don't eat breakfast in the morning so upon arrival here in the office, I stop by a convenience store and I buy these:

Funloops mini donuts. Just chocolate covered, choco-centered donuts. I love munching on these and my favorite is the peanut butter variant. I also made a cup of coffee from our scary-looking coffee maker. Why scary, you ask? It sometimes operate on it's own and emits steamed milk! What more if it starts shooting coffee beans around. Anyway, the concoction turned out to be super bitter despite the fact that I already added two small packs of brown sugar. So I added a lot of milk so I had this:

Haha, looks weird. Change topic, again. We had our lunch out one day at Gerri's Grill so I'll just place these pictures here.

Sizzling Bangus (Milkfish), Hills of rice, Fish stew in Miso Soup, Fried Chicken and French Fries, Sizzling Sisig, and Iced Tea. All were delicious and filling. This is actually one of our favorite restaurants, we dine in big groups and have a good time laughing and taking pictures.

Hap Chan Chinese Food

The restaurant is called Hap Chan. After attending mass, we went here for lunch. A few minutes after our arrival there was a power power outage. We were already sitting comfortably when the waitress approached and told us that their machine used to cook food was not available since it runs on electricity, so we decided to wait 5 minutes and see if everything will return back to normal. In Chinese restaurants they serve tea before a meal so we sipped on some light tea. We already finished the whole teapot and still, lights were off so we told the waitress that we'll just look for another place and thanked her for the free tea. Of course it was just a joke ^^. Moments later, power went back so we went ahead and placed our orders..

The drinks came up first we had lemonade, soya milk, iced tea and four seasons. Their lemonade lacks zest but I liked their iced tea. Here in the Philippines, iced tea is like the fast food drink of almost all chains. Their version was very unique, I am a tea enthusiast and I can really say that their iced tea is brewed from real tea leaves not from powder and I like it.

The drinks were followed by these:

From the top, starting from the left picture - breaded shrimp, sweet and sour fish fried rice, pork steak, tofu with sesame seeds and garlic broccoli. The breaded shrimp was different but delicious, breading had no bread crumbs and the shrimp is steamed, not fried! I don't know how they did it but it was really good! The pork sweet and sour fish and pork steak were also a taste of heaven, what I like about most about Asian food is the fact that nothing goes to waste. Even the littlest vegetable garnish to the scoops of "food sauce", everything is edible! Their fried rice was yummy, I definitely tasted butter and egg in it. There were bits of carrots, peas, corn and bits of meat in it. The steamed tofu is a winner, it's almost hard to scoop it out for it was softened to perfection! I also enjoyed the garlic broccoli. I love the taste of garlic and I never imagined it would go well with broccoli! They were all so good that I had seconds, here is what my plate looked like including the "aftermath". Haha.

For dessert we had - Buchi!

Buchi is a local term which is an equivalent for Japan's mochi or rice cake made of glutinous rice pounded into paste and molded into shape. It is covered with sesame seeds and has a bean paste filling, this one had sweet yam paste. It's the best buchi I had so far! We liked it so much that we ordered another bunch for take out - which I end up eating most of them, haha.