I've been waking up to some amazing views lately. This morning, in Cape Town, from the patio of my fabulous room at The Dock House - a sublimely chic six-room villa-type boutique hotel in what used to be the Residence of the Harbour Engineer in the mid-1800s - I woke up to this:
Went to Switzerland and didn't ski but came back with a tan. So tanned that my children didn't recognize me when I picked them up from school. And so tanned that my older daughter cheekily pulled down my top to ascertain whether the sudden and uncharacteristic tan was an epidermal phenomenon limited to my face, chest and arms, or all over my body.
I tend to have an aversion to contrived holidays like Valentine's Day and, yes, Mother's Day. It's not the sentiment nor the intent behind the holidays that turns me off, but the over-commercialization of the occasion. But then again, perhaps coming from a family for whom the mere mention of a Hallmark card is enough to elicit a collective shudder, it's not that surprising that I prefer to steer clear of anything that involves syrup and schmaltz served up in a greeting card.
Until I had kids, of course.
So there I was at an airport terminal, somewhere in the Middle East, en route to Europe to see the man. I scanned the coffee shop, staffed naturally by Filipinos, hoping to park myself at a table and keep myself awake for the next three hours with a cup of java. I heard an accent that was unmistakably - for want of a better description - Manila-NuVo-Embassy-by way of Boston University.
As far as homecomings go, Rafe Totengco's is pretty hard to beat.
Accessories designer Rafe Totengco, known for blending uptown sophistication with downtown edge, has taken his aesthetic to the Philippines.
"I was blown away with the reception I got from customers, who came in droves to congratulate me, shower me with affection and support," New York-based Totengco said about the launch party.
So tonight I was cooking chicken drumsticks and thighs marinated in what we refer to at home as my "special sauce" - sesame oil, soy sauce, garlic and whatever else I feel like adding, be it lime juice and ginger or five-spice powder.
Recently I fiddled with the recipe a bit, using chicken breasts and skipping the garlic.
WWD today released a new Top Ten List, this time ranking the countries by the percentage of residents surveyed who say they buy designer brands.
And guess what? The Philippines is ranked 8th, with 26 per cent.
If the guy you're dating had on his bedside table a self-help book by the likes of Osho or Dr John Demartini, would you think he was profound or a total loser?
Personally the warning bells would start clanging loudly in my brain. And I tried reading both books, believe me, but there was no breakthrough experience for me and I gave up after 30 pages. I would rather see, say, a hefty Yves Saint Laurent tome by his bedside; at least I'd know he's gay and we could spend the rest of the night watching Sunset Boulevard and taking turns acting out Norma Desmond's lines.
The ongoing "high" society drugs-and-sex scandale in Manila as exposed by THAT blog reminds me of an incident - oh gosh - over 20 years ago or so. I was home from Paris for the summer and on a date with a well-known Man About Town. Intellectual sophisticate, smooth talker, connoisseur and collector of all things luxurious, from sports cars, aircraft, fine vintage wines, private islands and women...
You gotta love our country. The land where Kafka wears a smile, while tripping on Zoloft in between marathon cocaine speedball sessions. And where the scandales keep on coming like the gift that never stops giving.
Forget the NBN-ZTE scandale. All of Manila - and beyond - is riveted by the ongoing revelations of the former Australian gay lover of some lifestyle columnist with a penchant for snorting the white stuff up his nose and defrauding boyfriends. His partners in crime - allegedly - are some of Manila's IT boys and girls collectively known as the Gucci Gang. Whether self-styled, self-proclaimed and self-advertised I won't say; you be the judge.
A few weeks back, my friend Mons Tantoco-Romulo asked me to answer the question of the week for her column in the Philippine Star. I'm flattered that Mons thinks of me every now and then despite my being away from Manila, but I'm afraid the replies I've given her over the years are rarely as profoundly introspective as everyone else's. Perhaps her respondents like to see her column as a chance to go all Deepak, but believe me, if your life the past four years has been anything like mine, with its never-ending circus of assessments and pre-trial conferences, you'd be Deepak-ed out.
So Mon's question, ironically put to me a week before Valentine's Day, was: "How do you move on after a heartbreak?"
This was a question published recently in Parade magazine from a reader named Mike Waldo:
Ike Turner died of a cocaine overdose. Did ex-wife Tina attend the funeral?
I don't read Parade magazine, but California writer Tod Goldberg does, if only to lambaste the idiotic letters sent in by clueless readers. Tod Goldberg's blog, which I absolutely adore, is not for the faint-hearted. Punctuated with f-words, it seethes with his vicious brand of satire, aimed mainly at the inanity of pop culture. His main mission - admittedly futile and quixotic - is to rid the world of what he calls "fucktards". And for some reason, he believes, the readership of Parade magazine is awash with such fucktards.
If I were back home right now, I KNOW I would have been at the interfaith rally yesterday along Ayala Avenue in Makati, calling for the resignation of the Midget. Even if I was raised in a household where we ate politics for breakfast, lunch and dinner, I grew up largely apolitical. I simply didn't care. Men like Jose Rizal, Apolinario Mabini, Manuel Quezon, Ninoy Aquino and Pepe Diokno... to me they seemed to be freaks of genetics that our national DNA managed to produce every few generations through some fluke of history and chromosomes.
If you're a TV junkie like me with a penchant for late night talk shows, then you know about Sarah Silverman's hilarious surprise video gift to her boyfriend Jimmy Kimmel in which she tells him and the whole world she's f*cking People's Sexiest Man Alive, Matt Damon. There's a running joke between Jimmy Kimmel and Matt Damon - the Bourne Ultimatum star was a guest on the show once and never got his five minutes of airtime because time had run out.
The other night was unusually hectic, socially speaking. A fashion show and reception at 4 pm, followed by a farewell drinks party from 8 pm to whenever, in two different cities 35 minutes away from each other.
Anyway, the fashion show, in which I participated as a reluctant model, patriotism clearly over-riding common sense, featured the stunning jewel-toned wraps and tops made from delicate yet sturdy banana silk fibers by Manila designer Dita Sandico-Ong, who was en route to Cape Town.
UPDATE: Dita's merchandise - around $12,000 worth, was stolen from her car in Cape Town. Welcome to Crime Central...
The it was back to Joburg for a party at a venue which turned out to be the ultimate frat boy's hangout. It was wall-to-wall university students and those who wished to relive their university days, plus girls who've never had to diet a day in their lives - yet - all chugging down beers and Jagermeister shots. Most of them were old enough to be my children, had I actually shed enough of my ingrained Catholic guilt in my late teens, I might have actually given birth to one of them. As it is, that Catholic guilt and the fear of my parents' fury kept me chaste for some time after my teenage years.
