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! 

Discounted meal - Feb

Very satisfied with the food selection this month! I'm starting a new diet and loading on protein so no carbs on my plate. The proteins are breaded fish, St. Louis style ribs, oxtail stew and jerk chicken. Surprisingly they were all good, nothing too salty or dry but I did have a hard time eating with utensils and having to resort to using fingers instead. The fruit salad was yummy too, not sweet at all

2g2g: Coffee Bean

The coffee bean close to us is the best when it comes to 2g2g, they are consistently generous with their surprise bags and what we get in return is much more in retail value than advertised. 

Here are surprise bags from two separate occasions

Buldak carbonara ramen

I got 6 packs of these buldak ramen at Sam's at a discount and made 4 to share with my coworkers for lunch. Spicy but on so creamy and addicting!

Idli and Sambar at Bakersfield

I missed breakfast at the hotel because the neighbors were so loud in their activities and I couldn't get a decent sleep until later in the night. 

Woke up much later than anticipated so I started looking at the food apps to see what good deals I can find in the area. Enter Aroma of India by Ming Ave - they have a few BOGOs but all vegetarian dishes which was fine by me as it's been a while since I last had idli and Sambar. The item pictured in the middle is mighty spicy chili peppers fried in batter. Everything was delicious, idli was fluffy and sambar was flavorful and have plenty for dinner and leftovers too.

Hyatt Challenge

Recently I signed up for a fast track to Globalist challenge with Hyatt, been trying to do this for quite some time but wasn't able to since it requires a company/corporate email that are registered for the challenge with Hyatt to participate. By chance I stumbled upon a post about this and I thought why not try again since I don't have anything to lose and to my surprise, my new work email worked! Thankfully we have a trip coming up and that kinda fueled me to complete this challenge as I will have around 2 weeks worth of stay in Asia and will only need 20 nights total to complete the challenge so it sounds completely doable.

So I had to rebook some accommodations that were previously booked so I could stay in Hyatt properties to count for the challenge. My trip will have 13 nights covered as a couple days will be staying at my parents residence. Which leaves me 7 more nights that leads me to this impromptu getaway. The closest Hyatt properties that are affordable for this "mattress run" as the folks in the points/miles group would call it is in Bakersfield a total of 8kpts/night or $185/night. Or I could opt for 4kpts/night plus $75. I have a little extra points to cover 2 nights so full points redemption it is. 

It was my first time in Bakersfield, I left at 10pm and arrived a little after midnight but went to a supercharger closeby to charge the car since this trip was planned at all, completely last minute. It took about 30mins to charge to 70% from 20%, I'm not sure why it was charging so slow as it's rated as level 3 or 250kW. Anyway charging after midnight is cheaper than during daytime so it works out, will write up on the hotel and trip next.

So with the accelerated globalist challenge, Hyatt gives you Explorist status for 3 months. Here are the perks for Explorist, and with Globalist will have everything listed which will be much added value on our future stays which I'm hoping to do in the next couple of years as I'm also working on getting Southwest companion pass.

Fav Salad

One of our very favorite salads is from Stonefire Grill - chopped salad with either brisket or chicken. This is one of the very few places that we didn't mind paying full retail $35 with tax for a family size! Yum

Honey Nut

I have another promo that's expiring with GrubHub so I thought I'd get a treat at honey nut. Didn't realize that they close at 3pm so they were waiting for me to pickup the pastries. I ordered 2 creme brulee cruffin, but they only had one so the staff asked if I would like a replacement instead of refund. Yes please - she gave me two options to pick from but ended giving both for the inconvenience so Yay!

Filipino feast

Have 2 DD promos that's expiring by month's end so to round up the week, I placed it for pickup at island pacific. I love their pancit, this time around their rice was kinda mushy. The sinigang with milk fish was definitely sour but love it with veggies. Others were good but I always find their food on the greasy and salty side. Can't complain all came up to around $28 and have plenty of leftover to take to work for lunch

2g2g: Poke House

The restaurant listed these as $15 retail per bowl and doesn't include any toppings!? Definitely would not pay that much without toppings. With 2g2g these were $5 per bowl which is alright considering just rice and protein.

Thankfully I have a bunch of ingredients at home that I can use for toppings. Avocados, pickled slaw, furikake, crisp chili oil and it came out yummy!

Honey Cup

One of the supervisors that I work with is always so generous and kind. She brought a bunch of pastries from Honey Cup to share with a few of us! 😍

2g2g: Papa John's

Love Too Good To Go - it's an app where vendors can list leftovers or overstocked items for sale at reduced rate to curb waste. Some use this platform for marketing. Honestly it's great because it allows me to try out a new spot and not having to pay full retail. I've never tried Papa John's before and this was a great opportunity. The consumer typically don't get to choose what they get - called surprise bags. So this was my surprise bag for $5 pre tax. It tasted pretty good too! 

Discounted meal - Jan

Once a month at work usually on the 3rd Wed, the galley offers discounted meals for folks to enjoy at $7.25. When I first started 1.5 years ago it was at $7. - still a very good deal given the portion and variety of food offered.

Couple days a coworker invited me to go along and was hesitant because I'd usually go with Tal but he's been out of town. Glad she convinced me because it was seafood themed and I enjoyed the shrimp, crab and rice with Cajun seasoning drizzled all over, yum!

Launch from Vandenberg SFB

There's been countless of launches from Vandenberg SFB nearby and we've been lucky to be able to catch glimpses of it right in our back yard. I recently joined the community page to get alerts on launch schedules so I can take better videos of it! Here's a recent screenshot caught a couple nights ago

Not paying retail

Love bogo deals and our local island pacific (Filipino) market has an area that sells prepared food ala panda express style. A breakfast combo is usually $12.99 which is kinda steep plus they charge tax and came up to $14.19. I personally wouldn't buy if I have to pay retail but with bogo it softens the blow a bit:

I also have a promo and credit on DoorDash so I thought I might as well order something else from them to take advantage of the drive, this would have been over $30 but with the promo and credits, ended up paying just $10.42. 

Would be able to make a few meals out of these!

Trip to Ridgecrest

Woke up early today at 545a to catch the shuttle at 730 for a meeting with my mentor, got there on time and by 1030 we were done. I went into town to Albertacos for lunch - I had fond memories of their food and got chile verde with tripa tacos, both were excellent, love that their tripa is crunchy. Then went across the street and got a matcha lavender drink which had more ice than drink itself!

The shuttle came in late so we got back late, reached at 545p but at least it was warm and not cold which is odd for a winter evening.

Dubai chocolate - Overhyped?

Super affordable avocado toast

Avocado toast with sourdough is one of the easiest ways to make brunch and so filling especially right now avocados price have dropped - I got a 6 count and 2 large loaves of sourdough plus the eggs, so much more economical to make it at home. I sprinkled on everything but bagel sesame seasoning on top of the avosand topped it off with a drizzle of Sriracha ketchup and it's the 💣

New Year 2026

Been a long long while since I've posted, planning to pick up this back up after a long hiatus to keep track of life as I'm at halfway point in life and for sure memory will only start going downhill so this will be a good reference point.

First week of the year has been quite interesting at work, the final two weeks of the year was filled with outages - power, Internet, water, elevator. So everything pretty much at standstill at work, which works to my favor. 

Ending the first work week of 2026, coworker and I went to Filipino market and got their breakfast BOGO promo, portions are huge, they don't skimp on the protein! Garlic rice was yum, plenty of leftover for dinner and lunch next day!