An Invitation For MMK's Charo Santos-Concio To Eat At St. Mark's Hotel Buffet

Dear Charo: 

How are you? You're the head of ABS-CBN and so I want to thank you for showing me the genius and uplifting comedy of Vice Ganda. But this isn't the reason I'm writing to you. 

I write because I want to invite you, Vice Ganda, Anne Curtis, Piolo Pascual, Angelica Panganiban and Jericho Rosales to visit St. Mark Hotel and eat at the Cebuano Buffet.

I invite you to try the Rico's Lechon, Inun-anan, Kaldereta, Avocado Manga Ice Candy and all the other standard Pinoy food here. Here are three reasons why:

 1. St. Mark's Cebuano Buffet serves the second most delicious Fish Paksiw I've ever tasted in my life and the most distinct best-tasting Lechon I ever tried, which is Rico's Lechon. 

The best Avocado Ice Candy with a twist of mango I ever tasted is also here in St. Mark Hotel. By the way, Charo, did you know that Rico's Lechon fits the Paleo diet, a diet that's arguably healthier than just plain vegan diet? A vegetarian diet seems like it deprives you of the nutrients found only in animal meat. A protein-heavy diet is better.

There's still ongoing debate on whether vegan is best but I learned from Nicholson Taleb that in order to be healthy and become stronger and anti-fragile, we must try all foods, including the fatty ones. 

Press PLAY to View Slideshow of Cebuano Buffet

Whether it's softdrinks that's bad for you or hotdogs labelled by health experts to cause cancer, all kinds of food provide a little benefit to your body.

Ingesting a little unhealthy food will help your immune system against unknown harmful elements.

The same concept works with exercise: you're adding a little harm to your body thru physical exertion when you exercise, and yet after the little harm, your body becomes stronger.

Therefore, eating a bit of lechon is good for you, Charo.

That said, if you want to taste a lechon that's in my Top 3 Lechon list and you value food the way the great writer Tolkien valued good food and merriment in making the world a happier place, then St. Mark's Rico's Lechon might be for you.

Go find it for yourself and tell us about it.

2. I enjoyed St. Mark's Kaldereta because it has none of the pungent goat meat smell that puts people off. 

I also heard from Giecelle C. Abinales The Hotel Manager that her friend who didn't eat kalderata had a change of heart when he'd tried the St. Mark's Kaldereta; it's now his favorite.

Giecelle also never ate Kaldereta herself until she was forced to taste the one in St. Mark's because it's part of her work  and now it's her genuine fave.

Irene of Cebuano Blogging Community also favorited this dish. I wonder what you would think of the Kaldereta, Ms. Charo?

And I wonder if I can bring you and Ellen Adarna here at St. Mark's Hotel, and we can have a threesome...dinner.

3. St. Mark's Cebuano Buffet is located in a hotel. 

Don't be intimidated by the location of the buffet, Ms. Charo. As you know, the secret to life is to act like you belong.

Just go inside the hotel's second floor and enjoy the buffet there after going to, say, church (St Mark Hotel is located near Redemptorist Church) or getting your friends' kids from STC.

Click PLAY on the video to see what's actually inside St. Mark Hotel's Buffet:

By the way, I want to ask you a very personal set of questions before I end this letter and I hope you don't share this to Kris Aquino or Boy Abunda or anyone like them. 

My questions are: what if the drama you're encouraging in your Maalaala Mo Kaya show is what's generating more depressed people in our culture? 

It's like, we want people not to be attached to their pain because according to Eckhart Tolle, it's mental illness that makes people so obsessed about their pain, that they hurt themselves.

Obsession to drama could be why people use marijuana.

Attachment to pain could be why people smoke.

It's the obsession for drama that may make people overeat. But your Maalaala Mo Kaya show makes advertising money from drama, and do you think your MMK is contributing to the problem?

So do you think you're in a dilemma because the money fueling the industry you're in may also be the cause of the problem your advocacy is trying to solve?

Does drama propagate depression, rather than cure it? Using Eckhart Tolle's Power of Now as a reference, is Maalaala Mo Kaya the reason for people's mentally unhealthy desire for drama? 

Should there be a government intervention to monitor TV broadcasts of too much drama the way the government intervenes in society's illegal use of marijuana?

Do you think it's better if we just shut down all these drama shows?

And once and for all ABS-CBN should just broadcast shows that teach people not to attach to drama .

ABS-CBN should get people to detach from ego. "But that's what the people want," you Charo might say. Do we always have to give what the people want even if we know it's not helping them?

Tolle said we can be happy if we stay away from drama and go back to the formless. The formless is when you don't attach meaning on things, and not rely too much on intelligence.

Oprah seems to also suggest that our attachment to our egos is what's driving us away from being free of suffering. And drama worsens it.

I'm a proof that happiness can be had if we don't rely too much on our intelligence. I'm empirical proof that one can be happy without drama, like the happy man of Dostoevsky's The Idiot.

That said, here's a video of how Marcel Proust can help you no longer seek drama.

And then here are quotes from Eckhart Tolle's Power of Now to help you and your friends find the inner peace you keep on looking for after failed relationships:

"When you are not honoring the present moment by allowing it to be, you are creating drama. " - Eckhart Tolle
Read more at: http://www.azquotes.com/author/14703-Eckhart_Tolle/tag/drama

“Give up defining yourself - to yourself or to others. You won't die. You will come to life. And don't be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it's their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don't be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.” 

-Eckhart Tolle

“A genuine relationship is one that is not dominated by the ego with its image-making and self-seeking. In a genuine relationship, there is an outward flow of open, alert attention toward the other person in which there is no wanting whatsoever.” 

― Eckhart Tolle

By the way: St. Mark Hotel Cebuano Buffet is available only twice a week, and if you want to know the schedule and other info, click HERE.

Anyway, that would be all Ms. Charo. Please extend my regards to Ellen Adarna. I want to talk to her.

Yours truly,

A Bad Richard