Happy ever after

WHEN intimate relationships fail, such as a significant love partnership or a marriage, the ones who bear the heaviest toll of the separation, and the attendant emotional suffering, will be the two people involved directly in the relationship.

Yet unknowingly to the uncouple, their friends and family also do suffer—although that may be too strong a word—some sort of grief when they see a formerly jovial coupling come unraveled. We all yearn for significant intimate relationships to last forever, as our stupid fairy tales have taught us in childhood, so we cannot help but mourn—yes, like someone died!—for that relationship that has given up the ghost as well.

We feel for the uncouple, and try not to take sides on the issues that had escalated and blown up in the former partners’ faces. We try to give each of them support, as they—and we mirons to the relationship—go through the pain and anxiety of coping with the loss.

We feel worse when there comes that point in the post-relationship period, when we, friends and family, are forced to let go of our objectivity and just have to stick by one ex or the other.

It sounds pathetic, I know, but when faced with such an issue, as has happened in the recent past, my friends and I go into some sort of a very analytical, post-relationship withdrawal mode.

You see, when one of us gets into some form of intimate relationship with another person, our tendency of course is to support our friend, whether we like his significant other. We “invest” in getting to know our friend’s partner to understand the latter better, and accommodate her in our get-togethers, dinners, parties and what not. We try not to judge, although out of our friend’s earshot, we will do just that probably, and be hypercritical of his newfound love.

It’s not because we don’t want our friend to be happy...it’s precisely because we cherish him so, and only want the best for him, which drives us to nitpick his partner’s character, trying to find some flaws. Seeing none, or maybe imagining a few, we probably would end up being close to our friend’s partner, as well. We start enjoying her company, too.

While the relationship is ongoing, we are witness to the couple’s highs and lows. The gang is hugely entertained and enthralled at the affection shared by the two. When our friends are in love, the entire gang is ecstatic. (Of course, our gangmate’s partner has become close to us as well, so we call her “friend” too.) The relationship is going strong, and we cheer for them. Who doesn’t love a happy couple, right?

But when their relationship hits a plateau and fights erupt between them, we gnash our teeth and hope each partner holds on. We try to offer solutions in the most dispassionate way so as not to be accused by either of taking sides. As much as possible, we want the couple to remain together. We can’t help but project our own desires for a “happily ever after” on them.

Unfortunately, there are times when we don’t get our wish, and the hapless couple goes their separate ways. Now comes the tricky part: What to do when that happens? Do we shun our friend’s ex and stick with him? As most barkadas will attest, this will happen whether we like it or not. But after trying to appease both sides, offering our sympathies and a firm helping hand to ensure a peaceful breakup, we come to that stage when we will eventually have to choose who to talk to, or be with every day.

In the last breakup involving another set of friends, I had to eventually side with whom I had always been chummy. I felt guilty about dropping my ties with my friend’s partner who I had become fond of as well, but there was really nothing I could do about it.

I already knew my friend had crossed the point of no return, that he no longer entertained the idea of getting back together with his ex, and just wanted to explore the big beautiful world of other partners-to-be out there.

Eventually, the rest of the gang, except for one or two, had to stop answering the text messages of our friend’s ex, and started increasing the privacy settings on our Facebook accounts so that the ex could no longer also see what our friend was up to via our comments.

I, for one, didn’t want any more dramas, so I had to “unfriend” my pal’s ex on the networking site. (I had to do this as I realized that my friend’s ex was mining my photo albums, continuing to pine for the days of yore, when they were still a couple, and we as a gang were coming along swimmingly.)

As friends, we are obligated to give as much support to whichever ex we are closest. And in so doing—that is, “unfriending” my pal’s ex—I felt this would ease the separation anxieties for both of them. I wanted to spare my friend from dealing with my commenting on his ex’s photos, status or whatnots.

I sometimes dread to see my friend’s ex now. I mean, what do I say, or what do we talk about when all we had in common was my friend? Other pals who have been put in similar situations tell me how awkward it can be, especially when they had become close to the other partner, as well. And they never get over that awkward feeling.

You end up talking about the ex just the same, and unwittingly give information about how the other is doing in their lives. Then, there is the struggle of whether to tell your pal about bumping into his ex. "Should I? Should I not? If I do tell him, what do I say? Do I edit out the part where I told his ex that he had gained weight since the breakup? Oof! Or should I tell him that his ex was with a hot new boyfriend or what? Ugh!" It isn’t easy being friends with uncouples.

Somehow in the post-relationship upheaval, we, the family and friends who became witness to a once glorious partnership gone bad, can only find peace when each of the ex-es finally manage to recover, and find new love and happiness again. And hopefully, the next relationship they embark on, will be the “happy ever after” for each of them.

(My column Something Like Life, is published every Friday in the Life section of the BusinessMirror. This piece was originally published on Oct. 21, 2011. Photo from the web.)

Back with my homies

AS with most long-time friendships, one never truly recalls how the relationships were formed and how they were first cemented.

Gorjus, Dee, Berry and I bonded as close friends all throughout high school at St. Theresa’s College in Quezon City, although we belonged to different homeroom classrooms (only Dee and I were actually classmates all throughout the four years). But I’ve known Gorjus since pre-school at Little Angel’s Nursery School, where once she so bravely told my Mama why we had to have afternoon classes, because Mama didn’t believe me. (This was after a massive typhoon hit the country and all schools were closed for a month).

Gorjus returned to Manila recently for a week from her home in the US, where she keeps house with her doctor-husband and two very sweet kids (a boy and a girl). So over dinner and then coffee one rainy Thursday, we got together with Dee, gabbed, and reminisced some.

We had a hilarious time, though there were some serious turns, especially when we exchanged stories of a few girls who had passed on in tragic ways. But it was all great to be with my homies again even if it was for just a night. Too bad Berry wasn’t around, but thank God for Facebook, we are all updated about each other’s lives even if we don’t talk every day.

Dee—married to a banker—works in a government agency, and takes care of her two grown kids, one of them already a lovely 18-year-old. It was Dee who married first, followed I think by Berry, who now also lives in the US, then Gorjus. I am the only one in the group who is still unmarried and who lives rather untraditionally, I suppose.

Berry was called “Sor Maria” or “Sister Berry,” because she was the sweetest and most demure in the group. For a while we were sure she would end up as a nun at St. Theresa’s. She was and still is the epitome of quiet beauty and brains; I remembered her as always being at the top of the class. She was nice and respectful, although Gorjus claims that I actually got so miffed at her once that I refused to speak to Berry for quite a time, despite the apparent thousand apologies she gave me.

(Unfortunately, Gorjus doesn’t recall what caused the rift, and also fails to recall how we patched things up. I still don’t remember this incident, as with some other events Gorjus seems to hold in her head, but one must forgive my senior moments. We’re talking about events that happened 30 years ago—I can’t even recall what I ate for lunch yesterday.)



Dee was my closest buddy—the veritable gal pal who would endlessly listen to me prattle on and on and on about my sad sack life, and complain about the idiots in our midst. I don’t know where she got the patience. Yet she was the brave one who could confront me about important issues, and I had quite a few in high school. What we joke about today is how Dee was such a baby—the quintessential hatid-sundo girl—with her mommy just a few steps behind her most of the time. She protests now that she did a year on the school bus though. Uhm, okay.

I led a slightly less ethereal existence in my elementary years, riding the jeepney of Mang Munding, who plied the Quiapo-Dimasalang route between 8 am and 3 pm, but turned his vehicle into a “school bus” in the morning and in the afternoons when he would fetch us kids to and from school, and safely return us to our mothers’ loving arms.

Truly Gorjus was our Sony Pro memory stick that night, reminding us of the various laughable incidents or somber events that affected our gang of four or our batch back in the day (over 200GB of information dating as far back as 1970!). She was also our news bulletin of sorts, reporting on the successes of our girls, especially those living abroad. Apparently, our batch—I will never tell you what year we graduated lest I incriminate myself—has the most number of people who moved overseas, especially after college.

It’s unfortunate for our country to lose these brilliant beautiful minds, but what an honor for St. Theresa’s to have that many respectable women contributing their talents to make foreign economies work better! But then I have yet to hear of any Theresian performing much less than what’s expected of her by our nuns.

I was especially awed to find out that one of our girls works at Nasa as a nuclear physicist, one makes a good living as a jewelry retailer, another is a successful dermatologist, while another is actually the mother of a very current showbiz star! Our very own Berry is now studying to get a teacher’s certificate which will play right into President Barack Obama’s recent call for more teachers.

Here at home, we have an amazing number of bankers from our batch, a pediatrician, a well-known writer and newspaper columnist (my friend Georgia, who moved to another high school but still considers herself a Theresian), an architect, a surgeon, lawyers, etc., all leading honorable and admirable lives. And some are, yes, “domestic engineers” who keep house for their husbands and their now-grown adolescent children. Despite the times we lived in when all avenues for women were swung open, at St. Theresa’s we were taught that all career paths were prestigious—whether one was a housewife or worked in an office.

Of course, there was a short discussion about unsavory rumors circulating among some batchmates concerning yours truly, and a few other girls, mostly untrue. (One was even dubbed a Japayuki just because she lived in Japan, how cruel!) I really couldn’t care less. These people were never my friends then, why should I expect them to be friendly towards me today? And really, there are always two versions to a story, but when passed on as a rumor, will likely get distorted and the people involved, misunderstood.

But just like any school, there are the smart ones and there are the bullies. There are also the truly kind and sincere girls whom I appreciate for their friendship to this day—even if we see each other just on Facebook these days—and there are the backbiters. There are the quiet hardworking ones, and there are the veritable nuisances. Not one high school is without all these kinds of people. But life goes on and despite some negativity, our true fighting nature is unleashed, and we triumph against the canard and the cheap tattlers.

Still, as I sat back sipping my tea and listening to Gorjus and Dee discussing our girls and the past events in our lives, I couldn’t help but smile. I was beyond proud of our batch. Everyone seems to be in a good place right now. Perhaps our being Theresians helped form us into better citizens of this country or other parts of the world, although that could be a cause for debate, especially from our Assumptionista and Maryknoller friends, hahaha. But we’re all living the best years of our lives right this moment. We rock. And that’s all that matters.

(Originally published on Jan. 28, 2011. My column, Something Like Life, is published every Friday in the BusinessMirror. Photo from http://www.deeannegist.com.)

Brod

SENSELESS.

That bombing off De La Salle University last Sunday at the traditional salubong for bar examinees was a despicable act perpetrated by one human being to another. How could anyone justify lobbing a grenade at a crowd of would-be lawyers—kids really, who had just finished a grueling four Sundays of exams—just because his fraternity had a run-in with a rival frat?

To me, that was the most supreme act of cowardice, dude. If you think you were being such a big man then, you weren’t. And those who continue to coddle you and hide you instead of bringing you to justice to accept punishment for that foolish, nay, that terroristic act, are equally guilty of being cowards, and criminals. (Click Something Like Life, Oct. 1, 2010 for the rest. Photo from the film, Batch '81.)

Manny and the madness

THIS is one of the best profiles on our Pambansang Kamao, Manny Pacquiao yet.

(Photo by Mark Seliger/GQ)

The thing is, a number of people have stolen from Manny, been caught by Manny, then been forgiven by Manny: Never has a fighter been possessed of so pacifistic a nature. What's more, there seems to be a consensus that these redeemed-Judas tableaux were… pre-scripted.

"He has made numerous people in his camp believe in God with what he's done," Ramos says. "Do you understand?"

Abac Cordero puts it more directly: "I think he was put here to make us better men. There is a feeling that those who betrayed him had to, so that Manny could teach them."

"Sometimes, the way things happen with Manny, it's like, parables," Ramos says. "Here's one: At the last training camp there were about thirty of us there. Now, one of my jobs is to lower the overall costs of living. So we go to this Thai restaurant next to [Roach's gym]. Our bill there was between $500 and $700 every day. So I said, 'Manny, why don't we buy some food from the local Philippine restaurant and have it delivered to your apartment? It'll only cost about $150.' Manny took me by the shoulders and in front of everybody said, 'Don't ever mess with another man's livelihood. Now let us enjoy their food.' " (Click Manny Pacquiao in GQ.)

Sorry kids, it's not working for me

(Photo from the Inquirer)
The caption is as follows: MY GRANDMA, MY PRESIDENT, MY HERO Michaela Gloria, Marie Angelique and Eva Victoria (from left) mob their grandma, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, after she delivers her State of the Nation Address on Monday. It is obvious that the children of Ms Arroyo’s sons, Representatives Mikey and Dato Arroyo, idolize her, which should make up for all the “bad words” she’s been getting for her SONA. JOE ARAZAS/CONTRIBUTOR

Gamitin ba naman props pa ang mga apo? icck.

* * * *
BTW, I just sneaked a peak at a few of the presidentita's Facebook profiles put up by her office (www.op.gov.ph), and the most number of friends she could gather was 2,457 friends as of today. Even one of the many fan pages put up by her unabashed supporters such as this, only show 1,346 fans. Gee, even admin senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago has more friends at 3,241. Ah yes, even the presidentita's love Sen. Mar "bad words" Roxas, has close to 5,000 friends on one profile alone.

It's sad really when you're the leader of the land and people avoid you like the plague even on Facebook. Tsk, tsk.

What matters most

"As we get older, we try to return to what remains true and good in our lives. As we find peace in our hearts and love in our age, we realize that some things, like the dishes at our favorite restaurant, the great friendship and family, do not change." (Click here for the rest of my column, Something Like Life.)

THANK you Billy Cortez of Finex, for your kind words about my column. Mabuhay ka!

Hello there sweetie!

MY friend and editor Gerard and his partner Ryan are now the proud parents of Mary Elizabeth Soliven Cruz, nicknamed Meryl. I soooo loved touching and talking to this cute bundle of joy who was just christened over the weekend. This three-month-old is so gorgeous and smart, she listens intently when people are talking to her. I think she is an old soul, and will have a lot of things to teach her parents.


Congratulations to Gerard and Ryan for taking this huge step in their relationship. I wish them well and am looking forward to all the antics of little Meryl as she grows up. Tita Stella will have a thing or two to teach her as well...hala.

September na!

TIME to make that Christmas shopping list ghels and gheys...araykow!

Just to remind you all how close it is to D-Day, check out the Christmas countdown widget on the right. (Lord, pls. give us strength.)

(Snoopy image from i-love-cartoons.com)

Sinong best friend mo doon?

Something Like Life
Aug. 23, 2008

I STILL remember that sweet TV commercial of a popular ice-cream brand featuring two tykes, one of them asking this question of his friend who was about to leave for the US. His best friend, of course, assures him that they will still be best friends despite the distance; then they share an ice-cream cup (or was it a cone?) afterward.

I recall this poignant TV ad today, as I write my column, after being told that the best friend of my friend Señor, who recently passed away, had also bid this earthly world of ours goodbye. It was such a shock finding this out today because the last time I “spoke” with the Don was after coming home from Señor’s wake. I texted the Don to tell him I missed seeing him at the wake, and also to send my condolences because I knew how close he was to Señor. I was pretty sure he was torn up, as well, with his best friend’s passing.

The Don texted back and thanked me for my concern, telling me the reason for his absence—he was ill. I told him that when he gets better, I was looking forward to seeing him again to toast the good times we had with Señor.

That the Don also passed away from the same illness that Señor had, and just a month apart, was more than a coincidence, as far as I’m concerned. They were such good buddies; some say they were more like brothers than with their own siblings, so perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that the other just followed wherever his best friend was going. (Click here for the rest.)

A good man

I lost a friend today. It hurts because I didn't have enough guts to visit him when he was sick, and in the hospital. At the back of my mind, I was hopeful that he would still get well. And the last time I spoke with his wife, just last week, she said he was always thinking of food. I told her to tell him that he better get well and I will cook him sinigang, one of the dishes he wanted to eat.

I prayed and prayed that God would spare him again. I said his family still needed him, and I wanted to see him up and about, and fully recovered. But he passed away this morning, after putting up a brave fight with his illness. I know he wanted to stay because of his family and the many things he still could have done. I will always remember him as a sweet, caring person, with a joke or another amusing anecdote to make kwento about himself, his family, even our favorite president. His zest for life was just so infectious.

I never thought we would actually be good friends because he breathed a more rarified air than what I am used to. But just like that, he took me in like family (which is why I called him Dad sometimes). Pangs and I would usually join their family to watch a movie, get together for dinner, or go to their beach house and just spend a nice weekend lounging by the pool. I will always remember him with either a glass of red wine in hand, or smoking like a chimney, and by the time I would wake up, he would be done reading with the newspapers, then I would join him and his wife discussing the dastardly news of the day.

He had such a kind heart. I remember that when I had resigned from a job, and he heard another version of what happened from a cruel and corrupt lawyer I had a run in with, he and his best friend took me and Pangs out dinner. He was very concerned about what I would do next. While the night began on a somber note, by the end of it, we were all drinking, laughing and dancing. He didn't like the people around him to be sad, so he would always try to be upbeat.

At his wake, photos of him, his family, and friends were projected on the screen as we heard Mass in the chapel. It was riveting, all those photos. He was just smiling in all of them! It was a celebration of his life and how much he enjoyed it. I shall miss Iñaki, and am sad that he is now gone, but after seeing those photos of him, I'm so thankful that he became a part of my life. He was such a good man.

Ana, my prayers are with you and the whole family. Big hug.

Road trips

BACK in the ’70s as I was growing up, I remember taking a lot of road trips with my family. Despite the energy crunch then, we would still go up to enjoy the chilly weather in Baguio City, travel to Dau, Pampanga, to buy PX goods, motor down to Tagaytay to enjoy the cool breeze and the fabulous view of Taal Volcano, or to Cavite and Batangas to swim in their once-clean beaches.

When I started working the agricultural beat in the late ’80s, there were also frequent land trips to as far as Ilocos Norte or down south to Quezon, as I tagged along with whoever was the Cabinet secretary then on his visits for chats with farmers and local officials, or check out whatever was the agency’s pet projects.

Land trips can be exhausting, especially if you ride the bus, and during my time it took almost 11 hours just to travel from the Quezon City bus terminal to Laoag. In between, there were only two bathroom breaks. (Of course, these days, most major provincial bus lines have restrooms onboard, and DVD players to keep passengers entertained.)

In the last couple of weeks, my friends and I have been going on road trips to the north and south of Manila, just near enough not to bust the gas budget or get enervated because of the slow-moving traffic. The trips have been a way for us to bond and, at the same time, marvel at what’s left of the remaining beauty of the Luzon countryside. (Click here for the rest.)

I know what you did on Good Friday

IF the crowds at the various malls last weekend were any indication, hundreds of families spent the Holy Week just here in Manila. Well, I don’t blame them. Why go to Boracay, where it’s all hot and crowded, when you can enjoy the free air conditioning at the malls? It may have been congested like any other weekend, but at least there were fancy shop windows to look into, and you weren’t all sweaty and icky. Never mind if you never intended to buy anything.

A friend who owns a resort in the new summer capital of the Philippines confirmed the same. He said there were fewer bakasyonista in Boracay last week compared with 2007. (On the upside, those who were on the island were Caucasians and other Asians...a development that will surely be welcomed by our hardworking tourism secretary, Joseph “Ace” Durano. It is, no doubt, the fruit of his relentless marketing efforts abroad.)

Time was when Holy Week meant Visita Iglesia, the pabasa, Seven Last Words, Way of the Cross, and processions of religious images depicting the passion and death of Jesus Christ.

Except for last week, normally, school is officially out by the time the Holy Week rolls around. It also heralds the start of the summer travel season. Families are on grand excursions to the beach or vacations in Hong Kong, Baguio and the US. Those who don’t want to add to the crowds in the nearby tourist destinations, or don’t want to spend ginormous sums of money on resorts unreasonably jacking up their rates for the four-day holiday, now choose to stay put in Metro Manila. And, yes, as was prevalent last weekend, they went a-malling.

Many people I know tried to catch up on their sleep and backlog on books they’ve been wanting to read.

Jeff said he was going to watch old cheesy biblical epics. (My favorite has always been The Robe, starring Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons and that greasy hunk Victor Mature. Ooof!)

Sis had house guests visiting and planned to treat her nephews and nieces to the newly opened Manila Ocean Park everyone has been going gaga about. Even Pangs, who is normally in Bacolod for the Holy Week, was in town working on his editorial assignments, although, lucky dog, he still managed a few laps in the swimming pool.

As for me, the four-day Lenten holiday started out with a visit to a dear friend, Swit, whose brother had passed away unexpectedly from a heart attack. Despite the rather sorrowful circumstances of the visit, it was a rather enjoyable gathering with friends. It took us just an hour from Quezon City to get to Bacoor, Cavite, where the wake was, as there was hardly any traffic on the road. We caught up on the latest gossip and basically laughed ourselves silly, tempting the Almighty to strike us with lightning. (Note to self: Never miss the opportunity to go to a wake in the provinces where funeral parlors donate kakanin to the dead’s bereaved families. I unashamedly devoured a plate of the softest home-made cuchinta courtesy of Samson Funeral Home.)

On Good Friday I started cleaning out my DVD and CD collection, as well as tons of books gathering dust in the attic. While I actually had made plans for Black Saturday, I knew I couldn’t finish the cleaning task in just a day. It eventually turned into an unscheduled spring cleaning of all the stuff I had in storage...and by God! I could not believe the amount of material possessions I had accumulated over the years! I decided to make the spring cleaning my penitencia for the rest of the Lenten weekend.

A lot of my CDs, DVDs and books were still in huge cartons, because that’s where I left them when I went abroad to work for a year. Along with some Pyrex dishes and other houseware, I still hadn’t unpacked them because I kept on thinking I would eventually move out of the parents’ house again and into my own rental one day. The attic dust must’ve shot up straight into my brain as I inhaled, shaking me out of my reverie. How dare I go off into Lala-land and think such crazy unrealistic thoughts! Achoo!

The task was sheer burden as I struggled to decide which items were still worth keeping and which ones I had to let go. Sometimes I had to force myself to label several items as junk just so that I wouldn’t think twice of tossing them out (e.g., college class cards), or undeserved nostalgic shit (e.g., petrified roses from ex-boyfriends).

Twice I had to go through the CDs just to weed out the music I had outgrown, such as the New Age woo-woo and shamanic recordings. (Anyone care to buy my Narada CDs?) As for the books, I decided to keep the classics, bestsellers and all-time favorites (e.g., the Dune series), and let go of authors I really didn’t know but whose books I had bought from the annual cut-price book sale of a popular bookstore chain.

Of course, there were brief moments of amusement amid the grueling task. I sat and sifted through old photographs and marveled at how amazingly thin my friends and I were way back when. True, we may miss our old slender selves (hey, round is a shape!), but not the hideous fashion we wore. It also gave me immense joy to note that over the years, we have remained basically unchanged. To this day, we still have the same ear-to-ear ludicrous grins on our faces. Sure, we’ve grown a bit wiser, but we still haven’t lost our sense of humor and our enjoyment of the ridiculous. Ah, those photos are definite keepers!

Two more days of organizing, filing, cleaning and sweeping...I fell asleep each night utterly exhausted. It was finally over by Easter Sunday evening, and managed to get myself to Mass. Everything was in order, packed and neatly labeled. Piles of stuff I wanted to sell were in one corner, and another pile was for items to give away. After dinner and the usual marathon CSI Sunday shows, I laid back against my pillows and clicked on my downloaded torrent of The Robe. There I lay laughing hysterically at the mala-Goma and Shawie dramatic dialogue between Brando and Simmons, and the constipated expressions on Mature’s face. Before I knew it, I had zonked out, but awoke on Easter Monday completely refreshed.

Thank you, Lord, for a new beginning. I really needed that.

(My column, Something Like Life, is published every Friday in the Life section of the BusinessMirror. Photo from BM)

Reach out and touch someone (updated from my Nov. 2007 entry)

Something Like Life
Feb. 29, 2008

SOMETIME last November, I got a little pissed at Flickr because I could no longer organize my new batch of Boracay photos into a set.

To those still living in a world where they think Wordstar is the best word-processing program ever invented, Flickr is a digital photo-sharing web site where you can upload your photos, organize them, put little captions, and virtually store them all for free (well, almost). You can choose to share the photos to anyone who’s sitting in front of the computer and surfing web sites and such, or just to a small private group of friends or family.

The problem was, I couldn’t organize my new photos into another set, like an album you see, on account of my being a free-account user. Because I’m cheap and didn’t want to spend $25 a year just so I could organize and post an unlimited number of photos and sets, I searched through the discussion forum to find solutions or alternatives to the issue at hand.

Fortunately, some of the guys in the forum mentioned Facebook, the social-networking site, which they said allowed unlimited photo uploads. Hmmm...I thought that sounded cool, although I was still wary of the social-networking phenomenon that began with the establishment of Friendster and MySpace.

I’ve been invited a lot of times by Friendster users to join the site but never did, because I couldn’t figure out how you could call this person and that a “friend” without actually meeting them in the physical world, face-to-face. Some of the users had more than a thousand “friends,” according to their pages. Then there were those reports of kids committing suicide after bullied on their MySpace pages. What ultimately put me off joining these sites was this one guy whom I had never met in person but e-mailed me nonstop to view his Friendster profile, which I found creepy and annoying.

So my joining Facebook was borne out of a real need—that of wanting to have unlimited photo storage online—and partly because I thought it would be a good social experiment.

First of all, I wanted to see how many of my real friends, contacts and regular acquaintances would join the site. I found out that among my e-mail contacts (Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail), there were a few who were already Facebook members. So I restricted my invites to people I actually knew, my friends, as well as a few acquaintances I was interested in knowing more.

Two days after I joined Facebook, 10 of my friends who were scattered all over the world — the Philippines, Bangkok, Northern Marianas and the US — joined. Hmmm...not bad.

Second, as I plodded through my Facebook friends’ pages, I also noticed that most of their friends were people they’ve worked with, people they grew up with, or went to school with, or even current companions and colleagues at work. There were only very few who appeared to have “friends” whom they met randomly online.

I don’t know if it’s because I belong to a more, ahem, mature generation (my youngest Facebook friend is 25, while the oldest is probably in his mid-60s) who are more protective of their privacy, but only a couple of my friends had about 130 Facebook “friends” on their lists and I, too, knew most of those people, having met them in press conferences or other social events. So they were not strangers at all. So, generally, I think Pinoys are still conservative when it comes to meeting new people, especially online.

Since signing up, I’ve had a couple of “friend requests” from people I didn’t know and thus ignored, which is probably contradictory behavior on what is supposed to be a social-networking site. I’ve also ignored requests from people I do know but don’t particularly care to reestablish any relationships with, due to unfavorable experiences with them in the past. I wouldn’t want to be a hypocrite and pretend I like you now that I’m online, right?

Third, the great thing about Facebook and perhaps other social-networking sites, is that I’ve been able to reconnect with a number of people I have not seen nor heard from in over 15 years who are now living in other parts of the globe, just because I found them on other people’s profile pages.

There’s lovable Bessie with her still long curly hair, now married and living in Shanghai with an absolutely adorable son.

Then there’s Tita Minnie, who used to be part of my barkada, but whom I gradually lost touch with when she opted to join the corporate world before going offshore. She now works in Argentina, the lucky bitch.

Then there’s Nona, who was two batches ahead of me in De La Salle University but I knew her because we both worked at the university paper. She’s now based in Sweden with a grown-up daughter—and married. While we were never particularly close back in college due to our differing political beliefs (I was mostly a fencesitter), we now constantly “feed” each other tiramisu or some other yummy desserts.

It may sound silly to those who aren’t members but on Facebook, we send cybergifts of tequila shots to our friends, feed and race one another’s pets, comment on recently uploaded photos, bless and send good karma to one another, and recently, I became a proud owner of a “Tiffany necklace.” (One friend who isn’t a member thinks that those who join such sites are just “desperate” to meet men, the poor dear.)

Of course, the site is now packed with a lot of annoying ads (it’s the only way for the site’s owners to actually earn from hosting the free service) and, technically, you won’t know what gift you’ve received from another person unless you send out an invite to at least 15 other people to use that particular gift application. So it can be a tad irritating receiving numerous invites to use an application. There’s also a lot of spam being forwarded like chain mail, videos and silly photos.

Then, if you’re like me who makes a living out of using the computer and being online all the time, there is the tendency to keep one’s Facebook page open for hours, and use several applications at the same time. A friend of mine in Boracay says she is hooked to the site, but became embarrassed about being online all the time. She finally had to disable her online status setting.

As of today, I have 56 friends on my Facebook page, which is probably small by average social-networking standards, but if you know me, that’s actually more people than I can handle in the real world on any given day anyway. I like sharing my photos with my friends, and keeping in touch, especially with those who are watching the sun rise at the same time I’m off to bed. It’s also a smart way of greeting your friends simultaneously on special holidays like Christmas and Chinese New Year.

I don’t think social-networking sites will ever replace meeting people and making new friends the regular face-to-face way. But I think these sites are powerful tools to keep relationships going, and keep friendships alive and current.

The only downside in joining Facebook is that I found out that creepy Friendster guy is also a member—and on a friend’s page. Thank God for small mercies like “block this profile.” All you gotta do is click, block and ignore.

When you're past your 40th birthday

IT had been a most unusual day.

I woke up rather early, at 5 am, and couldn’t go back to sleep. I watched Cate Blanchett’s Elizabeth: The Golden Age while waiting for Sis to wake up so we could have breakfast. Usually, it is she who wakes up early and eats breakfast while she leaves me alone lolling in Dreamland.

We were in Boracay with Pangs for my birthday last weekend and even before we arrived, the island had been suffering from a spot of unusual weather, battered as we were by strong gusty winds and intermittent rainshowers. Phooey!

There were hardly any people awake as we went down to the resort’s restaurant for our morning meal. We plunked down in an empty cabana, and I stared at the breakfast menu for the first time in three days since we arrived.

After giving out our food orders, we stared at the dark heavy clouds and shuddered in the cold winds. I wondered when I would ever get to swim in the beach and if the sun would ever sneak a peek from behind those billows in the sky. Then the faint strains of some groovy ’70s Motown music started wafting through the restaurant speakers, feel-good doo-wops that my older siblings were singing and dancing to back when I still toddled behind them. Sis and I were like, “Wowwww!” Suddenly the gray morning didn’t look so bad anymore.

As The Moments’ “Love on a Two-way Street” played away, we heartily dug into our bangus belly à la pobre and beef lugao. We swayed and sung along as we laughed and exchanged stories. We were amused at how these songs from our childhood, tunes from Pangs’s CD as we later found out, just put us in a freakishly good mood. They just made us feel that everything was perfect and all right in the world. Stories of Benjamin Abalos and his $130-million cut, the raging controversy on the ZTE-NBN deal, just seemed so far away. It was as if these songs held a promise of better things to come.

We were not disappointed. As soon as we were done with our meal and finished with our coffee, the pillow-like gray clouds began to part, and the sun’s rays finally broke through. Yay! The powdery white sand was finally dotted with shadows from the beach umbrellas, the tables and chairs, and the people walking. Salamat, Lord!

Still, the waters were just much too cold for swimming. I froze my hefty buns off as soon as I set them down on the water, which made me instantly leap up and run back to shore. Brrrr!

But when you get to be my age -- for the record, it is 23 forever -- you learn to appreciate the small stuff. At least the sun was out, and although shaded by a huge beach umbrella as I lounged on the beach bed, I was enjoying a mild dose of vitamin D. I read my magazine, spied on the young gorgeous European hunks nearby playing volleyball, and sipped on my cool mango shake...what more could I ask for?

I take my birthdays very seriously. It is usually a time for me to offer up my thanks to the Great Almighty above for all the blessings in the past year, as I look forward to another one full of exciting possibilities. It’s just like celebrating the New Year, as my reflections take on a more individual, closer-to-the-soul note.

Unfortunately, there are certain realities one cannot escape as one rushes past 40.

Like, no matter how my brain thinks I’m still in my 20s or 30s, there are just some days I wake up in the morning with the wind whistling through my bones. I am creaky all over and feel too tired to get up. Of course, my age is also an advantage, because this is probably the only time in my life when I can actually declare that, fudge all that! I shall stay in bed the entire day! If I were in my 20s and 30s, I’d still get up, despite a hangover or a fluish condition, and haul my carcass to the office.

I can’t hold my liquor as long as I used to. Time was when I could start drinking from 6 pm until 4 am the next morning, and still go to work the next morning. These days, three glasses of red wine is cutting it too close and the sulfites in my drink will deaden my brain right up to next day. (Again, staying in bed is usually the solution.)

My forehead has two fine horizontal lines and I have dark spots on my cheek that refuse to go away. No matter how many anti-aging creams I slather on my face, they just sit there staring back at me from the mirror. Unfortunately, my unpredictable cash flow won’t pay for any Botox injections. Besides, I’m a coward when it comes to needles and even if I had more financial resources, I will probably spend the money on traveling and good food rather than on my face.

I am now prone to allergies. For some strange reason, some food or beverages which I had no problem ingesting only a few years ago, now give me a rash or a headache. Take cheese, for example: I used to eat all my favorite nutty and intense varieties at any time and any day. But now, I noticed that as my period approaches (excuse me, gentlemen), eating cheese gives me a migraine. Added to that, the migraines sneak up on me more often than they used to.

And as I mentioned in this space two weeks ago, I am now on maintenance pills to restrain my hypertension, a legacy from both sides of my parents’ families. Thanks to mom and dad, I have to watch what I eat, making sure I stay away from Aling Mila’s lechon and Two Seasons Resort’s sinfully good Crispy Rack of Pork and Char Shiu Rice forever. I cannot afford to miss a single class of yoga, otherwise my blood pressure may start hiking up a treacherous path.

(UPDATE: Three days ago, my doc took me off the anti-hypertension meds, pronouncing me in the pink of health...well, almost. Just need to exercise more. But at least, this is one reason to feel good on this birthday.)

To top it all, I hate exercising, and any effort spent on a treadmill or stationary bike makes me feel cheap. I love my body and I’m happy with it, but somehow I still feel I need to conform to society’s standards of beauty and wellness.

I don’t have the patience to read books anymore. A bookworm since I knew how to read, I now can’t sit still through three pages of any novel, no matter how high up it was on the New York Times bestseller list, without my mind wandering off somewhere. I think of my schedule for the entire week, the recipe I’ll be using at dinner, or what I’ll wear to an interview I’m conducting the next day. Maybe it’s because I already do a lot of reading on the Internet that having pages of printed words on paper just doesn’t hold my attention anymore as staring at my computer. If I do read a book, it is usually a biography or a collection of short stories. My favorite reading materials now are magazines -- Vanity Fair, Gourmet, Travel + Leisure, Interiors.

Finally, I want someone to come home to other than the mother and the maid. It doesn’t matter if it’s a man or a pet. There are just days when you want to cuddle with someone because you are feeling awful and need to feel secure or comforted. Or just do the nasty with every night. Because Johnny Depp is already hitched to that beyootch Vanessa Paradis, I might have to get a cat instead.

But in all things, I take the bad with the good. You can’t have a happy sunny morning without going through some voluminous rainclouds first. So, thank you, Lord! Thanks for another fabulous birthday in Boracay with my best buddies. Thanks for those relaxing massages I got. Thanks for that gorgeous birthday spread and for all the lovely meals we enjoyed. To all those who remembered my birthday and took the time to greet me, Bless you all! It feels great to be alive and well, the sometimes creaky bones notwithstanding.

The ultimate reality bite: It’s the little things in life that count the most and make me happy.

(My column, Something Like Life, is published every Friday in the Life section of the BusinessMirror. Photo from BusinessMirror.)

How honest should you be with your friends?*

I’VE always been a picky person when it comes to friends.

Right now, I can count on my 10 fingers just who I consider as real friends…people who I can see spending my twilight years with while we continue gabbing about ugly people we know, having regular pot luck dinners with, traveling to really fabulous places, or still lusting after the young men. (You know who you are bitches!)

A number of these close friendships have been built up through the years. For some people, they meet someone new, they click at once. Well that’s not me. I find that these quick friendships are the ones that peter out soon enough.

Some of my closest friendships have undergone the most trying of circumstances, peppered by shouting matches, with a few silent treatments thrown in, but thankfully, no hair-pulling incidents…yet. I mean what’s a friendship without a bit of high drama right?

Friends are part of one’s extended family and most often, they can be closer to you than even your own siblings or parents. You can tell your friends anything without getting the third degree unlike family members who can be very judgemental. Friends are very accepting of each of our faults and frailties, so even if you do joke about each other’s quirky habits (even behind each other’s backs), they often do so out of love and understanding.

So it can be really depressing when someone you’ve trusted for the longest time, does something to hurt you, knowingly and without remorse. You are stunned and unable to believe that here was this person you’ve probably shared your innermost fears and secrets with, just stabs you in the back. Et tu, Brutus?

In the last few months, I’ve known some people who’ve been virtually kicked from behind by people they considered their friends.

Like I know one lady who was unceremoniously given her walking papers and the next thing she knew, someone who thought she was her friend was already taking over. Incredulous, I asked her over an accidental lunch one day, “But Tita, I thought she was your friend?!” All she could manage was, “I thought so too.”

Despite how disappointed she must have been feeling, kudos to her, she didn’t sound bitter at all. Perhaps all the years she’s spent in her crazy business, she was no longer surprised by the turn of events. Power can just be too attractive (and addicting) that one can be drunk enough with it to sacrifice a friendship.



Pangs and I had a running discussion about this since we’ve heard the gossip about these two ladies in the business who were so-called friends. Pangs is my food and travel buddy whom I’ve known for close to 20 years. We’ve had our differences but I guess we’re already quite used to each other’s weirdness that any misunderstanding between us doesn’t last very long. So yes, we can call each other family.

According to him, he would be happy to have a friend take over his job since he isn’t the type who’d hang on when he’s not wanted. Dispassionately he said his friend doesn’t have any obligation at all to tell him about both of their fates. Geez, was this just a guy thing?

Because to me, more than the generosity, kindness, or esprit de corps friendships bring, what I value above all, is honesty. I told Pangs that if I were being asked to take over his job, I would tell him so. In fact, I would even think twice about replacing him because it just feels weird and treacherous. It just leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth, you know? My conscience would bother me if I don’t say anything. (But then I’m the type whose insides get torn up when I don’t call my mother.)

I mean, there are just certain hard and fast rules in friendship. And foremost of these rules is that you don’t betray those close to you.

Yes, it can be difficult to remain honest in a friendship. Do we tell our friend she looks gawdawful in her new dress? Do we tell her that she looks fat and looks like she’s been locked overnight in the ice cream factory? Do we tell our friend her husband’s sleeping around with another woman? Do we tell her we’re even friends with that woman? Do we tell our friend that she’s losing her job tomorrow?

I heard someone say once that one of the most overrated virtues is honesty. Why unduly hurt someone with the truth? That just doesn’t sit well with me. If I know by keeping my mouth shut my friend will end up looking like a fool, humiliated before the entire world, then I have to speak up. It’s a no brainer. In any relationship, we all have the responsibility to look out for each other. That’s just what being a friend is all about.

* * * *
Since last week, I have been receiving a barrage of text messages and phone calls from numerous public relations practitioners and media relations specialists who read my column on the “Media-PR relationship” (Something Like Life, Jan. 25, 2008).

A few congratulated me for hitting spot on what was wrong in their industry. (Laziness!) One incredulously asked me why I was mad at PRs. A couple of them joked by calling me “Estella.” Then another asked if it was too late at night for her to text me. One thought my column was great for pointing out his colleagues’ foibles, and then proceeded to violate every rule in the PR handbook himself.

One close PR friend, only one of the very, very few allowed to call me on a Sunday even late at night, joshed that he had already suggested that I be invited to their group for a tete-a-tete/lecture, because God knows just how many “idiots” were now polluting their industry.

I didn’t think the column would create such a storm, but I just thought it was about time someone said something. I’ve noticed that over the years, more and more of us in the media have been sharing horror stories about PR practitioners. I remember starting out in the media profession, I had very few, if none at all, complaints about any PRs. (But like one reporter friend recently wrote on my blog, she had encountered a PR guy who demanded that they use his press release as is. Verbatim. Kapal.)

I should point out though that there are still a number of PR practitioners who are really tops in their field. They know how to serve their clients well by coming up with really creative ideas, and treat the media with the utmost respect. It’s just that they are becoming too far and in between. Sad.

* (This should've been column 106 in BusinessMirror. Photo from allposters.com)

100! and counting...

Something Like Life
Dec. 20, 2007

THIS is my 100th column for this super-excellent business newspaper.

I never would have thought I’d have enough discipline to do this every week and talk about a topic which matters to us most: our relationships. After all, I’m more a politics and business kind of girl who usually rants over the latest insane idea of the government, despite my having turned more to lifestyle writing.

When my editor first proposed to me the idea of writing about relationships, I was amused. I think I asked him if everyone else had turned him down before he finally approached me. Frankly, I thought the topic was very limiting and felt I’d run out of ideas each week. Besides, who would want to read about falling in love (and out of it), dating, adultery (woo-hoo!) week after week? Besides what right did I have talking about romance when I’m currently unattached, except to my Mac?

But as Gerard spelled it out to me, relationships do not only mean romantic love and its many configurations, but also the bonds that tie us to our work colleagues, our bosses, our family, our friends and, yes, even those who are within our periphery who may not be any of the above but who still make our lives work, such as our secretaries, assistants, househelp, etc. (A couple of months back, for example, a few people told me how they enjoyed my piece on finding the right househelp, and sympathized with my plight.)

Helping me through this weekly commitment of column-writing have been my friends, some of whose life stories have also made it to the pages of this section. Well, what are friends for if you can’t mine their experiences and regurgitate them for public consumption, eh? Seriously, I just love my wonderful friends, some of whom have been closer to me than my own family, and I’ve shared some of their own stories with you, so you already know just how much I have learned from them, too.

'The Entourage' (foreground, from left): Fil, moi, Donna, Marianne, Tita Nel; (back, from left) Tito Mon, Pinky Poo, Badang

So this year, as I give thanks for the great opportunities that have come my way and to my fabulous readers, I’d like some of my dearest friends to take center stage and talk about their favorite Christmas gifts. This is my “Entourage” — the people who have been around especially when things weren’t going so great in my life. It hasn’t been an easy year for me and my family, but I’m glad I have these splendid guys and gals to hold me up and lift my spirits. This is my own little way of saying thank you to them and hoping that all their Christmas wishes come true. (Okay, I didn’t bother to ask the rest because they don’t believe in Christ-mas anyway…heathens! I still love you guys, though.)

Fil: Back in 1987 when things weren’t that big, Larry (my life partner) bought me a 29-inch Sony TV which had surround sound. Big TVs weren’t in fashion yet then. But it was the biggest gift he ever bought me. Until now it’s still working!

Tito Mon: I was five years old and my mom gave me a bicycle. We lived in the province then and we weren’t rich. So it was something big for me already. Also, I remember that same Christmas, my ninang (godmother) gave me a basketball. The ball fell down the stairs and out into the compound’s ground. I ran after it and the German shepherd of my neighbor clawed at me. I was given 24 anti-tetanus shots!

Marianne: Everyone knows I love vinegar. A couple of years ago, a publicist gave me different kinds of vinegar—red wine, tarragon, malt, balsamic, sukang Iloko, etc. I really appreciated it because I wasn’t even close to her but she took the effort to choose these vinegars in nice different bottles and arranged them in a gift basket. It may be ordinary to some but I liked it because she put a lot of thought into the gift, which is something that you don’t expect from most publicists, right? Napa-bilib ako sa kanya! Someone actually paid attention to what I wanted! (Anyone who can guess who this publicist is gets a special prize. No help from Marianne, please.)

Jun: I was 11 years old, I received a doll dressed as Santa Claus. It was a gift from my favorite kuya who died from bangungot in December also, three years after he gave me the doll. It was the best gift I received because I guess it was his way of telling me that it was okay for me to be gay. He was 24 then, and it was his first job, he bought my doll from his first salary. Of all my brothers, he was the one I was closest to, and he was the only one with an open mind to what I was, what I am. That’s why I don’t enjoy Christmas that much since he passed away.

Donna: Just last Sunday I received a Tommy Hilfiger watch from a really good friend. It’s lined in pink with Swarovski crystals. I really wanted that watch. And although it’s not really that expensive in terms of watches, it was expensive for my friend to buy it. The last time she gave me an expensive item was several years ago. But it’s not really the price that mattered; it’s who gave it.

Ted: I must’ve been nine or 10 years old and our “Santa Claus” got a bundle from his huge Christmas sack and called out my name, “To Teddy.” I walked up to him, got the bundle, ripped open the wrapper and couldn’t help letting out a delighted yelp, “Santa’s finally got it right!” when I saw what it yielded: all the titles of classics illustrated comic books I had written on the Christmas wish list which I and all my cousins in the maternal family compound I grew up in Bacolod were asked to make before Christmas Eve. A Tale of Two Cities, The Prisoner of Zenda, Robinson Crusoe, Man in the Iron Mask, Huckleberry Finn, War of the Worlds, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Rip Van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, etc.

Jun the fabulous, now based in Hong Kong.

Francine: Getting married two days after Christmas Day was the best Christmas gift I received…next to the sofa my husband (Peter) bought me today. Peter and I actually wanted to get married on Christmas Day but we wanted our friends around to share the day with us. People would still be nursing a hangover on the 26th, so we decided to hold it on the 27th. And also now (will be a good Christmas) because we have a baby, it’s his first Christmas. We just moved into a new house. We brought in a cypress tree from the garden into the house and decorated it with lights and Christmas cards. So we’re going back to trying to find meaning in Christmas. We want to make it more meaningful again, especially for us as a family.

It’s funny that as I was interviewing my friends for this piece, most of them had a difficult time remembering the outstanding gifts they received over time. I did, too. I sort of remember the food I ate more than the gifts. (But now that I think about it, the best Christmas gift I probably received was a dainty gold bracelet from an old boyfriend. He had come from Bangkok, where he attended a conference, and didn’t give me any pasalubong. Nagtipid ang gago — the bracelet was my pasalubong and Christmas gift rolled into one. What was interesting was that when we split up, the bracelet also broke…but then, of course, it’s 24k kasi. Confession: I still have the bracelet, repaired, which I still wear sometimes.)

But I guess as one gets older, the material stuff doesn’t really hold too much meaning for us anymore. We’re not as impressionable anymore as when we were little and all gifts were the best. These days, it’s the thought that counts, or whoever gave the gift that lends it some meaning. The fact that someone actually remembered and took time out to give us a present is quite heartwarming, more so if it comes from someone we really have great affection for. (Of course, if anyone gave me the stuff that was on my Christmas wish list published a couple of weeks ago, I will love him or her forever.)

So, with a gentle reminder to keep the Excedrin, Lomotil, Alka-Seltzer, apple juice and tomato juice on hand, my friends and I wish you all a Merry Christmas!

(My column, Something Like Life, is published every Friday in the Life section of the BusinessMirror.)

Loveless on Christmas?

Something Like Life
Dec. 14, 2007

YOU have just renewed your membership to SMAP (Samahan ng Malalamig ang Pasko). Every time you hear the song “Pasko Na Sinta Ko” played on the radio, you want to go out and shoot your neighbor’s dog. Okay, so you don’t have a boyfriend this Christmas. What are you going to do, short of hiring your gardener’s macho dancer-son as your boyfriend to present to the relatives for the Christmas Day reunion?

Well, first of all, make sure you pay him at least a thousand bucks. Just kidding!

I know a number of people who have husbands, boyfriends, or family who still don’t feel the Christmas spirit at all despite the grand day being just 11 days away. (A friend’s status on his Facebook profile reads “Holidying”.) So I can just imagine what it must feel like when one is all alone with no one to share a special romantic gift over the holidays. It is true that this is the time of the year when suicide rates spike up as people either don’t have money or don’t have loved ones to turn to. If you let the Christmas blues get to you, you will likely feel empty, wretched and miserable.

I, for one, have always been thankful that, despite some years when I have to cough up my membership dues to SMAP, I still have my family around me. It will be a bit different this year, primarily because my father had just passed away, but I know we will all pull together to make Christmas still meaningful despite his absence. Having kids around helps as their wide-eyed innocence and belief in some bearded fat man in a red suit bringing them gifts just makes us work harder to make the holidays extra-special.

There is no reason, however, to feel lonely on Christmas just because Prince Charming seems to have lost his way trying to find your house. (Baka na-traffic.)

Focusing on other people instead of yourself eases the loneliness. If you become self-absorbed and keep obsessing about your loveless plight this season, you will likely need more than a bottle of Paxil to lift your spirits.

You can:

Spend the day in an orphanage. Bring some buckets of greasy breaded fried chicken or cartons of sweet spaghetti to share with these unfortunate souls. Or ask donations from friends for used toys or children’s clothes to donate to the children. Seeing these kids’ faces light up from sheer joy at the goodies you’re bringing is a feeling so precious that you will forget, however temporarily, how depressing (you think) your life is.

Visit a home for poor senior citizens. Next to orphans, old people whose own families have abandoned them are the most pitiful creatures imaginable. After giving their lives to their families, they are cast aside like used plastic bags. People who are forgotten need someone to talk to. I find it a real learning experience to just sit down and listen to seniors tell stories about their youth. It’s better than any reality TV show (or telenovela) and you get a history education to boot.

Spend Christmas Day with orphans. (Photo from stadonfamily.com)

Invite others for a Christmas get-together. Whether your friends are alone like yourself or have families, ask them to come over for a meal and some merriment. If you want to slave over a hot pot the whole day just to forget how alone you are, then go ahead and do the entire menu. If your friends are up to it, then go potluck and ask them to bring some special dish. Christmas is all about sharing. For sure, you will all be closer to one another when you all come down with intestinal flu. What fun will it be for all to investigate whose dish caused your brains to run out your ass.

Okay, so you can be a little self-absorbed, too.

Splurge on yourself. Plan the entire day around the most important person in the world. You. Whip up a really delicious meal from a recipe you’ve been dying to try. Relax and book yourself for an entire day of pampering and wellness at your favorite spa. Go watch a Christmas movie or rent your favorite video (except those goo-goo Meg Ryan romantic comedies) to watch at home. If watching a video isn’t your thing, settle down in bed with a nice pot of tea and read a good book while your favorite music plays in the background. God knows you haven’t had much time to read except magazines, or the news online, during the entire year that you’ve been stressed at work.

Indulge. Go ahead and buy yourself a great big Christmas present—like that 40-inch Plasma TV set you’ve been ogling every time you pass by the appliance store. Or perhaps the new MacBook Pro with the 13-inch screen and 2GB memory. Sure, these items are expensive but, hey, they’re gonna last longer than a boyfriend! So go use that credit card and swipe away. It’s zero-percent interest anyway.

Go on a holiday trip. Who says you have to stay at home in this country on Christmas? Right now, go online and start surfing. What destination have you been wanting to travel to all these years? This is a good time as any to go there. And, hey, just think of the cultural education you’ll be getting. Try another country’s Christmas traditions for a change. It doesn’t have to be as far as Alaska (but on second thought, you might have better luck getting a boyfriend there, like Marian Frisk in Men in Trees). Check out New York Times’ 53 places to go to in 2008. There are a lot of exotic countries just within the region that really look like exciting places to visit (e.g., Laos, the Maldives, Lombok in Indonesia, Barossa Valley in Australia, and—believe it or not—Iran).

Go to church on Christmas Eve. There’s nothing more uplifting than to join others in celebrating Christ’s birth, which is the real point of the holidays anyway, and not just maxing out the credit card to buy everybody gifts. Most churches these days celebrate Christmas Eve Mass with some play on Christ’s birth with the neighborhood kids as the main characters, or feature an honest-to-goodness choral group that has endlessly rehearsed the traditional Christmas carols in harmony or other sacred arias. These traditions just make Christmas Mass more extraordinary and inspiring.

While shopping malls have all but eroded the real meaning of Christmas, try to remember that the season is all about giving love and joy to all, and making peace with others. It is also the time to count your blessings and realize just how lucky you are. You may not have Prince Charming by your side, but you’re healthy, are able to eat three meals a day, have a roof over your head, and good friends (or family) around you.

You have every reason to be happy.

(My column Something Like Life, is published every Friday in the Life section of BusinessMirror.)

Libre ang mangarap di ba?

Something Like Life
Nov. 30, 2007

BEGINNING tomorrow, December 1, we have exactly 23 days to get our Christmas lists in order, subtracting the friends we haven’t seen for ages or adding new ones to the list (including new bosses for the proverbial sipsip gifts), and getting all our shopping done before the clock strikes midnight to herald the Christ Lord’s birth.

I’m almost done, having eliminated most of my lovable and understanding friends from my list and pleading poverty again this year, but I still need to get in order the gifts for the godchildren (with a plus-one courtesy of Iris this year).

After having had a less-than-productive shopping expedition with Fil at the International Bazaar at the PICC, I’m looking forward to a three-day shopping extravaganza at the St. James Bazaar in Alabang beginning today. Hopefully by this Sunday, I would be all done with my gift-buying, allowing me to concentrate on my own needs next. After all, I’ve toiled, sweated and run around godknowswhere, just to earn honest decent wages from my writing, so it’s time I get some rewards in return.

And I do have a lot of dream gifts for this Christmas, not that I can afford them all. But perhaps I can take a cue from the wildly popular video/book The Secret and focus all my positive thoughts and energies on these gifts. I shall visualize receiving these wonderful goodies and, for sure, most of them will be handed to me effortlessly. And, nah, I’m not going to wish for any of that “peace and goodwill to all men” crap that everyone unabashedly says when the klieg lights and cameras are switched on in their direction. I’m all pure materialism this year.

My 10 dream gifts this Christmas are:

Ananda in the Himalayas

1. A 10-day free stay in all the best spas in the world, with complimentary massages, body treatments and yoga instruction. These should include Reethi Rah in the Maldives, Banyan Tree in Phuket, the Ananda in the Himalayas and, just for kicks, the Four Seasons Biltmore Resort in Santa Barbara, just because Vanity Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens stayed there and tried to get an extreme makeover.

2. A monthlong cooking, eating and drinking tour of Tuscany, Italy, preferably, of course, with some gorgeous hunka-hunka burning love I’ll probably meet over there. Who knows, I’ll probably move there permanently. Think Diane Lane in Under the Tuscan Sun, right Francine?

3. The freakin’ P3.2-million, 103-inch Panasonic plasma TV everyone’s been talking about. While I have no room in my mother’s townhouse to put it in, I can probably have it installed in the garage and watch all first-rate, still-to-be shown-in-local-theaters movies on DVD. Of course, I will have to charge my neighbors P200 each if they want watch the movies with me. That P3.2 million will be paid up for in no time. Uh-huh, I’m so smart, aren’t I? Don’t you wish we were friends?

4. Full-course lunch or dinner at French Laundry with chef-turned-TV host/book author Anthony Bourdain. I saw a long-ago episode of Bourdain’s TV show where he and his chef buddies dined at what has been called one of the best restaurants in the world, and everyone looked like they were having fun with the tasting menu alone and the wine just flowing. This time, I’ll do the eating and Bourdain will provide the laughs (along with the credit card to pay the bill). We will have fun roasting that perennially perky fake cook Rachel Ray! Ooof! What the hell was Oprah thinking?

French Laundry's Atlantic Halibut (Photo from KQED.org)

5. Majority ownership in at least one hugely profitable listed firm, like SM Investments, PLDT (yeah, even if Smart Communications is ever so slow to release my new phone under my retention policy) or Globe Telecommunications (just to get back at Smart), JG Summit Holdings and Metrobank. There are other companies that are attractive but I’m still too busy plotting the takeover of the other firms. Besides, I don’t want to appear too greedy…duh.

6. My own vineyard and winery in New Zealand, which produces some of the most exciting wines in the world these days. I had the good fortune of touring the Villa Maria Estate years before NZ wines were introduced in the local market and marveled at the modern processes used to produce its award-winning wines (large steel barrels in place of oak, and screwcaps instead of corks). I shall become the best world producer of award-winning Pinot Noirs, Shiraz and Sauvignon Blancs.

7. The Jodie Ankle Boot from Louis Vuitton, which, I swear, is the most fabulous ankle boot ever! Made of canvas and calf leather, the brown boot just looks oh-so-comfortable even with its four-inch heel. I like it also because the LV monogram detail is subtle, unlike the ones on those fake LV bags available at your friendly tindera in the Greenhills tiangges. I especially love the metal rivets and tiny buckle detail. I stumbled on the Jodie after dreaming about a pair of LV boots, which set me off googling photos of LV boots one entire day.

8. The untitled 1954 oil on canvas by HR Ocampo displayed in the function room of the Bank of the Philippine Islands named after the artist. Or perhaps Pablo Amorsolo’s portraits of the Women of Rizal hanging in the BPI chairman’s office? Yes, some art for Christmas may be good for the soul, and will undoubtedly also raise one’s market value in the eyes of envious friends. And you all thought I was shallow!

Lake Como, Italy (Photo from Student Brittanica)

9. A house in the Southhamptons or maybe in Lake Como in Italy where all my friends and I can play all day. There’s nothing like exchanging gossip over cocktails with Vera Wang, Renée Zellwegger, and George Soros at the Hamptons abode, or having dinner with gorgeous George Clooney and his Ocean 12 buddies at my lakeside retreat. Of course, my friends will have to pay for their own airfare and land transport to get there. Sorry, darlings, no such thing as a free lunch!

And last but not the least:

10. Tony Leung. Need I explain?

Do you friendster or facebook? (and the phrase of the day)

OKAY, so I was sitting just sitting here transferring photos from my camera phone into my computer but I realized I couldn't upload them into another photo set on Flickr because I'm a free account user. So not wanting to spend $25 a year just to get a Pro unlimited account, I searched through the site to find out if I could delete a set of photos without erasing them completely from my photostream. Of course, there was nothing on the FAQs page nor anything in the forums advising users of solutions or alternatives to this dilemma. (Of course if you've been a long-time Mac user like me, you know that anything owned by Yahoo as well as Yahoo itself sucks.)

Fortunately, some of the guys in the forum mentioned Facebook, the social networking site, which they said allowed unlimited photo posts. Hmmm...I thought that sounded cool, although I was still wary of the social networking phenomenon which had begun with the establishment of Friendster. I've been invited a lot of times by Friendster users to join the site, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out how you could call someone a "friend" without actually meeting them face to face! I've read in some newspaper stories that some users had thousands and thousands of "friends!" Then one annoying guy I don't even know just kept on emailing me to view his profile, which I found creepy. So I didn't want to join that.

(Partying at the Two Seasons resort blessing, Nov. 17, 2007. From left: Teddy, Raoul, moi, and Jenny Peñaloza. More photos at Stella in Facebook.)

Anyway, to make the long story short, I joined Facebook. It seemed a better alternative as it seemed the entire world had already joined Friendster. I felt Facebook was "cozier", if that term even applies in the cyberworld.

So this is part real, part social experiment. I want to see how many of my real friends, contacts, and regular acquaintances would join Facebook and be my "friend." I found out that among my email contacts (Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail), there were a few who were already Facebook members. I restricted the invites to only people who were my actual friends, travel buddies, and fellow foodies, as well as a few people I was interested in knowing more after the initial contact in the real world. As of today, I have 10 Facebook friends from the Philippines, Bangkok, Northern Marianas, and the U.S.... not bad considering I just joined two days ago.

But as I plodded through the list of friends of my Facebook friends who had added me to their network, I've concluded that Filipinos are still a conservative lot. Most of the friends on their own lists were people they've worked with, people who they grew up with, or went to school with, or even current companions and colleagues at work. There were only few who appeared to have "friends" the Friendster-type. I don't know if it's because I belong to a more mature generation (my youngest Facebook friend is 25 I think) who are more protective of their privacy. Only one of them had about 125 Facebook friends on the list and I knew most of these people even vicariously. His friends were surely not from Timbuktu. (Of course the downside to this is I realized creepy Friendster guy is also a member of Facebook and is one of my Facebook friend's "friend." Kainis!)

Anyway, check out my photos from my vacation last weekend at Stella in Facebook. This is my first photo album and I'm still trying to get the hang of posting, poking, writing on walls and such. It's definitely a different experience worth exploring. Enjoy!

(P.S. A lot of my earlier photos are still posted on Flickr. You can check them out at Stella at Flickr.)

* * * *

RIDICULOUS HEADLINE OF THE DAY:

I just couldn't help but howl in laughter over this continuing saga between Manny Paquiao and Ara Mina. Hay naku, read on and forget the problems of this country for a minute!

Pacquiao tells Ara Mina: Ignore rumors about us.

* * * *

PHRASE OF THE DAY: Panty-quivering. To describe how a really hot guy makes a woman deliciously shiver down there just by his looks alone. Ex. Tony Leung, and that real yummy guy I met in Boracay. Oof! I invented this term and am patenting it starting today. So there.