bambina writes

Things That Made My Year

2007 was supposed to be the year of resolution. Get my divorce decree, get custody of my girls, move back home to Manila, where I had schools, a job, a home, a car - already lined up. But what do you do when you just want to be Reese and someone else wants to be Charlie and Denise, Paul and Heather, Alec and Kim combined?

Still be Reese, I guess, and look forward to a Jake of my own when this is all over.

So instead, 2007 became the year of letting go. Which was basically a continuation of the process that had begun in 2006. What was the point of holding on to so much anger? Resentment is ageing and bitterness is soooo last season. And as clichéd as it sounds, looking good IS the best revenge. I could thank my fabulous DNA (just a bit short on the height gene though) but at my age I've learned that the face that you ease into is equal parts genes and attitude.

I've said it so often, in three different languages, that it's practically become my mantra: The energy you give out to the world is the energy that comes back to you - and this past year has been an amazing testament to that.

Besides, karma's a bitch, and it always comes back to bite you!

So here are some of the things that made my year:

JE BLOG, DONC JE SUIS
This blog is barely a month old, but already it's had over 1000 page views! Wow. A hundred of those are probably mine, checking on whether the page looks right or if I've missed any typos. Who knows how many times Dex has trawled through, but the rest of the stats come from you, my dear readers! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

GO TOWARDS THE LIGHT
Let's see... My kids and I came within inches of losing our lives in a car accident, Dex got the divorce trial postponed, a media consultancy gig for some friends went awry, and we were being kicked out of the flat we'd been living in...

But.

Now I have the nicest flat, drenched in sunlight all day long, with beautiful parquet floors instead of moldy carpets, and small kitchen that's functional and chic. So much more me. Goodbye Victorian gloom, hello Little Miss Sunshine!

DROWNING IN WORK
My business partner and I, plus our investors, managed to get a boutique PR business going in Manila, and we won the Qatar Airways account. Logistically, it's been a challenge, with both of us in different hemispheres, but for the first nine months we found a way to make it work, even landing one of our stories with a human interest angle on the front page of the country's highest-circulation newspaper.

Of course we labored under the expectation that the six-time-zones-apart thing was a temporary situation... and by the end of September, it became a practical impossibility to continue, but I'm proud of what we'd built together in such a short span of time.

Plus there's a free business class ticket or two waiting for me when I get back!

LA VIDA LOCA
Somewhere along the line, I unwittingly became an authority on all things Isabel Preysler. Go figure. It began as a collaborative effort between Qatar Airways and Philippine Tatler, engineered by myself and my friend Anton San Diego. The editorial team, of which I was supposed to be a part, was scheduled to fly to Madrid at the end of July to interview La Reina del Glamour, as the Spanish press has dubbed her. Because of my Not Without My Daughters situation, I missed the Madrid trip, but ended up contributing a couple of pieces on the Isabel Preysler phenomenon.

La Señora de Boyer herself sent word that she loved the articles... which led me to wonder whether I should call on her in Madrid post-divorce. Maybe she can help me find the Jake to my Reese. In this case, a Jacobo, although an Alvaro or Luis or Andres or Rafael would be fine, too. My friend Toto, however, demands that I do not settle for any Juan, Ramon or Enrique, unless Medinaceli, March or Martinez de Irujo are appended to their first names!

G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S
It was a year of being chatted up, hit on, fancied and flirted with, whether it was long-distance or face-to-face.

And because I'm shallow like that, I loved it.

The best was at a party in Manila last August, when this really cute guy came up to me and from the corner of my eye I could see my gay friends nudging each other while they were watching me. Yeah, like anything was going to happen now! Still, I love me my gays.

Hey, it's great to know that after two kids I still got it goin' on!

PILGRIMAGE TO WAKE-UP
While I was back home (Hong Kong is just as much home to me), lots of people came up to me, unbidden, I have to add, telling me they were BEYOND glad that I'd gotten out of my marriage. Yeah, me too!

TICKET TO RIDE
Hands down the best birthday present ever. My dearest, bestest friend Claudia sent me a ticket to go back home via Hong Kong last August while my kids were with Dex. It was just what I needed, she said, and as usual, she was right. And this gift came wrapped in a business class upgrade! How fantastic was that? I got on the plane after YEARS of not having taken a long-haul flight to find the cabin all changed, and all the control buttons completely foreign to me. Video on-demand! Privacy panels between seats! Fully reclining seats! It was all so new to me, I felt like a Russian peasant emerging from the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But that was nothing compared to the sheer joy of being back home with many of the people I love most in the world, including my dad, whom I hadn't seen in 2 1/2 years. My only regret was that my daughters were not with me. They regretted it, too.

MY HEART WILL GO ON
Have laptop, will write. After spending most of 2006 and the early part of 2007 working on revisions with my (then) agent, I finally got cracking on new fiction. The muse was back, and she was beckoning from Jordan, of all places. Guess I'm done with black comedies about marital dysfunction!

Have friends, will survive. What would I do without my wonderful friends, who day in and day out, right here and mostly from across the miles, are ALWAYS there for me, praying and hoping along with me, encouraging me? Occasionally they make me feel envious of all that I'm missing, yet they always make me feel missed. You all know who you are - How I love you and how I thank you for hanging in there with me.

Have family, will laugh. My parents, my brothers, their wives, my sister, my nephews, nieces, aunts, uncles and cousins. My crazy, at times infuriating, but unflinchingly loyal and loving family. Where else would my genes + attitude combination have come from? If my daughters inherit only this from me, then theirs is the world. For when life laughs at you, the best thing to do is to laugh right back.

Have daughters, will love. They drive me nuts, but they keep me sane. They're beautiful, they're strong, they're amazing. Life sucks, justice comes at a stalled pace, but the everydayness of waking up with them beside me is the most wondrous gift of all.

So young are they, yet so full of grace, humor, life and love. May they grow up continuing to, in the words of a character in my (unpublished) novel Confessions of a Fauxmestic Goddess,

"Feel with passion. Love with compassion. Live with generosity. And if a wave should ever wash over you, glide over it with grace."

Because that's what I intend to keep on doing in 2008.

Happy New Year.

Love at First Bite

This morning, my younger daughter and I made cookies. Our chocolate chunk and peanut butter cookies are a firm favorite with my kids, their friends, our neighbors and practically every person who's ever had a taste. We also do a white chocolate version, which my older daughter prefers, and which we've christened Blondies. Sometimes we bake the dark chocolate version as Brownies, that is, baked in a pan and cut into small squares. Whatever the shape, the cookies are always a huge hit. Friends (men, women and children) on their way home from school or shopping have been known to detour past our house for a nibble or two when they hear there's a fresh batch baking in the oven. And when it was my little one's turn to bring something to sell for Bakers' Day, she brought a tray each of Blondies and Brownies - around 48 pieces - and they all sold out!

My kids always say I should open a bakery and make cookies all day long when we move back to Manila. Sweet, though the likelihood of that [the bakery] ever happening is as slim as me donning one of those horrid orange and green team jerseys. Nevertheless, it is heartwarming to realize that these cookies - along with Nutella Pie, "special sauce" chicken, tonkatsu, adobo and "creamy pasta", all made from scratch - will forever embody for them the taste of home. Their Proustian madeleine, I guess. They'll always remember that first bite of the warm, chewy cookie with the melt-in-your-mouth chocolate chunks and the unexpected kick of peanut butter the way I remember my mother's paella.

So anyway, today, as we poured the sugar into the butter, my daughter said with unabashed enthusiasm, "Mom, I'm so lucky I'm your daughter!"

"Why do you say that, darling?" I asked.

"Because if I wasn't your daughter, someone else would be here making brownies with you, and it wouldn't be me, 'cause you make the best brownies and cookies and cakes in the world!"

Awww.

There are days when I feel like a short-order cook in a diner, making my older one's omelette with bacon and cheese just so, and the younger one's pasta with this but not that... but when they tell me I'm the best, all culinary exigencies are forgiven... till the next meal.

Of course they have yet to discover my dessert guru Pierre Hermé! One bite of his macaroons and I'm history!

Just ask Dorie Greenspan, who always samples the latest creations of le maître himself whenever she is in France.

Cookie, anyone?

A Thousand Days of Forgetting

Actually, it's been more than a thousand days, but I'm not the bean counter.

I tell him, "I knew a man who sat with his freshly estranged wife outdoors at the Saloon near Lincoln Center and, over fried zucchini, he asked her if she'd ever loved him, and she said, 'I can't remember. Perhaps I did, but I just can't remember.'"

- from A Thousand Days in Venice by Marlena de Blasi

I know exactly what she means. I can't remember either.

I guess it is true: the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. And with indifference comes not a willful forgetting, but a gradual erosion of relevance, until in the end, you just can't remember.

And neither can you even summon the desire to try.

How many more ways are there to say it's OVER?

Paul Smith

I have a piece in today's WWD about the new Paul Smith store in Hijack City. I need to ask Adriaan Louw, the photographer who took the fabulous photos, if I can reproduce some of them here.

My favorite quote in the story came from Anthony Keyworth, one of the store's owners.

Finding stylish, well-made and attractively priced men's wear has always been a challenge for sartorially conscious South Africans. The South African male himself is typically stereotyped as a sports-mad, shorts-clad species. "We felt sorry for South African men," Keyworth revealed. "The choices they had were limited."

Yeah, those short-short khaki shorts and those garish green and orange shirts have got to go! They do serve their purpose, though, on occasion. To her enduring sartorial shame, a friend of mine realized the value of wearing the shirt plus a vest made of springbok hide in Paris of all places, to humor her husband when they watched a rugby (or whatever sport it was) world cup match last September. In all fairness, he (thankfully) doesn't rock the lion-ate-my-shorts-on-safari-that's-why-they're-so-short vibe.

The fashion don't was well worth it - at the very least, she got a surprisingly warm reception from the Parisians because she clearly wasn't English. And, she returned hauling back some serious loot from the likes of Prada and Vuitton.

Home

"You and home have always been in the same place," says the son to the mother in Marlena de Blasi's memoir, A Thousand Days in Venice.

My girls are back, and at last, it's Christmas.

Merry Christmas

What I'm missing...

And this

And especially

But I'll be with

Seriously.

Feliz Navidad y'all!

About Last Night

Was that a date?

No sé, but nights are nicer when they're in Spanish!

Color Me Blind

At a dinner hosted by the Governor of the Reserve Bank (charming, throws a good party, enforces a pretty effective fiscal policy but needs to ramble less when giving a speech) a couple of weeks ago, a high-level diplomat from the Congo (La République Démocratique du Congo, to be precise) is introduced to me. He asks me where I'm from, and when I tell him, he (all 7 feet of him) flinches back in surprise.

"Mais vous êtes blanche!" (But you're white!) he exclaims.

I tell him each year of marriage to a gringo bleached my skin a lighter shade of pale. I mean, really. It's the age of globalization. Questions like that should be irrelevant, especially in this Rainbow Nation.

Nevertheless, a few days later, at Pilates, I tell the trainer what the black diplomat said. And she says, "But it's so obvious that you're Asian! I mean, you're olive-skinned!"

I don't know. Maybe the ANC has achieved the impossible and turned a nation colorblind.

Let's see what happens now with Zuma in charge. Though of course we don't intend to stick around.

OMG, I've just realized who the Reserve Bank Governor reminds me of. Ok, here we go again - who was Bobby Donnell's partner in The Practice? The black guy? Bald? Who had this habit of puckering up his lips and chewing on his cheeks whenever he tried to control his temper. Eugene, right?

On the left, Attorney. On the right, Guv.
Images from Google

Feeling Rock Star

The best compliment I've received this holiday season:

Your separation suits you!!!! imagine what you'd look like with a divorce!!!!

Second best:

Your daughters rock! They look just like you!

Third best:

Dime la verdad... como es posible que...has hecho botox, ¿no?

(Answer: ¡nunca!)

Awww. I love my friends!

Photo from our 2007 Christmas card out-takes

PusillAnimo Ateneo

Growing up, I was surrounded by Jesuits - the hard drinkers, the quiet philosphers, the social activists, the lost-in-classical-music aesthetes. Whichever way they chose to seek the greater glory of God, they were always open to debate.

Well, there's a debate raging on now about how Ateneans are reacting to the situation in which the country finds itself in the aftermath of the stand-off at the Pen. Open letters have been flying about. There's one, from the Ateneo de Manila Sanggunian president, condemning Trillanes et al, including ex-Ateneans Tito Guingona and Fr Roberto Reyes. Uniffors has it in full, plus annotations. Another letter, from the Ateneo Political Science Organization commends the same group for their actions. Both letters exhort the citizenry to be vigilant and to respect the rule of law.

Of the two statements, the one from the Ateneo PoliSci students seems to be the more grounded in reality, understanding that the rule of law must apply to all. The Sanggunian letter and subsequent comments in its defense in various fora seem to miss the point. I love the way these people wear their presence at the 2001 anti-Erap rallies like a badge of honor, as if their presence there justifies their political activist credentials and exempts them from future protest actions.

In the scheme of things, whatever Erap may have done may be morally repugnant, but what his illegitimate successor has done in the seven years hence is beyond immoral; it is amoral. So where are these same protesters? Apparently, they're busy being men for others. Ateneo is setting up leadership schools, to produce men for others. Medical Schools to produce doctors for others. Business schools to produce professionals for others. All for the future.

What future? The future begins now.

Learning, as any Atenean should realize by now, doesn't just happen in the classroom. What happens when principles collide with contradictory political realities? What happens when the values of your institution come face-to-face with institutionalized corruption and greed? Do you issue a statement? Open a new school? Will the product of your school really and truly embody the values you claim to impart? Just take a look at some members of the cabinet who proudly wave the blue flag and extol their supposedly Atenean values while simultaneously aiding and abetting the Midget in flouting the very rule of law we're all supposed to adhere to.

I bet Trillanes and his group got fed up with open letters that to them do nothing more than pay lip service to protest, without the action.

As for the calls for vigilance, well, the Midget has thrived on vigilance - she uses it to gauge what she and her accomplices can get away with. When mass action looms, she suddenly backs down.

The thing about the Midget is that she's so far been careful not to disturb our comfort levels too much. The fertilizer fund, the Garci tapes, the NBN scandal - in many ways they're too abstract to be felt. But commandeer the Pen, as Trillanes did - boy did that rankle. Boy did that disturb our comfort levels. Why a five-star hotel (my favorite at that)? Why just before Christmas? Why now when the economy is going well and the peso is almost P40 to the dollar?

As the Ateneo PoliSci students wrote:

Radical and illegal as they may or are alleged to have been, we see that what the senator has done was an important shattering of the glass. It was a loud clang of the gong of social consciousness, which might have irritated many, but has certainly showed us how silent the greater Filipino majority has become in addressing the varied political issues that abound.

To top it all, the irritated ones cry, Trillanes can't even speak English properly! It's Erap all over again. At least the Midget, they reason, is articulate - though if she says ce-RE-mo-ny instead of CE-re-mo-ny that's like a MAJOR minus. At least the Midget, they reason, knows which fork to use at a state banquet and won't mistake the finger bowl for soup.

Mastery of the social graces is no substitute for integrity. Just as apology does not amount to accountability. And accountability is the very least a country can demand from its leaders.

In a recent column, Fr Joaquin Bernas, a Jesuit, quoted Fr Pedro Arrupe, SJ, who is credited with modernizing the Jesuit vision:

"Today our prime educational objective must be to form men-and-women-for-others; men and women who will live not for themselves but for God and his Christ—for the God-human who lived and died for all the world; men and women who cannot even conceive of love of God which does not include love for the least of their neighbors; men and women completely convinced that love of God which does not issue in justice for others is a farce.”

The Poli Sci students have got it right.