test driving and food tasting

it was a long weekend, a 3-day break from work. it was a perfect time for us to leave rural laguna and visit urban manila (the fort to be exact) and spend time with our trusty gimik friends. 🙂

and together with friends we went to another auto show, this time held outdoors at the fort, to continue our selection process for our first car. if you can recall, we went to our first auto show a couple of months back and we were somewhat sold that the new honda jazz was the car for us. but a few weeks after that, we saw a ford focus hatch somewhere in cavite and were instantly attracted to it. then, a few more weeks later, a new ford focus was released and we were intrigued even more. this auto show was the time to answer the question, honda jazz or ford focus?


vena checking out the leg room of the jazz as selle looks on. plenty of leg room for a compact car. 😦 (btw, we bumped into vena and neriz at the auto show)


not only did the jazz have plenty of leg room, it had plenty of cargo space too. 🙂


the jazz dashboard.



the beautiful exterior of the focus… be it looking from the front or the back.


even the interior looks clean and elegant.

the nice thing of holding an auto show at the fort was, for one, it wasn’t mobbed by the general public. agents will have more time to entertain visitors. another thing, since it was held outdoors, test driving was easy… and test drive we did (or, at least, francis did. we were test passengers. 😆). all-in-all, we tried out four vehicles:

• ford focus
• honda civic
• honda jazz
• honda cr-v (wait. before you get funny ideas, eto ay ni-try lang ni francis. out-of-budget eto kaya wala eto sa mga pinagpipilian namin… although gus2 talaga eto ni selle. 😀 actually, we wanted to test drive the accord also kaso nagugutom na sina selle. 🙂)

look at what we saw at the end of the road as we were trying out the cr-v. was it a sign? 😉

since handling, riding comfort and interiors were things we were keen about in a car (plus reliability and maintenance cost), we concentrated on these things while we were test driving. afterwards, we collected all our personal inputs (francis as a driver… kami naman as passengers) and these were what we found out:

• suspension system of the focus was far superior than that of the honda. very smooth ride. we were terribly disappointed with the civic which had stiff suspensions. mas maganda pa ang sa jazz maybe because its suspension system is new compared to the civic.
• like we observed before, the jazz has super comfy seats. next was the civic at last yung focus. may katigasan ang seats ng focus. according to francis though, in the long run, initially having harder seats are better.
• francis was surprised (and delighted) by the response (and power) of the focus. take note, this is francis we’re talking about. 🙂 this can be attributed to the powershift (dual-clutch system) of the high-end focus… w/c is not our target (mid-range focus lang habol namin).
• in terms of blocking out noise and engine sound, focus comes out on top… kahit na diesel engine pa yung ni-test drive namin. next would be the civic. last yung jazz.
• the dashboard layout of the focus is more elegant.
• the audio system of the jazz is superb. we didn’t try sa civic while sa focus naman eh we tried only using the radio. we can’t compare fairly.

those were our first-hand impressions. we left the auto show still not decided on which one, the jazz or the focus. either way, we’re quite confident that we’ll get a great car. 🙂

after the auto show, we proceeded to serendra for dinner. francis recommended this restaurant which offered filipino cuisine with a twist. it sounded interesting so we agreed to dine at a restaurant called guava. food was unique and very yummy. 🙂





after dinner, gaya ng dati, we gotta have dessert. since we’re in serendra, we went to selle’s favorite, cupcakes by sonja’s. 🙂 (trivia: we got introduced to cupcakes by sonja’s by our dear caterer, kaye. naghahanap kasi kami nun ng wedding cake made of cupcakes and kaye recommended sonja’s. we tried it out and nasarapan c selle. we didn’t push through with it though kasi we felt the cupcakes will just melt in the morning sun.) francis and kathleen agreed to try it out naman kasi they haven’t tried sonja’s. we even gave them a tip that the cupcakes are best eaten a day after (which they tried and proved it was true. 🙂). but given the tip, they still tried out the cupcakes on the spot and they loved it. 😀




that should’ve been the end of our gimik but right beside cupcakes was a shop called miss dessert. intrigued, we peaked through their glass doors and found this posted.



best cheesecake in town. this has got to be put to the test… and test we did. 🙂



masarap nga! fully satisfied, we went home afterwards.

it was a very pleasurable day with friends. sure, the question on which car to buy remains but the time and experience with friends were something to treasure. til the next gimik, guys… 🙂