Signs of ageing

I remember the first time I tried eating All-You-Can-Eat pizza... I was in my Freshman year in La Salle Greenhills and as soon as news hit of the promo in school, my classmates and I walked all the way from school to the Pizza Hut restaurant in Robinson's Galleria. We were all soooo excited! Imagine... All the pizza you could eat for 50 bucks! Nowadays, it's no big news, especially with all the buffet lunches and dinners avaialble around the city, but you have to understand that back in 1991, it was the first time any promo like it was indtroduced in the Philippines, as far as I could remember of course. Naturally everyone in school had to try it. As soon as we had our first few slices, there was a rumor that went around that some fat kid held the record at 20 slices, so we were all gunning for 20. I think I had ten slices that day. Being only 14 back then, I must have burned it walking back to school then running around during PE in the afternoon.

Yesterday, as I was driving to work, I heard over the radio that Greenwich is offering All You Can Eat Pizza for 99 pesos. Memories of Pizza Hut in high school came to mind... together with one some questions... How many could I eat now that I'm about to turn 30? Could I still do ten? Being twice my age, could I finally match that fat kid's record from 16 years ago? Maybe if I skipped the crusts...

So I went together with a couple heavyweights from the office, "Banyak" and Rolly Bai to find out how many I could have.

As we lined up for the promo, we found out that the pizzas were offered in 2 flavors - Hawaiian and Pepperoni. A lot of people hate the taste or even the idea of having pineapple top their pizza, but not me. My lola loved bringing home Shakey's Hawaiian style every weekend back in the 80's and I guess I never outgrew the taste. Also, the saleslady told us that we could get bottomless softdrink refills for an extra 29 bucks. Not bad huh?


Then came the pizza... They were relatively small pizza slices, the kind that you could devour in about 4 bites (less the crust) so I thought I could probably do more than ten. We were onto our 6th slice, when I noticed that Rolly already stopped accepting pizza from the waiter... This surprised me because when Popeye's had its own eat-all-you-can chicken promo in 2005, he finished 8 pieces... 8 pieces!!! And he couldn't do more than 5 tiny pizza slices!!! Unbelievable... And more surprisingly, even Banyak stopped at the same number... 5! This is a guy who says "Excuse me, does it look like I even care?" when someone talks about his weight! And even more surprising was that I was still ok at slices 6 and 7. For those of you who don't know, I weigh 144 lbs. and have never weighed more than 150 at 5'7''. I was no match for these guys who must outweigh me by 30-40 lbs.

However, I started slowing down on number 7. And on my 8th slice, that's when i knew that that was it. So much for trying to beat the fat kid from 1991. 8 wasn't bad for someone who's about to turn 30... But I found out later on at 7pm that it was bad... I was still full and was not in the mood to have dinner. The pizza wasn't bad, don't get me wrong... But after a long day at work, I just wanna have a nice hearty dinner. My mind wanted dinner, but my stomach was screaming NO WAY!!! The promo lasts for two weeks, but I don't think I'm coming back for it again.