La Union has always held a complicated kind of real estate in my chest. I wrote about it early, before the bagnet boom and before I’m Drunk, I Love You made it a pilgrimage site for broken hearts.

The piece went viral and tourism spiked. I’ve quietly felt a little responsible for that ever since.

Three years ago, I went back to reconcile with someone who had broken mine. We rebuilt things the only way I know how: through food and sunsets, slowly and without any real plan.

It didn’t work out. He was gone two years later. And this year, I drove up again with my friends who’ve seen all fourteen years of me, specifically to replace those memories with better ones.

What I didn’t expect was to need saving from the food. The coffee I used to swear by tasted like warm brown water. A restaurant I’d always loved wouldn’t extend basic hospitality on a quiet, off-peak afternoon.

One of our watermelon shakes had a fly in it, and we genuinely spent a minute debating whether it was tapioca. Even my go-to dish from the place I’d been hyping for years landed completely flat, and I ate it quietly thinking I could cook better than this at home.

It stings when a place you loved starts coasting on its own legend.

When the ratings know better

Halfway through the trip, I gave up on memory and opened Grab. I let the star ratings decide where we’d eat, because I was tired of being let down by places I’d been vouching for.

That’s how we found Grab’s 5-Star Eats, a curated list that runs on real diner reviews, not sponsored placement or algorithm luck. To make the list, a restaurant has to prove itself at volume — a handful of glowing testimonials won’t move the needle.

Service gets weighted too: prep time, order accuracy, whether what arrived actually matched what was ordered. And food quality is measured the most practical way possible, where what the photo promises, the plate has to deliver.

We dined in at one place and ordered delivery to our stay from another. None of them were photogenic, and they certainly weren’t the posh spots making rounds on TikTok and Instagram.

They looked like roadside canteens and family-run eateries, the kind you’d drive past on the way to the beach without a second glance. Every single one was excellent.

After the trip, I reached out to a former mentor who, like me, had spent enough summers in La Union to feel like it belonged to us a little. He said the best restaurants there have always been away from the beach and the hype, and away from the content.

The list I didn’t know I was already following

When I got home to Kapitolyo, I had a quiet revelation that I probably should’ve had a lot sooner. The neighborhood is a well-known food hub, and I’ve been ordering and dining out here on instinct.

When I pulled up the 5-Star Eats list after La Union, I realized that many of the places I already rotate through were already on it. I’d been eating well by accident, and the list had been validating my choices the whole time.

BAC’s Sisig Express, where I get my silog fix on mornings I can’t be bothered to cook, turns out to be one of the top-ranked spots on the local list.

I found that out during the busiest week I’ve had this year, when a sudden shift at work sent everything sideways and I ordered the sisig, the Shanghai rolls, and the tocilog to get through the day. It delivered, as it always does.

And Lao Tai Pei in Kapitolyo, my go-to for dinner dates with the people I actually want to spend time with, the place I’ve been half-gatekeeping because it feels too good to share — it’s on the list too. Ranked exactly where it deserves to be.

I wasn’t surprised. I was glad that more people would finally find their way there through something more reliable than a viral reel.

Peso-worthy over grid-worthy, every time

Here’s what I’ve come to understand about food content: it’s beautiful, and it’s largely useless.

Social media gave small restaurants a real shot at finding an audience, and that part is genuinely good. Somewhere along the way, though, people confused visibility for quality.

Now, every café has a grid, a vibe, and a color palette. You can’t actually tell what’s worth your money until you’re already sitting there, 300 pesos poorer, eating something that looks stunning in natural light and tastes like nothing.

I spent years chasing the aesthetic: the plating and the whole production of a well-styled meal. I still eat with my eyes, but I’ve gotten older, and I’ve learned that the experience has to match what I paid for. That’s not a small thing to ask for.

What I appreciate most about Grab’s 5-Star Eats is that it doesn’t trade in aesthetics. It trades in accountability.

The ratings reflect what diners actually experienced, from the accuracy of the order to the quality of what landed on the table, and the list only holds restaurants that can sustain that standard over time.

Grid-worthy is easy to manufacture. Peso-worthy has to be earned.

After crossing the finish line at the Galaxy Manila Marathon, my friends and I pointed the Ford Everest Titanium+ north toward La Union.

The 12-inch touchscreen glowed softly in the dark, and our playlist connected wirelessly before we even reached the expressway gates.

Adaptive Cruise Control took over the repetitive parts of the drive not long after. We were cruising toward the coast, and for the first time in recent memory, I had nowhere else to be.

That lack of urgency might sound unremarkable. To me, it felt foreign. My life runs on calendars. There’s always a race to train for, a campaign to launch, a production to wrap, or a deadline waiting somewhere down the road.

Even weekends tend to arrive with a checklist. A long weekend with no race, no deliverable, and no training block doesn’t happen naturally. It has to be chosen.

When Ford Philippines handed me the keys to the Everest Titanium+ and suggested a road trip, I said yes almost immediately.

I spent the following week wondering why saying yes had felt so effortless, but I packed my bags regardless. I brought along three companions who have witnessed nearly every version of me over the past decade, sharing in my victories, heartbreaks, career milestones, and constant reinventions.

With 30 approaching next month, I wanted this trip to hold all of that. A celebration of who I’ve been, and a look at who I’m becoming.

What followed was the most complete weekend I’ve had in years. The Everest was exactly the right car for it.

Taking the open road

The route from Manila to San Juan covers hundreds of kilometers of expressways, provincial roads, and coastal highways. On a clear Saturday, the Everest handled it with enough ease that long drives stopped feeling like something to get through.

Ford’s Co-Pilot360 suite earns its keep on stretches like this. Adaptive Cruise Control maintained speed and distance naturally, while Lane Centering offered gentle corrections along the long runs of TPLEX.

For someone who spends most days managing too many things at once, it’s genuinely comforting when a car removes some of that mental load.

I’d planned to use the drive to process everything from the weeks before. Instead, I watched the landscape change. Concrete gave way to open fields. Fields gave way to mountains. Mountains eventually led us to the sea. For once, that was enough.

My friend, Echo, shared driving duties while Kelly and Noela drifted between conversations and naps. Up front, Echo and I turned the cabin into a private concert.

The B&O sound system filled the space without overwhelming it, and the insulation kept road noise distant enough that the outside world felt like a silent movie playing through the glass.

Our phones stayed charged the whole drive; the wireless pad handled that quietly, the way good technology should. With everything running through SYNC 4A, navigation and music just worked. The less we had to manage, the more we could enjoy the drive.

Luxury of staying put

Arriving at Casitas in San Juan, La Union, we settled in Villa Nikholai which felt less like a resort and more like a friend’s rest house in the province.

We didn’t rush out to explore and instead, settled around the dining table and talked about nothing in particular. The good nothing; the sort that fills a whole afternoon without you noticing.

The older I get, the less I want to maximize every trip. We used to try to squeeze every attraction into a single weekend.

These days, we trust that places will still be there when we come back. We spent the afternoon unpacking far more than just our luggage. Marathon stories, life updates, a decade’s worth of reflection over comfort food from Tagpuan.

Later, we watched Good Girls on Netflix until sleep won. No arguments. No suggestions of something else to do. Nobody felt guilty for resting.

The falls as the destination

Sunday morning took nearly two hours to start. Nobody seemed concerned. That collective patience felt like a small marker of growth.

We drove from San Juan toward San Gabriel, where Tangadan Falls was waiting. The road narrowed as we climbed, the scenery shifting into layers of green and winding mountain paths.

What the maps don’t tell you is that the last stretch — about 27 minutes from the municipal hall to the jump-off point — is steep, narrow, and in some sections, right beside a cliff with no guardrails.

We were careful the entire way up. And the entire way down. But we always knew where the car was, and that made the difference between a stressful drive and a manageable one.

At the jump-off, it’s a stairway down to the falls now; the original route through the boulders and river is closed. The climb down doesn’t prepare you for what’s waiting.

The falls are cold, loud, and completely indifferent to how long it took you to get there. We swam and didn’t say much.

A few years ago, I’d have been looking for the next thing the moment we arrived. This time, getting there was enough.

Uninterrupted sunset

Back in San Juan, we returned to our easy yet different rhythm. Noela had another beach outfit ready. Kelly rotted on bed watching Good Girls.

Echo alternated between napping and watching the same episodes. He’s a man fully committed to the art of doing nothing, which, I realized, was the whole point of the weekend.

So I uploaded photos, cleared a few work emails, then gave up on productivity and went outside.

As the afternoon light softened, we drove to a spot near the shoreline and settled in. We didn’t have any agenda or urgency. Nowhere to be after this.

At some point I realized I hadn’t checked my phone in hours — not because I was being disciplined about it or because I’d set some boundary for myself. I’d simply forgotten.

The sun was changing the color of the water. People moved in and out of the shoreline. Waves kept their conversation with the sand going, indifferent to all of us.

I sat with that longer than I expected. A genuinely restorative weekend doesn’t really announce itself. It arrives quietly, while you’re watching the tide, or while you’re noticing light on the water. It arrives while your phone is at the bottom of your bag and the world isn’t asking anything of you.

The rain came in before evening. We rushed back to the villa, which by then felt entirely ours. I jumped into the pool while it poured and sang Taylor Swift at a volume that required my friends to develop selective hearing. Nobody tried to stop me. That’s fourteen years of friendship.

I’m choosing to take that as love.

On the drive home…

Monday arrived slowly. We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast, lingered by the shoreline, and appreciated a peaceful version of La Union that felt deeply nostalgic. Devoid of the typical weekend crowds, Urbiztondo reminded me of the serene province I used to visit years ago.

While we seriously considered extending our stay for another day, reality eventually won because we had obligations waiting in Manila and an absolute lack of fresh clothes. That evening we loaded the Everest and drove home.

Echo and I split the night driving again. Along the dark stretches of TPLEX, my mind drifted. The last time I was in La Union, I was standing at the edge of something much harder: a reconciliation with someone who’d broken my heart.

The province had offered space for that. The waves listened while we said things neither of us knew how to say anywhere else.

That was three years ago. My life looks almost unrecognizable now.

This trip wasn’t about any of that, though. It was about gratitude. For friendships that have survived every version of who I’ve been. For growth that tends to happen quietly, without announcing itself. And for reaching a point where rest doesn’t feel like something to be earned.

As the Everest carried us home, I realized the weekend had given me exactly what I needed. Not an adventure or a revelation. Just a reminder that sometimes the greatest luxury isn’t arriving somewhere extraordinary.

It’s having nowhere else to be.

Every time a company announces an unusual product, someone inevitably asks, “But who asked for this?”

It’s a fair question. Practicality matters.

But after spending years reviewing tech, I’ve started appreciating another question just as much.

What if nobody had tried?

That, to me, is the story of ROG.

I only really noticed ROG when we started GadgetMatch back in 2015. Back then, they certainly didn’t feel like the powerhouse they do now. But even then, there was something different about the brand.

Looking back after more than a decade of reviewing their devices, I don’t think what defines ROG is that every product has been the best in its category.

It’s that they were rarely afraid to try something new. That’s a much harder thing to pull off.

The courage to experiment

I think ROG has always been willing to do things other gaming brands usually played safe with.

The late 2010s are probably the best example.

Gaming laptops were these behemoths that would break your back if you carried them around for an extended period. Then came the first iterations of the Zephyrus. It wasn’t just another gaming laptop. It was one of the first that genuinely attempted to shrink the gaming laptop form factor without giving up what made it a gaming machine.

From there, the attempts to try new things just kept happening. There was the ROG Phone. The Mothership. The Flow series. Dual-screen head scratchers. The ROG Ally. And more.

Not every experiment was perfect. That’s okay.

Because experimentation isn’t about getting everything right the first time. It’s about giving yourself permission to build something that doesn’t already exist.

That’s why, through all these years, the products I remember most aren’t the ones that played it safe.

The one that kept me curious

If I had to pick one ROG lineup that best represents that mindset, it’d be the Flow Series.

My first brush with it was the original Flow X13. My honest reaction?

“That’s… novel.”

At the time, I saw it as another attempt at shrinking a gaming machine. It came with the ROG XG Mobile—a proprietary external GPU that even used its own custom connector. That particular idea didn’t exactly age too well.

But what really made me gravitate toward the Flow series was the Flow Z13.

ROG calls it a tablet. Form factor-wise, it is. But that thing was chunky. Still, it became my work-and-play buddy for a good few months.

I took it with me on overseas coverage. During the day, it handled everything I needed for work. At night, I could finally unwind with a few games—something I don’t usually get to do while traveling for work.

I use NBA 2K to destress. The Flow Z13 felt like bringing a more-than-competent workhorse and an Xbox Series S in one convenient package.

The Flow didn’t necessarily solve a problem I already had. What intrigued me was what it represented.

To me, the Flow Series is ROG’s promise to keep trying new things. It constantly reimagines what a mobile work-and-play machine can be.

Where the Zephyrus now feels like a promise fulfilled, the Flow still feels like a promise to keep experimenting.

The easiest recommendation

If the Flow represents experimentation, then the Zephyrus represents refinement.

Whenever someone asks me for one gaming laptop recommendation, I almost always end up pointing them toward a Zephyrus.

It’s just the perfect marriage between a sleek work laptop and a gaming rig. There’s very little friction in recommending it because it looks like what most people expect a premium laptop to look like. Then, in an instant, it shifts gears and handles practically anything you throw at it.

That’s also why I’d recommend a Zephyrus over something like a Strix for most people. The Strix feels like it’s built for someone who fully embraces the gamer aesthetic. The Zephyrus feels more understated.

It’s the machine I’d recommend to someone who wants to look professional in a business meeting, then decompress at a café afterward by firing up a favorite game for a quick round or a side quest.

Through the years, that’s probably been the recommendation I’ve given more than any other.

Gaming, untethered

Then came the ROG Ally.

Before the Ally, I almost never played PC games away from a desk. All my life, PC gaming meant sitting at a table somewhere. The Ally really opened up the idea that PC gaming could happen anywhere.

That became especially obvious during the holidays. Whenever I went back to my hometown, I used to bring a bulky gaming console with me.

Last Christmas, I only packed the ROG Xbox Ally X. It completely satisfied my gaming needs.

Back in my tiny studio unit—which, admittedly, isn’t the ideal setup—it’s also become a great way to wind down before bed by knocking out a side quest or advancing a story for a bit. I don’t exactly recommend lying on your side while gaming, but hey, the use case exists.

One memory sticks out more than any benchmark ever could. Growing up, my older brother and I had to take turns using the TV to play games. Last Christmas, he was using the living room TV while I sat nearby playing on the Ally.

For the first time, we were both playing our own games at the same time. No taking turns.

That’s the kind of moment specs don’t really capture.

The products that stay with you

After using what is probably well over a dozen ROG devices at GadgetMatch, I’ve realized something. Their products might all be PCs—save for the ROG Phone—but they aren’t trying to be the same PC.

Each one is built for a different kind of user.

And because GadgetMatch has spent so much time reviewing ROG’s lineup over the years, they’ve naturally become one of the measuring sticks I use when evaluating gaming laptops.

Not necessarily because they’re always the best. Mostly because of the breadth and depth of the lineup—and the amount of time we’ve spent living with these machines.

This was SO COOL.

You start to see the ideas evolve. Some stick immediately. Some need another generation. Meanwhile, some never quite find their audience. That’s part of experimenting.

Even today, I still think the dual-screen concept is on the cusp of something. It hasn’t completely made sense just yet, but I also don’t think we’ve seen its final form.

Years ago, I probably would’ve asked, “Who asked for this?”

Now I find myself asking something else.

“What if this is simply the first step?”

A legacy worth celebrating

Twenty years later, I don’t think ROG’s legacy is about always building the best gaming machine.

I think it’s about being brave and bold enough to keep trying new things—and having enough faith that its community will be there with honest feedback to help shape what comes next.

That’s probably why the ROG devices I remember most aren’t necessarily the ones with the highest frame rates or the biggest performance gains.

They’re the ones that made me stop and think,

“I didn’t expect someone to build this.”

As ROG celebrates its 20th anniversary and introduces its latest lineup—from the refined Zephyrus family to new Strix machines and the continued evolution of ideas like the Zephyrus Duo—I’m reminded that innovation doesn’t always happen in one giant leap. Sometimes it’s a series of bold attempts, small refinements, and the willingness to keep asking “what if?” until the answer finally clicks.

And after all these years, that’s still the part of ROG I remember most.

Learn more about the latest ROG lineup

As ROG celebrates its 20th anniversary, you can explore the latest additions to the Republic of Gamers lineup, locate an ROG Store near you, or learn more about ASUS’ No. 1 Quality and Service Package through the links below.

• 2026 ROG Gaming Laptop Series 
• Find an ROG Store
• ASUS No. 1 Quality and Service Package