Roasted chicken with two butts from Sr Pedro

Saturday morning while on our way home from buying groceries at the Gaisano Fiesta Mall we dropped by the stall of Sr Pedro to buy roasted chicken. There were few chicken still turning brown on the charcoal roaster but the fellow manning the stall handed me a prepared styrobox of chopped chicken.

On returning to the tricycle, my wife told me about the story of the driver concerning some bad practice of the guys working at the stall. They would chop the chicken in an enclosed glass partition which was meant to prevent the chopped particles and oil to splatter all over the place. But somehow the glass partition has been covered with something opaque so that one could not really see how the chicken was chopped up.

This is where the guys do their clever trade. When they push the chopped up parts to the styrobox they drop some pieces to the side of the thick and wide chopping board. Either they sell the collected parts or have them for their meals.

I sort of defended the guys. I made a big speech about how a business would lose its customers by these tricks. And Sr Pedro is already a successful business with many stalls in Cebu.

During lunch, I picked out the wings which are usually the parts I eat otherwise I am mostly on a fish diet. I finished eating first and while I was on the phone talking to my brother, my wife called out and showed me two butts (isol in Cebuano) of the chicken and she was firm that she could not find the breast parts (pecho for Cebuanos).

I hope the management of Sr Pedro is not complicit with this malpractice. We have come to like the taste of Sr Pedro roasted chicken. Andok's chicken is just too pricey.

So we have decided that next time we'll just buy but roasted chicken straight from the roaster and chop it up ourselves.

Duke, Duchess and the CIA

I've been tracking this for sometime and finally got it.

In November 2005 there was a news clipping announcing that a Filipina with the name Duchess Marie Cruz got the Gold Medal Award for the Certified Internal Auditors examination. The award means she was the first placer in the whole world for that exam sitting.

That she was Filipino was not the interesting part (I think it is a sign of inferiority complex to trumpet about any accomplishment of an individual who has even the slightest hint of Filipinoness in his/her blood. I am a believer in the Homo sapien.)

The interesting part is that I remembered that in the previous year the first placer was named Duke Bajenting. That he was a fellow Cebuano is not the interesting thing. (Am I repeating myself?)

I have a daughter who is taking up accountancy. She just passed the Certified Bookkeeper exam. We paid with hard-earned money for the exam. But that was not meant to be the end of it, I found out. The certifying agency, it seems, does not make money only from the exam fees but also from registering with them before they give the passer a certification. I told my daughter I allowed her to take the exam to test what she has learned to date. That she passed was enough for me. Who cares about a piece of certificate.

At our office there are two of us who get calls not only from within but also from other branches in the country from colleagues who refer to us their problem about computers and applications. Interestingly, as far as I know, only the two of us do not have any certificates in computer training.

So I told my daughter to wait until she qualifies for the Certified Internal Auditor exam. Her second name is Hara which is Cebuano for Queen. After a Duke and a Duchess who knows. A father can dream, can't I.

Here is where I tracked the Duke and the Duchess of CIA. Just excuse the little "hambog" about who are tops in the world. That is part of the advertising of the group.