It wasn’t at all stuck up. At least to us, that was the atmosphere at the Malacañan Ceremonial Hall during the traditional Vin d’ Honneur last Friday. It was a welcome change from the stereotypical, stiff Malacañan Ceremonial Hall functions we’d covered in the previous decade.
I’m not alone in hoping that next year, Christmas and the New Year will not sneak up on us just like it did this year. It went—just like that. It’s becoming harder to relish a moment, much less a season. Time—the most precious, most perishable commodity—is gone in a blink.
I thought the staff was sick and tired of doing the Christmas wish list. Apparently, except for one or two, they’re not. It is, as one of them chuckled—joking, get that clear—that time of the year “we can be self-serving,” and it’s “our aspiration to leave a legacy.” (Now you know why sometimes it’s good not to take them that seriously.)
One never knows what to expect in a piece of Hans Brumann jewelry—it could be an image of Rizal (Rizal collection to mark the hero’s 150th birth anniversary), a Christmas tree, or a grid. Or—it could be a Kenneth Cobonpue chair, which is precisely what is in Hans Brumann’s yearend collection presented two weeks ago. The Cobonpue rattan chair—a global iconic design today—is the inspiration behind the Hans Brumann ring.
When Kevin Tan was eight years old, he was sent by his parents Andrew and Katherine to Hong Kong to spend his grade school there at the Chinese International School.
Nanay” is cool about being photographed with the santos that populate her office. That is where she prefers to pose in the shoot. We’re surprised to see the many religious icons. “That’s only a few,” says granddaughter Trina Licauco Alindogan. “There are more of them at home.”
If there was a wedding I’ve seen that represented the style of today’s Filipino bride, it must have been the wedding of Cebu couple Kaye Luym and Javier Sala. It was nonchalantly elegant, simple, simply cool.
I can’t keep my promise to write this Sunday about “Fifty Shades of Grey,” the New York Times bestseller which woman readers call “mom porn” and are lapping up so that it’s outsold Harry Potter on amazon.com.
I had intended to write about the book “50 Shades of Grey,” the “mom porn” which my housewife-friends from Alabang and an independent woman friend from Forbes are all talking about. I had planned to speed-read it (through the steamy sex scenes), but that can wait.
Somehow I got the feeling that this year’s Sona cocktails at the Batasan were different. Held after the President’s State of the Nation Address last Monday, it had the same sumptuous, finger-licking fare, by Millie Reyes’ The Plaza, as last year’s, and I presume, the same exclusive list of invitees, from diplomats and top government officials, to legislators and their spouses.
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