Weekend with Rhena

April 15, 2016

Weekend with Rhena

For the book club's April read, we're reading Andre Aciman's Call Me By Your Name. The sole activity for the participants this month is called It's a Date! Unlikely Pairs Weekend Adventures where members of the book club who don't usually hang out with each other are paired and required to spend some time together. For the instructions, I'm lifting the moderator's words verbatim:

There will be 3 categories of activities you need to fulfill:

Enjoy: Do something fun together. Something that will require you to be an active participant, This could be something you don't usually do. Participate in a fitness class, join an arts and crafts class, go kart racing, play archery, etc.

Browse: Browse some place. It could be a library, museum, vinyl record shops, antic shops, etc.

Eat: After all those activity you've done, reward yourself with a meal. Fill yourself up with great food while enjoying each other's company.

My (unlikely) partner is Rhena, whom I've always wanted to get to know since time immemorial. I already know that she's talented, smart, and sweet (not to mention charming, of course) but I really haven't had the proper time to spend with her. So when I found out that I'd be doing this activity with her, I was so happy!

Our first activity was Eat. We had afternoon snack at Za's, one of the older restaurants in the Manila area which serves fantastic grilled ensaymada and hot chocolate.

We transferred to this table for purposes of this picture, per suggestion of the kuya. Heh.

And then, for Browse, we headed around the corner to visit F. Sionil Jose's little bookshop, Solidaridad. Rhena's never been there, so it was the perfect place.

Browsing titles at the Filipiniana section.

She bought something! Yay!

And finally, for our Enjoy activity, we decided to attend an hour of my favorite GX activity at the gym, Body Jam. It's a cardio dance workout that'll burn around 500 kcal for 55 minutes. I brought her with me to the gym and we had a blast!