Aug 31, 2024

Today is the day! Today is the day when someone and I will be baking together! Only, we wouldn't bake together and instead, we'd be baking each of our own cakes, separately. In the morning, I was thankfully feeling less pain in my foot and I can place it firmly on the ground now. Phew, I'm glad that the "hail Mary" thing I did yesterday of chugging medicine and a full carton of milk to ease my gout and hasten my recovery worked. I could finally walk now! Only, there was that small side effect of the medicine that I had to endure in the morning. But eventually, I booked a Grab for someone and me, and we both had the same ride so we could talk on the way there. Since the ride was approaching my house, I just made a deal with myself to carry on and live through the next few hours and that was my only wish. I've been suffering from side effects and had a shitty week, but I'm going through this gritting my teeth. Once the car arrived and I hopped in, someone and I began talking. Initially, they got the location of my house wrong, which was funny, but we also talked about a lot of things while on the way to S Maison. We talked about our old friends, the places I've been to in Taguig, my neighborhood's history, and a lot more. It was a comfortable ride. Since someone and her family were going to hang out later for dinner, I just gave her the gold Timezone card (which still had some credits) that I had. The driver was supposed to drop off us at the front of SM Mall of Asia, but I just asked them to drop us off somewhere near S Maison, and someone said Conrad Manila and asked to tip them 50 for the trouble. They agreed and we were dropped off nearby, we had a short walk before going to Conrad/S Maison. We walked for a while, but thankfully I didn't feel any pain in my left foot. I thought it would be really, really bad because I couldn't walk with it for some reason, in the morning. Since we were a bit early and it was just 1:30 p.m. (our reservation was at 2:00 p.m.), we walked to Fully Booked for a while. I thought it would be on the second floor, but apparently it wasn't. It was such a big surprise that it had relocated and was way smaller now, I had just been there in January! Regardless, someone and I checked out the store and we found some really interesting books. We saw a few books we were familiar with, like Pride & Prejudice and the other books of Jane Austen. Someone was interested in The Secret Garden because the book looked pretty and it was special to them since they had memories of reading it during elementary. I offered to give them any book of their choosing and they told me that they would pick a book later. We looked around for a bit longer, found some other books, and talked about them, and we went to Bakebe for our activity for the day. We entered early, at around 1:45 p.m. or so and we got started. We took a few photos and that's when I told them that we both would be cooking our respective "Shakespeare's Chocolate Cake" for the day. They told me it would take a while but they continued along with it anyway. Someone immediately got started and I tried my best to catch up to them. They were preparing and measuring ingredients and they taught me how to use the digital kitchen scale. I kept looking at her items because I was too lazy to get my provided iPad and follow along, but I eventually did. For the most part, we were mostly focused on our cooking. We didn't have much time to idly chat and take photos together. We did help each other with our cakes, funny enough. I helped them carry the cake batter to the oven and they told me to be careful with it, I joked that I could've been a surgeon in this life with how steady my hands are (even though they aren't). I was able to help, though, and I brought some ingredients to her from time to time. In return, someone also helped me with preparing my cake like helping out with setting the chocolate on the parchment paper, and I even used the chocolate ganache that she made because mine was too hot to set on the cake. It was a fun, casual activity, all things considered, and we also joked around like how we normally would in VHH. By the end, our cakes looked massively different from each other. Hers was shorter because she opted out for the feather and had cut her layers too thin. At least someone's cake looked presentable. Mine looked like a mess but in a good way. I had unevenly cut the layers making my cake look like it's leaning, and I didn't put much frosting on mine. It looked like a giant tower of cake, funnily enough, because it was way taller and had 2 feathers as the topping. We eventually took a photo together while holding our cakes and we went back to Fully Booked. She's decided on the book she wants and it's The Secret Garden. She looked happy with the book and we went to Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf to sit while they waited for their family to arrive. I got caramel macchiato for myself and water for someone because it was the only thing they can drink. We mostly waited for their family to arrive and someone mostly read through the whole thing. I opened Genshin on my phone and someone pulled on characters for me, and it was the luckiest 10-pull yet because I got 3 characters that I've never had (Chichi, Xinyan, Xingqiu) which honestly shocked me. Even though we pulled for Mualani, I didn't really get her. I showed them my characters in Genshin but she eventually went back to reading her book. After a while, their family called them to say that they had arrived to their meetup place and I booked a Grab ride to stop over there. The ride was just going to stop there and then take me directly home. We got a ride and we talked about a few things like if we liked Popeye's or not and work, but then we quickly arrived at the mall and someone had to leave. The rest of the car ride was just me playing music and looking outside. By the time I got home, I placed the cake in the fridge and had a take-out dinner with my sister. I spent the night mostly by myself, just resting because I pushed my body too far and I needed the rest. Someone was still out with their family but they messaged me every now and then. Eventually, they arrived home and we got into VHH. Eventually, someone logged into Sky and we did our dailies in the Daylight Prairie. After we did our dailies, someone asked me to stream horror videos and I played one from WOWMAN as the night went on.