On a happier note

Karen and I went to Bliss cafe for Valentines. They held a limited engagement vegetarian buffet, with two sets of music from a wonderful vocal quintet. It was a real nice and romantic evening. We are hoping Jim, the owner, will be able to open his other business idea, a "canteen" style food offering at the Buddhist temple about 100m from our school. The place is great, there is a Zen rock garden, lots of interesting books, real good music and free weekend art films. It is a fairly unknown establishment among locals so it is funny to go there and see all these Swiss and Germans and Americans packed into the place from time to time. Jim is an American Ex-Pat from Chicago. He and his wife have been all over SEA for the past 20+ years, or so. They have settled in Baguio, and now they run what must be the most pleasant restaurant in the city. All the food is prepared by his wife Shanti, and from scratch, on the spot. Even the rice. That makes for a long evening, which actually turns out to be perfect, as the number of local art exhibition, interesting books, posters and artifacts from Jim and Shanti's travels engages the mind in pleasant ways, and puts the prospect of food on temporary hold, at least until it is served. The menu has many offerings, but most notably to me are the set meals. They consist of entree, salad, dessert and beverage for about $5. They are either Indian, Korean, Mexican (yes, Mexican!) or what I don't exactly know called simply and wonderfully, "Heaven" and "Earth", but we love it. There is NO MEAT whatsoever in any of it, and Shanti has a knack for making some pretty accurate interpretations of meat products out of Soy, gluten and who knows for sure. Anyways, we are going tonight to eat and watch "The Elephant Man".