Hyatt Place Bakersfield

Back at Bakersfield this weekend to complete my Hyatt Globalist challenge, thankful that the points are less this weekend 6.5K vs 8K for an economical redemption, the drive here last night wasn't bad either but boy gas prices have skyrocketed for sure, from afar it looked like they're close to $6/gal. Another thing to be thankful is that we drive EV and free breakfast every morning!

Ilocos empanadas

Apparently this is all the rage right now in the Filipino foodie community at least, my coworker spoke to me about it and the next day she brought for me to try, so sweet of her. I didn't have a chance to try until this today, a few days later which I felt bad. To heat up the empanada, I popped it into the air fryer and let it do its thing for 5mins and it came out so crispy! It was originally deep fried so it was greasy. Its fillings consist of longanisa, green papaya, and egg! It tasted peppery and goes well with the vinegar that comes with it but the best is the crunchy shell!

Jury Duty

I received a postcard saying that I didn't report for jury duty - i never received the letter to report! Rescheduled to report today and their process changed quite a bit since my last visit a couple years ago. I've been lucky and never got close to being in the court room but not so much today. 

We were excused at 11am so I checked Uber and Lyft to see how much it'd cost to get home, outrageous especially now with higher gas prices. So I decided to get lunch and walked to stone fire grill

Not sure I'll need to go back yet but I have a feeling I may need to.

Discounted meal - Mar

It was steak, pork chop, salmon, shrimp with rice pilaf and sweet potatoes fries today!

lax-sfo-sgn

First segment of our Asia trip - we arrived to lax around 1115 and thankfully the pre check line was in operations and we breezed through security. We looked around for a place to grab a quick lunch and tal settled for bagel. I brought a chicken salad so we were set. Southwest has new policy with assigned seats and since we're cardmembers we have the privilege to assign our seats 48 hours prior to departure vs 24 for others and we were put in group 4 to board. We departed and arrived to sfo on time. 

We arrived at sfo terminal 2 and walked all the way to international terminal A and got into the China airlines lounge which was tiny but ample as there were not a lot of guests. They served fried rice, mapo tofu, tomatoes and eggs along with corn chowder soup plus a few different sandwiches and desserts

We hangout there for 4+ hours and started heading to the gate at 8pm. Thankfully there's free Wi-Fi onboard to kill time. First few hours were full with turbulence, managed to get maybe a couple hours of sleep. After first meal that is, food was good, service was good too surprisingly after what I've read online. 

The cabin is a little warm so maybe that's why I'm having a hard time falling asleep

i woke up at about 10 hours in and ordered their beef noodles which wasn't bad and I went back to sleep after or rather dozed off watching a movie

then it was almost time to land, this was our breakfast and the croissant was yummy and flaky!

We were one of the first out but immigration line was already busy due to another flight and this was at 4am, can't imagine how it'd be during peak hours

VDay

A supervisor brought in a bunch of cookies for VDay!

While we avoid going out on a day like today due to crowds and what not, I did spent a bit of time shopping for my mom and saw that Crumble - a cookie place was still open so I thought I'd get a box of cookies to surprise my husband as this was my last week before the start of my diet. The Dubai chocolate was definitely good but so rich, we could only take a few bites, snickerdoodle is still a classic, the rest were good as well but the icing was sweet for my taste

Honey Cup again!

Well since I started my diet, I'll just take picture of it, one of the nicest supervisors brought a box of these lovely pastries. They smelled heavenly!