(FROM THE EDITOR, SENSE&STYLE, JUNE2008 ISSUE, www.senseandstyle.net.ph)
This issue is dedicated to the yin side of the universe, although we do not exactly mean the “feminine passive principle in nature that in Chinese cosmology is exhibited in darkness, cold, or wetness,” as it is defined by Merriam-Webster.
Nevertheless, we believe in unity in duality and that unless we embrace these seemingly opposing forces there is no way we can achieve balance or harmony or, in more temporal terms, success and happiness. To quote from Merriam-Webster yet again, yin, after all, “combines with yang to produce all that comes to be.”
BLURB
The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it. —Roseanne Barr
But this issue does not aim to draw attention to the feminine as a force breaking into what history has come to define as a “man’s world.” In a larger context, it’s not about women’s rights or gender equality and it’s definitely not about the classic, if tiring, battle of the sexes. Rather than about woman power, it’s simply an ode to the all that is great, strong, captivating, influential, groundbreaking, life-changing in a woman, whether such powers take her to the top of male-dominated industries, win her the attention of Prince Charming, or simply turn heads as she walks by. It’s true, at least where I come from, that a woman need not imbibe the qualities of a man to make it in a man’s world, although in the previews for Spring/Summer ’08 late last year, tomboy chic made quite an appearance, particularly in the collections of Stella MaCartney, John Galliano, Ralph Lauren, and Stefano Pilati for Yves Saint-Laurent.
Still, now that we are right in the middle of the Spring/Summer fashion season, feminine rules, as evidenced by the prevalence of florals and dainty, girly dresses that have somehow stolen the thunder from the gender-benders. That is exactly the point of this issue: You can be a power woman in a flowing dress, Fendi, Louboutins, and Shu Uemura lashes all included. After all, the word power has no gender, unless you translate it in French.
Our cover girl, Nancy Jane, has metamorphosed from the sweet, shy, you-can-make-her-wait-because-she-won’t-mind Nancy Castiglione (“I.Am.A.Woman,” page 120) and needless to say it has been a struggle. Of course, with every change, something has to give and in Nancy’s case, it might have been innocence and a bit of her faith in the world. “I used to be a big dreamer,” she admits. “But I’m a lot more jaded now, a lot more aggressive, I think, and a little bit more practical.”
But change is not always a dramatic turnaround. Half-Filipino, half-American Cathy Tanco Ong (“A League of Her Own,” page 132) “grew up in Maryland, playing sports, including basketball, softball, tennis, volleyball, and even cheerleading,” so it didn’t have to take too much of a revolution for this former newscaster, mother of two, and now team manager of the Little League to end up in the “world of soiled rubber shoes, fast balls, and catching mitts,” even if baseball is still deemed a man’s game in this age of Lydia de Vega and Elma Muros.
To me, Abby Buenviaje Magpayo (“Strength in Numbers,” page 134) is the embodiment of the vision behind this issue. An investment banker, she admits she moves in a tight circle of men in power suits, crunching numbers, making major financial projections, yet she remains every inch a woman, toting a Fendi Spy bag, to boot. “We can do everything [men] can do. Even better,” she says. “And in high heels at that!”
Indeed, sometimes, it’s sad that some feminists try to push gender equality with an aversion to stiletto heels, plunging backs and necklines, and slits from here to there. Gathering all the tools ever available to women in some kind of a power kit (“Look At Me,” page 26), we let ourselves be guided by the allure of long lashes, the hypnotic charm of red lipstick, the staying power of pearls, and the killer appeal of stilettos. More elucidating is a review of the 1994 book, The Power of Style: The Women Who Defined the Art of Living Well, by Annette Tapert and Diana Edkins (“Elements of Style,” page 20), whose profile of iconic, if iconoclastic, women like Jackie O, Diana Vreeland, Wallis Simpson, and Coco Chanel reminds us in the chic, charming, glitzy, or glamorous way only women can do that changing the world has never been solely a man’s job.
Looking at it this way, our mission to “inform, entertain, inspire, and empower women” is ever more rewarding, as keeping our feet on the ground, we do our best with every issue to put style and substance in one package. In this special edition, for instance, as seamlessly as yin and yang, fashion blends with the call for freedom (“Set Me Free,” page 88), just as the desire for a shapely, fit body mixes with the pursuit of enlightenment (“Divine Secrets of the Yoga Sisterhood,” page 70).
Indeed, it is a disgrace that some people associate weakness with a woman. As one contemporary superwoman, American lawyer and diplomat Faith Whittlesey, once said, “Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.”
A
Post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com
Thursday, May 22, 2008
MEN AND WOMEN
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE CARRIED EVERY FRIDAY IN MANILA BULLETIN, 23 MAY 2008)
According to American advertising executive and author Lois Wyse, “men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths.” I hate to add fuel to the fire that has kept the Battle of the Sexes a burning issue in this age of Cory Aquino and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, but in my experience managing people and working under male and female bosses, I find women somewhat stronger.
BLURB
You don’t have to be anti-man to be pro-woman. —Jane Galvin Lewis
This is, of course, a sweeping statement, but I am talking in general terms. I have to emphasize this is based on my experience—limited, I admit—drawing good things out of young and not-so-young writers, artists, and other mostly creative people.
This is not to say, either, that men are weaker. It’s just that, I believe, women have more fortitude. Under heavy pressure, they seem to plod on more steadily, working with what’s available, rather than dreaming or complaining about what should have been available to make things easier, more manageable, less stressful. More important, men, straight or gay, tend to get hurt more easily. When things go wrong and you scold a woman, you are more or less assured she will focus on what went wrong and how she can avoid it next time. When things go wrong and you scold a man, you often have to worry if you hurt his ego, if you made him feel small, if he felt violated and humiliated by your “harsh” words.
As bosses, men and women are different, too. I have had an exceptional boss back in my early days as an advertising copywriter. He was an award-winning creative director and, working under him, I always wondered how I could get into his brains because even though he was quiet and hardly ever gave me specific orders I felt guided by his renowned brilliance in the advertising field. All the time, he would leave me to figure out on my own how to attack a creative challenge, look at whatever I came up with, and make very minimal recommendations on how to make it better. Voila, I won a Best Print Ad award under this kind of leadership and did many commercials that I feel continue to enrich and empower me now. But then that was it. Even now, I cannot say I know this man and I cannot even recall any word he had said or written to me that has any role in what I have become.
In contrast, the best boss I ever had, a female, was more involved in my development as a writer. Although she did give me a lot of freedom, allowing me to push the envelope at any given time, she conveyed to me in no uncertain terms how things should be and how I should do them. Her rules, at least to me, were not black and white; she left a universe of gray areas so I could play with my own ideas and inject my own style, but somehow I could see her imprint on my work. Somehow, the very way she carried herself, composed her sentences, drank her tea, did a 15-minute meditation break during work afternoons, smelled the flowers that arrived on her desk almost every day, gazed at the full moon, and conversed with people, whether a spa attendant or the President of the Philippines, had impact on my own growth as a person, as a writer, as an editor, whose main task now is to encourage, nurture, and manage creative talent.
Maybe it’s not fair that I make these comparisons. As an editor, I have had the privilege of handling both men’s and women’s magazines. If it’s any indication, I have spent 90 percent of the last decade working on women’s magazines. It’s just that I feel more drawn to the lifestyle of women. They have, for one thing, a million and one ways to get all dressed up, not counting the frills they put on after the basic wardrobe, whereas, except for the very few but growing number of male fashionistas who are so daring and inventive with their looks, men only mostly have the usual suit or jacket to turn to when there’s a need to put their best foot forward, especially now that even the boutonnière is no longer in fashion.
But then that’s me talking, a man who does have the tendency to dream and complain about what should have been rather than working with what is.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
According to American advertising executive and author Lois Wyse, “men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths.” I hate to add fuel to the fire that has kept the Battle of the Sexes a burning issue in this age of Cory Aquino and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, but in my experience managing people and working under male and female bosses, I find women somewhat stronger.
BLURB
You don’t have to be anti-man to be pro-woman. —Jane Galvin Lewis
This is, of course, a sweeping statement, but I am talking in general terms. I have to emphasize this is based on my experience—limited, I admit—drawing good things out of young and not-so-young writers, artists, and other mostly creative people.
This is not to say, either, that men are weaker. It’s just that, I believe, women have more fortitude. Under heavy pressure, they seem to plod on more steadily, working with what’s available, rather than dreaming or complaining about what should have been available to make things easier, more manageable, less stressful. More important, men, straight or gay, tend to get hurt more easily. When things go wrong and you scold a woman, you are more or less assured she will focus on what went wrong and how she can avoid it next time. When things go wrong and you scold a man, you often have to worry if you hurt his ego, if you made him feel small, if he felt violated and humiliated by your “harsh” words.
As bosses, men and women are different, too. I have had an exceptional boss back in my early days as an advertising copywriter. He was an award-winning creative director and, working under him, I always wondered how I could get into his brains because even though he was quiet and hardly ever gave me specific orders I felt guided by his renowned brilliance in the advertising field. All the time, he would leave me to figure out on my own how to attack a creative challenge, look at whatever I came up with, and make very minimal recommendations on how to make it better. Voila, I won a Best Print Ad award under this kind of leadership and did many commercials that I feel continue to enrich and empower me now. But then that was it. Even now, I cannot say I know this man and I cannot even recall any word he had said or written to me that has any role in what I have become.
In contrast, the best boss I ever had, a female, was more involved in my development as a writer. Although she did give me a lot of freedom, allowing me to push the envelope at any given time, she conveyed to me in no uncertain terms how things should be and how I should do them. Her rules, at least to me, were not black and white; she left a universe of gray areas so I could play with my own ideas and inject my own style, but somehow I could see her imprint on my work. Somehow, the very way she carried herself, composed her sentences, drank her tea, did a 15-minute meditation break during work afternoons, smelled the flowers that arrived on her desk almost every day, gazed at the full moon, and conversed with people, whether a spa attendant or the President of the Philippines, had impact on my own growth as a person, as a writer, as an editor, whose main task now is to encourage, nurture, and manage creative talent.
Maybe it’s not fair that I make these comparisons. As an editor, I have had the privilege of handling both men’s and women’s magazines. If it’s any indication, I have spent 90 percent of the last decade working on women’s magazines. It’s just that I feel more drawn to the lifestyle of women. They have, for one thing, a million and one ways to get all dressed up, not counting the frills they put on after the basic wardrobe, whereas, except for the very few but growing number of male fashionistas who are so daring and inventive with their looks, men only mostly have the usual suit or jacket to turn to when there’s a need to put their best foot forward, especially now that even the boutonnière is no longer in fashion.
But then that’s me talking, a man who does have the tendency to dream and complain about what should have been rather than working with what is.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
LAUGHING IN FLOWERS
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE CARRIED EVERY FRIDAY IN MANILA BULLETIN, 16 MAY 2008)
“Behold this flower. In this exists the entire universe.”
That was Deepak Chopra in Manila back in the late ‘90s, holding a single long-stemmed rose before a whole ballroom of us at some hotel in Makati. This Indian medical doctor and writer, a great force in the propagation of the New Thought Movement particularly in the United States, was then challenging us to look at the interconnectedness of life, the existence of all that was, all there is, and all there ever will be in everything.
Pluck not the wayside flower;
It is the traveler’s dower
—William Allingham
What better way to bring this point across but with the example of a flower, whose universal appeal makes it at once simple and magical, common and sublime, straightforward and symbolic? After all, any flower is as mute as it is eloquent, as silent as it is loud and clear in delivering messages that resonate within us with the impact of a megaphone. What exactly does a narra bloom stand for in the language of flowers? I don’t know, but when this tiny flower randomly fell on my windshield just when, faced with the dilemma of quitting a job I loved for greener pastures, I was praying to the Little Flower, St. Therese of the Child Jesus, for a sign—a yellow flower if I should stay or a white one if I should go—I knew exactly what it conveyed to me. It was the first ever time I earnestly asked for a sign from heaven and it was granted to me in no uncertain terms.
To me, a flower is as much a representation of the brevity of life as an embodiment of its infinity. Because of its short life span, we learn to come to terms with the fact that all things must end, that even beautiful things, joyful things must come to pass. But because after every wilting comes a season of blooming, we might be made to believe that life goes on, that there is a cycle with which we must come along, and that there is a time, a season for everything—joy and sorrow, youth and age, life and death.
In Manila, even in places where there is no space for gardens, flowers thrive. The pink bougainvilleas that adorn the aisles on Burgos Street from Roxas Boulevard appear to unfurl their petals and their color as if to defy the scorching sun. According to my friend, floral master Rachy Cuna, the less you water this survivor of a plant, the more beautiful it is when it comes into flower. Nature is magic in a bougainvillea, whose response to scarcity is beauty. I wish people had the same survival mechanism, especially in times of dearth such as now.
But other flower species paint Manila with all the colors of the spectrum. Yellowbells, gumamela, santan, calachuchi, four-o’-clocks, bandera Española, and other colorful blossoms peep out of fences in the villages everywhere or claim their pride of place even in tin cans on the steps leading to a shanty. If you’re lucky, you can drive through an almost deserted road in a village in Las Piñas under a shower of orange, the falling petals of a fire tree in bloom.
Edwin Josue, a Filipino florist who made it in New York, once raved to me during his brief homecoming how in awe he was that flowers grew almost wildly in the most unexpected places in Manila. At his shop in the Upper East Side of New York, flowers need to be flown in from places like Holland because, after all, when you walk down the busy streets of the Big Apple, all the flowers you can see are in the shop windows, especially now, when the biggest designers, from Valentino to Ralph Lauren, from Jean-Paul Gaultier to Viktor & Rolf, have all decided to grow a forest of flowers in their Spring/Summer 2008 collections.
If the great American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said, “Earth laughs in flowers,” was right, we can safely conclude there is happiness where we are. But how come our parks cannot be gardens full of glad tidings? How come some government official decided to cut down all the fire trees along some provincial road because they caused so much litter? How come we often fail to look up at the brighter side of things like flowers turning their faces to the sun?
I suppose that with so much “laughter” around us, we are taking it for granted how lucky we are to be happy in these very lonely times.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
“Behold this flower. In this exists the entire universe.”
That was Deepak Chopra in Manila back in the late ‘90s, holding a single long-stemmed rose before a whole ballroom of us at some hotel in Makati. This Indian medical doctor and writer, a great force in the propagation of the New Thought Movement particularly in the United States, was then challenging us to look at the interconnectedness of life, the existence of all that was, all there is, and all there ever will be in everything.
Pluck not the wayside flower;
It is the traveler’s dower
—William Allingham
What better way to bring this point across but with the example of a flower, whose universal appeal makes it at once simple and magical, common and sublime, straightforward and symbolic? After all, any flower is as mute as it is eloquent, as silent as it is loud and clear in delivering messages that resonate within us with the impact of a megaphone. What exactly does a narra bloom stand for in the language of flowers? I don’t know, but when this tiny flower randomly fell on my windshield just when, faced with the dilemma of quitting a job I loved for greener pastures, I was praying to the Little Flower, St. Therese of the Child Jesus, for a sign—a yellow flower if I should stay or a white one if I should go—I knew exactly what it conveyed to me. It was the first ever time I earnestly asked for a sign from heaven and it was granted to me in no uncertain terms.
To me, a flower is as much a representation of the brevity of life as an embodiment of its infinity. Because of its short life span, we learn to come to terms with the fact that all things must end, that even beautiful things, joyful things must come to pass. But because after every wilting comes a season of blooming, we might be made to believe that life goes on, that there is a cycle with which we must come along, and that there is a time, a season for everything—joy and sorrow, youth and age, life and death.
In Manila, even in places where there is no space for gardens, flowers thrive. The pink bougainvilleas that adorn the aisles on Burgos Street from Roxas Boulevard appear to unfurl their petals and their color as if to defy the scorching sun. According to my friend, floral master Rachy Cuna, the less you water this survivor of a plant, the more beautiful it is when it comes into flower. Nature is magic in a bougainvillea, whose response to scarcity is beauty. I wish people had the same survival mechanism, especially in times of dearth such as now.
But other flower species paint Manila with all the colors of the spectrum. Yellowbells, gumamela, santan, calachuchi, four-o’-clocks, bandera Española, and other colorful blossoms peep out of fences in the villages everywhere or claim their pride of place even in tin cans on the steps leading to a shanty. If you’re lucky, you can drive through an almost deserted road in a village in Las Piñas under a shower of orange, the falling petals of a fire tree in bloom.
Edwin Josue, a Filipino florist who made it in New York, once raved to me during his brief homecoming how in awe he was that flowers grew almost wildly in the most unexpected places in Manila. At his shop in the Upper East Side of New York, flowers need to be flown in from places like Holland because, after all, when you walk down the busy streets of the Big Apple, all the flowers you can see are in the shop windows, especially now, when the biggest designers, from Valentino to Ralph Lauren, from Jean-Paul Gaultier to Viktor & Rolf, have all decided to grow a forest of flowers in their Spring/Summer 2008 collections.
If the great American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said, “Earth laughs in flowers,” was right, we can safely conclude there is happiness where we are. But how come our parks cannot be gardens full of glad tidings? How come some government official decided to cut down all the fire trees along some provincial road because they caused so much litter? How come we often fail to look up at the brighter side of things like flowers turning their faces to the sun?
I suppose that with so much “laughter” around us, we are taking it for granted how lucky we are to be happy in these very lonely times.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
LA VITA É BELLA
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, MANILA BULLETIN'S WEEKEND SPECIAL, EVERY FRIDAY, 9 MAY 2008)
Everything we know about parents is suddenly in question, with the emergence of Elisabeth Fritzl from the dungeon of her own father’s cruel, subhuman, nonhuman perversions. I cannot think of any man in my immediate world who can do such a thing to any person, let alone his own daughter, but what keeps me aching for more of this incredible tragedy is where Josef Fritzl’s wife figure in all of this.
Is God up there? —Felix Fritzl, 5, upon seeing the moon for the first time ever
I’m not sure if you’re following it over on CNN or on the Internet. Just search “Dungeon Kids” to get the full story. But here’s a gist: Elisabeth was 18, when her incestuous, rapist father dragged her handcuffed to the basement of their apartment in Amstetten, Austria, where, literally in the pits of the earth, she stayed for the next two decades, what’s left of her life confined within a windowless cellar “behind a concrete door locked with an electronic code,” no sun, no air, except for the little brought in through a small vent on the wall, no contact with the outside world, except for a small television set, and no help every time her father came down to rape her, repeatedly, remorselessly, without any trace of humanity.
In the course of 24 years, in which she remained trapped in this hellhole, she gave birth to a total of seven children, whom, for my own sanity, I’d like to consider her very own, and not her father’s, whose role in their lives, except for a few million imperialistic sperm cells, does not have any shred of the necessary components of fatherhood. One of the children died shortly after birth and was reportedly burned by the evil old man on the furnace.
Is it real? Is it possible for one father to be so evil toward his own daughter? But if we must thank God for small mercies, evil personified might have been persuaded or, for no other reason but practical ones, might have thought it a good idea to bring three children—Lisa, now 16; Monika, now 14; and Alexander, now 12—upstairs one at a time to be cared for by his wife on the pretext that his “runaway daughter” returned now and then to leave one child after another at the doorstep for the grandparents to take over raising them. The eldest daughter, 19-year-old Kerstin, the second child, 18-year-old Stefan, and the youngest, five-year-old Felix, stayed below ground to grow up like animals, no medical care, no dental care, no care period, not counting the care their mother gave them despite her most helpless condition. Reports have it that due to a lack of social exposure as well as any level of education, the children speak their own language, “growling and cooing at each other” to communicate. Felix “prefers to crawl despite his five years, but can walk upright if he wants to” while Stefan walks with a permanent stoop, the ceiling in the cellar being barely five feet and five inches from the floor.
How do we teach our children to trust the world if this kind of story is real life? To me, the most dramatic potential in this yet-unraveling tale is in the mind of Rosemarie, Fritzl’s wife, who slept upstairs while the most atrocious crime was committed on her missing daughter for over 20 years by the same man who shared her bed when he was not busy abusing his daughter-turned-sex slave. Did she have any idea? Have her maternal instincts ever come to play? Does she want to throw her husband, now 73, down the cellar and leave him there to burn in hell?
But even in hell something beautiful emerges. Notwithstanding the horrors she went through and the childhood she herself was deprived of (her father first raped her when she was 11), Elisabeth Fritzl, now 42, tried to create an illusion of normalcy for the three children left in her care. “She read to them, told them fairy tale stories, and sang them lullabies to help them sleep,” said the Daily Mail.
It was reported that Elisabeth kept it from her children that they were imprisoned, helping them create a make-believe world by making models out of cardboard and glue, telling them stories of “princesses and pirates,” and watching adventure films on TV with them.
Elisabeth’s ordeal reminds me of La Vita é Bella (Life is Beautiful), except that, without any of the comedic relief in the Roberto Benigni film, hers is more harrowing, more horrific. In this context, her attempt at raising her children the best way she could is nothing short of heroic. After all, rather than a Nazi concentration camp, it was real life, her own life, her whole life that she was up against.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
Everything we know about parents is suddenly in question, with the emergence of Elisabeth Fritzl from the dungeon of her own father’s cruel, subhuman, nonhuman perversions. I cannot think of any man in my immediate world who can do such a thing to any person, let alone his own daughter, but what keeps me aching for more of this incredible tragedy is where Josef Fritzl’s wife figure in all of this.
Is God up there? —Felix Fritzl, 5, upon seeing the moon for the first time ever
I’m not sure if you’re following it over on CNN or on the Internet. Just search “Dungeon Kids” to get the full story. But here’s a gist: Elisabeth was 18, when her incestuous, rapist father dragged her handcuffed to the basement of their apartment in Amstetten, Austria, where, literally in the pits of the earth, she stayed for the next two decades, what’s left of her life confined within a windowless cellar “behind a concrete door locked with an electronic code,” no sun, no air, except for the little brought in through a small vent on the wall, no contact with the outside world, except for a small television set, and no help every time her father came down to rape her, repeatedly, remorselessly, without any trace of humanity.
In the course of 24 years, in which she remained trapped in this hellhole, she gave birth to a total of seven children, whom, for my own sanity, I’d like to consider her very own, and not her father’s, whose role in their lives, except for a few million imperialistic sperm cells, does not have any shred of the necessary components of fatherhood. One of the children died shortly after birth and was reportedly burned by the evil old man on the furnace.
Is it real? Is it possible for one father to be so evil toward his own daughter? But if we must thank God for small mercies, evil personified might have been persuaded or, for no other reason but practical ones, might have thought it a good idea to bring three children—Lisa, now 16; Monika, now 14; and Alexander, now 12—upstairs one at a time to be cared for by his wife on the pretext that his “runaway daughter” returned now and then to leave one child after another at the doorstep for the grandparents to take over raising them. The eldest daughter, 19-year-old Kerstin, the second child, 18-year-old Stefan, and the youngest, five-year-old Felix, stayed below ground to grow up like animals, no medical care, no dental care, no care period, not counting the care their mother gave them despite her most helpless condition. Reports have it that due to a lack of social exposure as well as any level of education, the children speak their own language, “growling and cooing at each other” to communicate. Felix “prefers to crawl despite his five years, but can walk upright if he wants to” while Stefan walks with a permanent stoop, the ceiling in the cellar being barely five feet and five inches from the floor.
How do we teach our children to trust the world if this kind of story is real life? To me, the most dramatic potential in this yet-unraveling tale is in the mind of Rosemarie, Fritzl’s wife, who slept upstairs while the most atrocious crime was committed on her missing daughter for over 20 years by the same man who shared her bed when he was not busy abusing his daughter-turned-sex slave. Did she have any idea? Have her maternal instincts ever come to play? Does she want to throw her husband, now 73, down the cellar and leave him there to burn in hell?
But even in hell something beautiful emerges. Notwithstanding the horrors she went through and the childhood she herself was deprived of (her father first raped her when she was 11), Elisabeth Fritzl, now 42, tried to create an illusion of normalcy for the three children left in her care. “She read to them, told them fairy tale stories, and sang them lullabies to help them sleep,” said the Daily Mail.
It was reported that Elisabeth kept it from her children that they were imprisoned, helping them create a make-believe world by making models out of cardboard and glue, telling them stories of “princesses and pirates,” and watching adventure films on TV with them.
Elisabeth’s ordeal reminds me of La Vita é Bella (Life is Beautiful), except that, without any of the comedic relief in the Roberto Benigni film, hers is more harrowing, more horrific. In this context, her attempt at raising her children the best way she could is nothing short of heroic. After all, rather than a Nazi concentration camp, it was real life, her own life, her whole life that she was up against.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
WORLD BEAUTY
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, MANILA BULLETIN'S WEEKEND SPECIAL, EVERY FRIDAY, 2 MAY 2008)
Start the weekend with yet another boost to our national ego!
Log on to paulsmith.co.uk. Click on “Shop,” then choose “United Kingdom/Rest of the World.” From there, move on to “Women’s Accessories,” then click “Jewelry” and—voila!—the Tweetie Gonzalez earrings. With a drop length of seven centimeters, the gold-plated “Hollywood” hoop earrings have blue Swarovski crystals and orange dyed jade. I believe the other pair I saw just a day before has already been sold.
BLURB
We have the know-how, the inspirations, the facilities... to make [jewelry design] a viable business. —Tweetie de Leon Gonzalez
The better news is, if you click on the earrings, it proudly announces in the description that they are “designed by Tweetie Gonzalez and handmade in the Philippines” but because, one’s country of origin cannot just be relegated to the fine print, at the bottom of the description, it says yet again “Made in the Philippines.”
Tweetie is especially proud of this: “I think it’s also a validation for our country, that we have the know-how, the inspirations, the facilities… to make this a viable business.”
What’s on the Paul Smith website is from an existing collection. None of it was designed exclusively for Paul Smith and Paul Smith had no say whatsoever on the design. “That’s why this is a great validation of me as a designer, that I’m good enough for them,” says Tweetie of the UK brand that first ordered from her collection in 2006. “LA was the first to order and it did well. About a year later, London called and sent pieces to Milan.”
This supermodel made her mark as an accessories designer with the Kamagong Collection, which she considers her trademark. Kamagong is a species of Philippine hardwood. “That did really well, for me. It’s been a year since it debuted, but it remains current,” says Tweetie. “It made the international market notice. It’s not distinctly Filipino because while I do use natural pieces, I inject a more modern touch to them. They look different from other pieces abroad. Although I use indigenous materials, my pieces are modern, young, upbeat, but nothing overwhelming…”
As a designer, Tweetie is rigorously following the disciplines of balance, ethics, and originality. “I don’t really search on what’s current,” she says. “I try my best not to look at magazines. I don’t want to be accused of imitating. My designs come from my own taste and design principles, although the structure, the look is generally classic, they’re fun to wear, but not to the point of being outlandish.”
If the buyers of the jewelry only knew more about the person behind it, I’m sure they would buy them all in a snap, if only because handmaking everything down to the very last detail Tweetie surely must have poured so much of her energy and passion into each piece.
After all, who doesn’t want a piece of Tweetie, who seems to radiate and attract all things bright and beautiful? She was—and still is—a supermodel, but she has had none of the drugs, sex, eating disorders, and diva catfights associated with the job. She was in showbusiness, which failed to bring anything ugly enough out of her to deserve the front page of a tabloid.
Tell me, indeed, how can we expect anything less than beautiful from someone like Tweetie de Leon Gonzalez?
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com
Start the weekend with yet another boost to our national ego!
Log on to paulsmith.co.uk. Click on “Shop,” then choose “United Kingdom/Rest of the World.” From there, move on to “Women’s Accessories,” then click “Jewelry” and—voila!—the Tweetie Gonzalez earrings. With a drop length of seven centimeters, the gold-plated “Hollywood” hoop earrings have blue Swarovski crystals and orange dyed jade. I believe the other pair I saw just a day before has already been sold.
BLURB
We have the know-how, the inspirations, the facilities... to make [jewelry design] a viable business. —Tweetie de Leon Gonzalez
The better news is, if you click on the earrings, it proudly announces in the description that they are “designed by Tweetie Gonzalez and handmade in the Philippines” but because, one’s country of origin cannot just be relegated to the fine print, at the bottom of the description, it says yet again “Made in the Philippines.”
Tweetie is especially proud of this: “I think it’s also a validation for our country, that we have the know-how, the inspirations, the facilities… to make this a viable business.”
What’s on the Paul Smith website is from an existing collection. None of it was designed exclusively for Paul Smith and Paul Smith had no say whatsoever on the design. “That’s why this is a great validation of me as a designer, that I’m good enough for them,” says Tweetie of the UK brand that first ordered from her collection in 2006. “LA was the first to order and it did well. About a year later, London called and sent pieces to Milan.”
This supermodel made her mark as an accessories designer with the Kamagong Collection, which she considers her trademark. Kamagong is a species of Philippine hardwood. “That did really well, for me. It’s been a year since it debuted, but it remains current,” says Tweetie. “It made the international market notice. It’s not distinctly Filipino because while I do use natural pieces, I inject a more modern touch to them. They look different from other pieces abroad. Although I use indigenous materials, my pieces are modern, young, upbeat, but nothing overwhelming…”
As a designer, Tweetie is rigorously following the disciplines of balance, ethics, and originality. “I don’t really search on what’s current,” she says. “I try my best not to look at magazines. I don’t want to be accused of imitating. My designs come from my own taste and design principles, although the structure, the look is generally classic, they’re fun to wear, but not to the point of being outlandish.”
If the buyers of the jewelry only knew more about the person behind it, I’m sure they would buy them all in a snap, if only because handmaking everything down to the very last detail Tweetie surely must have poured so much of her energy and passion into each piece.
After all, who doesn’t want a piece of Tweetie, who seems to radiate and attract all things bright and beautiful? She was—and still is—a supermodel, but she has had none of the drugs, sex, eating disorders, and diva catfights associated with the job. She was in showbusiness, which failed to bring anything ugly enough out of her to deserve the front page of a tabloid.
Tell me, indeed, how can we expect anything less than beautiful from someone like Tweetie de Leon Gonzalez?
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com
LUCK ON THE RUN
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, MANILA BULLETIN'S WEEKEND SPECIAL, EVERY FRIDAY, 25 APRIL 2008)
When in Macau, you have to decide: Are you in Venice or Las Vegas?
At the Venetian Macao Resort Hotel, you are in both, but you might as well throw in Guangzhou, if only because of its colonial touches. What a treat! That’s like three continents in a space that’s so much smaller than Metro Manila.
BLURB
Venetian Macau represents a massive paradigm shift for Macau and the future of tourism development in Asia —Sheldon Adelson, chairman and CEO, Las Vegas Sands Corp.
I have been to Macau twice before in the late ’90s, but I swear I cannot remember anything beyond the ruins of St. Paul’s. So traveling to Macau for the weekend felt so much like the very first time, especially since I was going to stay at the Venetian, which could have easily been the raison d’etre of my weekend trip.
Indeed, Venetian was on its own a destination and you have no reason to leave its premises, except that, like all the other hotels in Macau, it offers free rides to any point in the former Portuguese colony, not to mention a free ferry ride to Hong Kong.
The newer MGM Grand Macau, which opened only a few months after the grand opening of the Venetian in August last year, is one other reason to take advantage of Macau’s ride-all-you-can offer. True enough, it is grand, but not in the scale of the Venetian. Except for a gigantic replica of a flower garden in the plaza, I would say it had more subtle sensibilities. The reception area is set against a mural, actually a collection of paintings with random brushstrokes in bold colors, lit up from behind with a yellow light, so that from afar the human shadows on both sides of the counter mingle with the artwork, giving the whole arrival experience a modern, nearly Op-Art feel.
We also took a peek at Wynn Macau, if only to check out the Louis Vuitton store that I heard is selling its stuff like hotcakes. But to our surprise the show at the iconic atrium was quite a treat. I would venture to call it sculpture in motion, unraveling the mystery of the 12 animal signs of the Chinese zodiac every 15 minutes or so in a flash of gold moving to a heart-pounding tempo and reaching its climax upon the emergence of the golden tree of prosperity.
But all these megahotels pale in comparison to the Venetian Macao Resort Hotel, a megacity on its own, all 980,000 square meters of it. It is the world’s largest single structure hotel building, with 3,000 all-suite guestrooms (my favorite feature), 149,000 square meters of retail space, and over 51,000 square meters of casino floor, the largest in the world, teeming with 870 table games and over 3,400 slot machines.
It’s quite overwhelming at first, walking from, say, the main lobby to your room on the 17th floor of the South Wing, but with its Venetian theme, the hotel has made sure you need not get bored covering the distance. Indoor canals snake through the property, bearing gondolas and singing gondoliers. In one corner, a shop, whether Giordano or Armani, Rich Jade or Roberto Coin, beckons. In the next, a restaurant, whether the splendid buffet at Bambu or modern Japanese at Roka, lures the palate.
In between, such as when you find yourself in the middle of St. Mark’s Square, a violinist in a Carnivale costume plays a serenade, a living statue intrigues, a soprano takes breaths away, all under a makeshift blue sky that mimics the atmosphere of twilight as day turns into night.
But all these make up probably only less than half of the Venetian, whose second phase of development will begin upon the completion of the 4,108-room Sheraton on the Cotai Strip, a seven-hotel row within view of the Venetian’s Campanile tower, which will include big international hotel brands like Four Seasons, Shangri-La, St. Regis, and Raffles.
It’s a different world in Macau, where East meets—and literally becomes—West; where old meets new and new pretends to be old. After all, this little peninsula on the western edge of the Pearl River Delta prides itself with more than a handful of Unesco World Heritage Sites, the ruins of the St. Paul Cathedral included. But from a past brimming with riches, Macau is on a superhighway to a future even richer.
I thought I shared that future when I won the jackpot on the slot machine on the first night of my Macau weekend. But then it was only my first night and it was way too early to press on the “collect” button.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com
When in Macau, you have to decide: Are you in Venice or Las Vegas?
At the Venetian Macao Resort Hotel, you are in both, but you might as well throw in Guangzhou, if only because of its colonial touches. What a treat! That’s like three continents in a space that’s so much smaller than Metro Manila.
BLURB
Venetian Macau represents a massive paradigm shift for Macau and the future of tourism development in Asia —Sheldon Adelson, chairman and CEO, Las Vegas Sands Corp.
I have been to Macau twice before in the late ’90s, but I swear I cannot remember anything beyond the ruins of St. Paul’s. So traveling to Macau for the weekend felt so much like the very first time, especially since I was going to stay at the Venetian, which could have easily been the raison d’etre of my weekend trip.
Indeed, Venetian was on its own a destination and you have no reason to leave its premises, except that, like all the other hotels in Macau, it offers free rides to any point in the former Portuguese colony, not to mention a free ferry ride to Hong Kong.
The newer MGM Grand Macau, which opened only a few months after the grand opening of the Venetian in August last year, is one other reason to take advantage of Macau’s ride-all-you-can offer. True enough, it is grand, but not in the scale of the Venetian. Except for a gigantic replica of a flower garden in the plaza, I would say it had more subtle sensibilities. The reception area is set against a mural, actually a collection of paintings with random brushstrokes in bold colors, lit up from behind with a yellow light, so that from afar the human shadows on both sides of the counter mingle with the artwork, giving the whole arrival experience a modern, nearly Op-Art feel.
We also took a peek at Wynn Macau, if only to check out the Louis Vuitton store that I heard is selling its stuff like hotcakes. But to our surprise the show at the iconic atrium was quite a treat. I would venture to call it sculpture in motion, unraveling the mystery of the 12 animal signs of the Chinese zodiac every 15 minutes or so in a flash of gold moving to a heart-pounding tempo and reaching its climax upon the emergence of the golden tree of prosperity.
But all these megahotels pale in comparison to the Venetian Macao Resort Hotel, a megacity on its own, all 980,000 square meters of it. It is the world’s largest single structure hotel building, with 3,000 all-suite guestrooms (my favorite feature), 149,000 square meters of retail space, and over 51,000 square meters of casino floor, the largest in the world, teeming with 870 table games and over 3,400 slot machines.
It’s quite overwhelming at first, walking from, say, the main lobby to your room on the 17th floor of the South Wing, but with its Venetian theme, the hotel has made sure you need not get bored covering the distance. Indoor canals snake through the property, bearing gondolas and singing gondoliers. In one corner, a shop, whether Giordano or Armani, Rich Jade or Roberto Coin, beckons. In the next, a restaurant, whether the splendid buffet at Bambu or modern Japanese at Roka, lures the palate.
In between, such as when you find yourself in the middle of St. Mark’s Square, a violinist in a Carnivale costume plays a serenade, a living statue intrigues, a soprano takes breaths away, all under a makeshift blue sky that mimics the atmosphere of twilight as day turns into night.
But all these make up probably only less than half of the Venetian, whose second phase of development will begin upon the completion of the 4,108-room Sheraton on the Cotai Strip, a seven-hotel row within view of the Venetian’s Campanile tower, which will include big international hotel brands like Four Seasons, Shangri-La, St. Regis, and Raffles.
It’s a different world in Macau, where East meets—and literally becomes—West; where old meets new and new pretends to be old. After all, this little peninsula on the western edge of the Pearl River Delta prides itself with more than a handful of Unesco World Heritage Sites, the ruins of the St. Paul Cathedral included. But from a past brimming with riches, Macau is on a superhighway to a future even richer.
I thought I shared that future when I won the jackpot on the slot machine on the first night of my Macau weekend. But then it was only my first night and it was way too early to press on the “collect” button.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com
LAND BEFORE TIME
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, MANILA BULLETIN'S WEEKEND SPECIAL, EVERY FRIDAY, 18 APRIL 2008)
If Manila and other so called “key cities” in the world were anything like Batanes, global warming would have existed only in the realm of disaster movies, except that if we were all in Batanes, even in the capital Basco, the movie would have been some futuristic concept as well.
BLURB
In Sabtang, they only have lambat in their doorway, to keep out the chickens. —Telesforo Castillejos, governor of Batanes
We spent a week in Basco in March and it was a weeklong communion with nature, which was more than enough to keep our itinerary full. The only semblance of modern life was the van we took to go around a rolling terrain, mostly hilly on one side and on the other a wide expanse of blue, where sea meets sky and surely stretches all the way to Taiwan.
At Shanedel’s Inn and Café, a B&B in Basco, there used to be a living room with a big TV and a few racks of DVDs, but we had neither the time nor the inclination to check it out this time. Why imagine faraway celluloid worlds when you are right there, a tiny speck in a universe of primordial wind and water, closer to the skies, quiet save for the howling of nature’s forces. One of our companions did not even turn on her airconditioning unit, although, shutting her windows on the picture-perfect view of the Basco harbor from her room at Shanedel’s, she also completely sought the warmth of blankets. After all, even in March, when Manila and the rest of the Philippines began to intensify their collective assault on the environment, sending up twice, thrice, four times as much CO2 into the atmosphere from an arsenal of Carriers and Conduras in response to the scorching summer heat, Batanes was still bitingly cold, especially on the hilltops, such as in Racuh a Payaman or what they call Marlboro Country.
The opposite, however, is true in the company of the people of Batanes, whose generosity and hospitality can thaw the Ice Queen. On a visit to the municipal hall, we met Telesforo Castillejos, governor of Batanes, who could have been—and is—your friend, your father, your uncle, your friendly neighbor, rather than the highest official in this northernmost province of 10 pristine, bucolic islands, of which only three—Batan, Itbayat, and Sabtang—are so far accessible to lazy tourists like me. Reacting to our observation that his provincemates, more than hospitable, were genuinely nice and trusting people, keeping their homes unguarded, doorless even, open to the strangest of strangers, the governor said, “We are like that, all of us Filipinos, but many of you have changed and we are still the same.”
Have we, indeed, changed or have the crooks in our midst changed us? Is it only a matter of time before the Ivatans change as well, now that more and more of us city dwellers are being lured into their otherworldliness? The governor had more than reassured us, as he took us practically to a picnic at Batanes Resort with a buffet of their traditional dishes, including their yellow rice, called supas, colored with turmeric and drizzled with pork bits. “Nature is what we have to offer and so all the changes will have to revolve around that,” he said. “Why build casinos in a beautiful place like this? We can have our casinos elsewhere.”
So maybe, until the powers-that-be decide to ram casinos down the throats of Gov. Castillejos and his people in pursuit of the Taiwanese dollar, money will continue to be as unimportant as it is now in a place like Batanes, where there is hardly any reason to part with your travel money. You can’t even spend it on snacks or merienda, which is not part of the Ivatan culture, their three square meals a day being too heavy to leave any room for in-betweens. Even the stores catering to tourists with a penchant for pasalubong are few and far between and often smaller in scale than the average neighborhood sari-sari store in Metro Manila.
As the governor explained to us, in Batanes, no one gets hungry. Everything you need to survive is in a patch of land that is yours, often in the backyard, which provides your rice, your vegetables, your chickens, your pigs, and your cows. Everything else is in the waters that surround the islands, which provides the coconut crab, the occasional lobster, and the seasonal flying fish, migrating from elsewhere in the Pacific Ocean or the South China Sea.
Now if we could live that kind of life in Manila and other key cities in the world, Al Gore would have had no opportunity to earn a Nobel Peace Prize, but then who can afford a backyard, let alone a beachfront, in places like Manila or New York or Paris or Hong Kong?
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
If Manila and other so called “key cities” in the world were anything like Batanes, global warming would have existed only in the realm of disaster movies, except that if we were all in Batanes, even in the capital Basco, the movie would have been some futuristic concept as well.
BLURB
In Sabtang, they only have lambat in their doorway, to keep out the chickens. —Telesforo Castillejos, governor of Batanes
We spent a week in Basco in March and it was a weeklong communion with nature, which was more than enough to keep our itinerary full. The only semblance of modern life was the van we took to go around a rolling terrain, mostly hilly on one side and on the other a wide expanse of blue, where sea meets sky and surely stretches all the way to Taiwan.
At Shanedel’s Inn and Café, a B&B in Basco, there used to be a living room with a big TV and a few racks of DVDs, but we had neither the time nor the inclination to check it out this time. Why imagine faraway celluloid worlds when you are right there, a tiny speck in a universe of primordial wind and water, closer to the skies, quiet save for the howling of nature’s forces. One of our companions did not even turn on her airconditioning unit, although, shutting her windows on the picture-perfect view of the Basco harbor from her room at Shanedel’s, she also completely sought the warmth of blankets. After all, even in March, when Manila and the rest of the Philippines began to intensify their collective assault on the environment, sending up twice, thrice, four times as much CO2 into the atmosphere from an arsenal of Carriers and Conduras in response to the scorching summer heat, Batanes was still bitingly cold, especially on the hilltops, such as in Racuh a Payaman or what they call Marlboro Country.
The opposite, however, is true in the company of the people of Batanes, whose generosity and hospitality can thaw the Ice Queen. On a visit to the municipal hall, we met Telesforo Castillejos, governor of Batanes, who could have been—and is—your friend, your father, your uncle, your friendly neighbor, rather than the highest official in this northernmost province of 10 pristine, bucolic islands, of which only three—Batan, Itbayat, and Sabtang—are so far accessible to lazy tourists like me. Reacting to our observation that his provincemates, more than hospitable, were genuinely nice and trusting people, keeping their homes unguarded, doorless even, open to the strangest of strangers, the governor said, “We are like that, all of us Filipinos, but many of you have changed and we are still the same.”
Have we, indeed, changed or have the crooks in our midst changed us? Is it only a matter of time before the Ivatans change as well, now that more and more of us city dwellers are being lured into their otherworldliness? The governor had more than reassured us, as he took us practically to a picnic at Batanes Resort with a buffet of their traditional dishes, including their yellow rice, called supas, colored with turmeric and drizzled with pork bits. “Nature is what we have to offer and so all the changes will have to revolve around that,” he said. “Why build casinos in a beautiful place like this? We can have our casinos elsewhere.”
So maybe, until the powers-that-be decide to ram casinos down the throats of Gov. Castillejos and his people in pursuit of the Taiwanese dollar, money will continue to be as unimportant as it is now in a place like Batanes, where there is hardly any reason to part with your travel money. You can’t even spend it on snacks or merienda, which is not part of the Ivatan culture, their three square meals a day being too heavy to leave any room for in-betweens. Even the stores catering to tourists with a penchant for pasalubong are few and far between and often smaller in scale than the average neighborhood sari-sari store in Metro Manila.
As the governor explained to us, in Batanes, no one gets hungry. Everything you need to survive is in a patch of land that is yours, often in the backyard, which provides your rice, your vegetables, your chickens, your pigs, and your cows. Everything else is in the waters that surround the islands, which provides the coconut crab, the occasional lobster, and the seasonal flying fish, migrating from elsewhere in the Pacific Ocean or the South China Sea.
Now if we could live that kind of life in Manila and other key cities in the world, Al Gore would have had no opportunity to earn a Nobel Peace Prize, but then who can afford a backyard, let alone a beachfront, in places like Manila or New York or Paris or Hong Kong?
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
THREE DAYS, TWO NIGHTS ON MOONBAY
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, MANILA BULLETIN'S WEEKEND SPECIAL, EVERY FRIDAY, 11 APRIL 2008)
On the road to Subic, life is good, especially behind the wheel of a Ford Everest 2.5L TDCi 4x2 AT that is designed for complete comfort. On both sides on long stretches of the Northern Luzon Expressway, the grass is green, soaking up the sun and swaying to a gentle breeze. Looking out the window of a car on the move, you begin to wonder, “Does a food shortage really threaten the world? Is global warming a real problem? Is the sinking of the dollar directly proportional to the soaring of prices?”
BLURB
There’s plenty to do here and at night there’s so much fun, like on Magsaysay Road, but you have to know where to go or someone to take you there. —Zed Avecilla, owner, Lighthouse Marina Resort
In Subic, especially within the jurisdiction of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority, life is even better, with so much room to play and even more room to just sit back and take in the endless skies, the shimmering views of a calm bay bordered by mountain ranges, and, particularly at the Subic Bay Yacht Club, the sailboats bobbing up and down the harbor, at rest from a life designed to control the force of wind and chart a course across seas, which, like life, are as often easygoing as they are rough and violent.
There’s no better place from which to rediscover Subic than at the resort-of-the-moment, the Lighthouse Marina, a boutique resort at the central business district of the Subic Bay Freeport Zone. Just a little over a year old, this new place-to-be is almost like a secret that unravels itself to only two people at a time, especially with rooms that require utmost intimacy, thanks to a floating tub enclosed, along with the rest of the bathroom, in transparent glass in each of the rooms.
The Lighthouse Marina Resort is sleek and ultra-modern in its Palafox-designed architecture, yet it is nothing like any five-star hotel in the city. Its view of the Moonbay Marina from any of the Aqua Veranda rooms instantly lets the guest comfortably, if languidly, straddle manmade and natural splendor. Even better, looking out on the veranda, it feels like a different country. You could easily have been on the Gold Coast in Queensland, except that you’re only barely three hours away from Manila.
On the second day of our three-day/two-night adventure in Subic, Lighthouse Marina Resort owner and marketing manager Zedric Avecilla took us on a cruise on Subic Bay aboard his sailboat, the Selma Star. For Zed, as he is called, the resort, which continues to draw inspiration from his family’s love of sailing, is a work in progress. His father Jun Avecilla, after all, is a champion sailor and it only seems natural that the son is following in his father’s footsteps. Among Zed’s many plans for the waterfront luxury boutique, which, aside from his family and his sailing expeditions, keeps him occupied 24/7, is a quay, along with a host of other watersports activities for the resort guests. This is not to say there is not enough to do at the Lighthouse Marina, other than luxuriating in your room, cooped up in bed watching pay-per-view on a 42-inch LCD flat screen. The poolside Bar 720, which has a long list of cocktails to keep you in high spirits all night, not to mention a band or two on select nights of the week to keep you in the mood for singing and dancing, is glossy and contemporary enough to make any sophisticate looking for a night on the town feel right at home.
On our last day, Zed’s father, Mr. Avecilla, took us on a late lunch al fresco to try on the Mediterranean dishes prepared by the Turkish chef Oz Demir Mustafa, whom they had flown in only four weeks ago for Sands, the resort’s all-day dining restaurant with a view of the marina and the pool area. With the non-English-speaking chef to help translate was Turkey-born, Sweden-raised, and now Philippine-based restaurateur and furniture exporter Ajax Akkoic, who entertained us with vivid images of what it was like to live, shop, and love in Istanbul, whetting our appetite for all things Turkish, including the kebabs and the gyros Chef Oz served course after course through our 180-minute lunch hour with Zed and his father.
By the time the restaurant staff served coffee and fried apricots with vanilla ice cream for dessert, I was elsewhere, dreaming up a perfect afternoon on the Aegean Sea. Zed must also keep stock of good Turkish wine, like the award-winning Muscat ’97 from Kavaklidere, to go with Chef Oz’s specialties.
Ah, there’s the good life, indeed, in Subic. I could easily have been on the Bosporus, except that I was only barely three hours away from home.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
On the road to Subic, life is good, especially behind the wheel of a Ford Everest 2.5L TDCi 4x2 AT that is designed for complete comfort. On both sides on long stretches of the Northern Luzon Expressway, the grass is green, soaking up the sun and swaying to a gentle breeze. Looking out the window of a car on the move, you begin to wonder, “Does a food shortage really threaten the world? Is global warming a real problem? Is the sinking of the dollar directly proportional to the soaring of prices?”
BLURB
There’s plenty to do here and at night there’s so much fun, like on Magsaysay Road, but you have to know where to go or someone to take you there. —Zed Avecilla, owner, Lighthouse Marina Resort
In Subic, especially within the jurisdiction of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority, life is even better, with so much room to play and even more room to just sit back and take in the endless skies, the shimmering views of a calm bay bordered by mountain ranges, and, particularly at the Subic Bay Yacht Club, the sailboats bobbing up and down the harbor, at rest from a life designed to control the force of wind and chart a course across seas, which, like life, are as often easygoing as they are rough and violent.
There’s no better place from which to rediscover Subic than at the resort-of-the-moment, the Lighthouse Marina, a boutique resort at the central business district of the Subic Bay Freeport Zone. Just a little over a year old, this new place-to-be is almost like a secret that unravels itself to only two people at a time, especially with rooms that require utmost intimacy, thanks to a floating tub enclosed, along with the rest of the bathroom, in transparent glass in each of the rooms.
The Lighthouse Marina Resort is sleek and ultra-modern in its Palafox-designed architecture, yet it is nothing like any five-star hotel in the city. Its view of the Moonbay Marina from any of the Aqua Veranda rooms instantly lets the guest comfortably, if languidly, straddle manmade and natural splendor. Even better, looking out on the veranda, it feels like a different country. You could easily have been on the Gold Coast in Queensland, except that you’re only barely three hours away from Manila.
On the second day of our three-day/two-night adventure in Subic, Lighthouse Marina Resort owner and marketing manager Zedric Avecilla took us on a cruise on Subic Bay aboard his sailboat, the Selma Star. For Zed, as he is called, the resort, which continues to draw inspiration from his family’s love of sailing, is a work in progress. His father Jun Avecilla, after all, is a champion sailor and it only seems natural that the son is following in his father’s footsteps. Among Zed’s many plans for the waterfront luxury boutique, which, aside from his family and his sailing expeditions, keeps him occupied 24/7, is a quay, along with a host of other watersports activities for the resort guests. This is not to say there is not enough to do at the Lighthouse Marina, other than luxuriating in your room, cooped up in bed watching pay-per-view on a 42-inch LCD flat screen. The poolside Bar 720, which has a long list of cocktails to keep you in high spirits all night, not to mention a band or two on select nights of the week to keep you in the mood for singing and dancing, is glossy and contemporary enough to make any sophisticate looking for a night on the town feel right at home.
On our last day, Zed’s father, Mr. Avecilla, took us on a late lunch al fresco to try on the Mediterranean dishes prepared by the Turkish chef Oz Demir Mustafa, whom they had flown in only four weeks ago for Sands, the resort’s all-day dining restaurant with a view of the marina and the pool area. With the non-English-speaking chef to help translate was Turkey-born, Sweden-raised, and now Philippine-based restaurateur and furniture exporter Ajax Akkoic, who entertained us with vivid images of what it was like to live, shop, and love in Istanbul, whetting our appetite for all things Turkish, including the kebabs and the gyros Chef Oz served course after course through our 180-minute lunch hour with Zed and his father.
By the time the restaurant staff served coffee and fried apricots with vanilla ice cream for dessert, I was elsewhere, dreaming up a perfect afternoon on the Aegean Sea. Zed must also keep stock of good Turkish wine, like the award-winning Muscat ’97 from Kavaklidere, to go with Chef Oz’s specialties.
Ah, there’s the good life, indeed, in Subic. I could easily have been on the Bosporus, except that I was only barely three hours away from home.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
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