TOPAZ HORIZON

This is Figaro Cafe on Emerald Avenue in Ortigas Center.
It's dark and cool and quiet. It has the feel of a gentleman's library, with the dark paneled walls and deep leather couches. I love the coffee here and the pasta and the vanilla pudding. I love how being here relaxes me. These photos were taken last month. I should've gone there today. I should've hidden away from the world.

Woke up today to urgent messages on the phone but couldn't really call back. Our apartment is strange--even though we're in the heart of the city and surrounded by cell towers, the signal is incredibly weak. So not being able to call back to other people when they're freaking out adds to my stress.

Then this day wasn't so cool... although it ended much better than how it started. I hope this means things will indeed get better. Since Galady got her stroke and then recently died, I've been feeling melancholy and easily bothered and annoyed. Then stuff has been happening that I can't disclose just right now and I am now more agitated than usual.

This of course meant I said some things to some people that I shouldn't have had. Even though what I did say was true, sometimes it's best to just shut up. Unfortunately, when I'm feeling sad and crabby, I'm not the best person to be with.

I should also just avoid Facebook. Or maybe I should just erase all my relatives on Facebook. Or maybe I should just grow up and not be fake and just erase all the people I don't like but accepted as my friends anyway. Why am I pretending we're friends anyway? Why do I let people bully me into accepting them just because we're related or we met at some obscure time in my life?

I am not in a good mood. I think I'm going to shut off my phones, avoid Facebook and my email, and just blog about happy things. Because my life is actually happy. If only some people didn't belong in it or meddle with it, it would be perfect!

My favorite story is the one on the third wedding anniversary of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. Read that again--third wedding anniversary. Imagine that! The photo album we made on their marriage shows the couple so in love that I was ashamed for thinking they wouldn't last a heartbeat. Oh well, I do like to be proven wrong and seeing a happily married couple go on and on being happily married is always a good thing.

The November issue is also our Power Issue so we gathered the juiciest trivia about how many Hollywood celebs are just so demanding! It's fascinating! And a little disgusting, if you ask my honest opinion. Remember my fury a few weeks back? Get the November issue to find out who the star was!

Right now, the staff and I are starting on 2010. We're planning a more exciting OK! magazine for you--featuring anything and everything Hollywood plus how to get that celeb look and lifestyle! Yes, expect to see more beauty tips and tricks, fashion how-to's, and thorough reviews on everything from the perfect shade of lipstick and the most trustworthy medical spas to how to burn belly fat and buy the best running shoes!

Anyway, I wasn't able to go on my monthly TV guestings and radio tours to promote this issue. I've been feeling very depressed since Galady died and just can't work up the energy needed for TV and radio. So I'll just share these pics from my radio tours for the October issue at one of my favorite radio stations to visit:Danielle and Rico are sweethearts. They make my job easy. I hope you also all help make my job easy and make me feel better by buying the November issue. Thanks everybody!

Galadriel Amper Sales Rabbit finally said good-bye to us yesterday morning. Since suffering from a stroke in August, Galady hung on because every day I asked her to stay. On my birthday, we stayed home all weekend because she was slipping away but when my birthday came and went and she still greeted us with those big brown eyes, I thanked her for staying with me still.

But she was tired. I knew that. And with half her body paralyzed, that was no way to live. Vince and I sat by her in her final hours and when she started crying, we told her, "It's okay, baby. You can go, you can go." So at 2:40 AM, she finally followed the exit signs she's probably been seeing since August and went on her way.

The last 7 years and 6 months were filled with cuddles and love from the most adorable rabbit we've ever had. For once, I can't find any words to describe the heartache Vince and I are suffering. She was our baby girl. And we miss her so.



Galady, Mommy, Daddy and Matilda love you and miss you. We hope you're running free again in a land that's hopefully filled with all the Haagen Dazs ice cream, chocolate chip cookies, carrots, apples and bananas that you can eat. And be nice to Gandalf when you see her again. We miss you so.

My darling friend Kissa sent me this photo she took of an ad at a Tokyo MRT station. She said at first glance, she thought I was the leftmost girl. My husband and I (and not a few of our friends) are as shocked as Kissa when she saw this pic.
OMG! Someone out there looks exactly like me. Except she's a model and she likes hugging and touching women. Scandal indeed!

UPDATE: Fellow blogger tHiAmErE just told me Scandal is a Japanese TV show very similar to Desperate Housewives. And that the girl who looks like me is Kazue Fukuiishi. I googled her and, nope, we look nothing alike. Just that one pose on that particular poster. Relief! Thanks, tHiAmErE!

I am feeling slightly better. Been down with a nasty cold bug that I am finally finally shaking off. So we continue with the Singapore series...

The morning after the Nuffnang blog awards, the Singapore Tourism Board scheduled a city tour... at 8 in the morning. Now I am not a morning person. Never have been. My mother used to tell me I would never be a successful person because successful people wake up with the sun. I'd always reply I'd find a night job and my father would always retort that women who work at night are... well, I am digressing.

So the bus leaves at 8. I woke up at 8:30. My roommate, Jen Juan, woke up at about the same time. The next 10 minutes were a flurry of panic. But to our relief, we weren't so late. True, we were the very last to climb aboard the bus at about 8:45 but there were also a few stragglers and everybody hid their groggy eyes behind dark glasses. Except me. I'm stuck with my eyeglasses, which didn't hide how sleepy I was.

While we went to several places, today I'll talk about my favorite one. The Royal Selangor. It's a pewter shop. What's pewter? See the background of my photo above? That's pewter. Despite the entire wall of it behind me, it's not used for metal buildings. Pewter is like silver but it's really tin and in olden times, pewter was used chiefly for tableware so if you watch all those Middle Ages movies and people are eating and drinking from metal plates and glasses, well, that's pewter they're eating and drinking from. The Royal Selangor is world famous for their pewter products and I really wanted to buy these rabbits but they were way over my budget:
However, we didn't leave empty-handed since we all had a chance to make our own pewter bowl! Pewter is a malleable alloy so we were given wooden hammers, a flat pewter disc and a set of letters and numerals and told to hammer away!
This was my design:
Obviously I was thinking of only one person the entire time. Anyway, after hammering my disc into a perfect bowl, I felt really satisfied and rediscovered something about myself: I like working with my hands. Aside from cooking and housework, I've never really done anything with my hands. Sewing and knitting were hard on my eyes. I used to be able to draw well but my parents didn't encourage us kids to take up the arts because artists starve (funny then that my brother is a musician, I'm a writer and my sister is an actress--something wonderful does come out of disobedience).
When I was 17, I made the bookshelves for my tiny bedroom, measuring, sawing the plywood, hammering in the nails... I felt a great sense of accomplishment with carpentry but of course, my parents didn't raise me to be a carpenter or to be anyone who worked with their hands. I was supposed to be a rich housewife and a doting mother to at least 4 kids. I remember telling Papa I wanted to be a writer because I can create stories, he said, "Create? The only thing a woman should be creating is babies!" Now, I have nothing against women who embrace this creative aspect but I think, in this aspect, I will continue to be a happy disappointment.

So lately, I've been drawn to shoe and jewelry design. It's something I think I'd like to do. When I see and touch my little pewter bowl, which Vince now uses as the house keys container, I believe I've found another thing to do. And I'm really really excited about this!

I would like to thank Nuffnang and the Singapore Tourism Board for this Uniquely Singapore Series.