Beyond the chocolates, flowers and romance
Today is Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day. It is as much a holiday as any—there’s planning, preparing, gift-giving, celebrating, partying, and all that fun stuff left and right.
February 14, 2014
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Today is Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day. It is as much a holiday as any—there’s planning, preparing, gift-giving, celebrating, partying, and all that fun stuff left and right.
Falling in love is “a strange feeling,” and it’s even more perplexing when it’s with a longtime friend, Mia Nolasco found out.
It’s that time of the year again when couples, soon-to-be-couples, and those that prefer to go solo anticipate and look forward to – Valentine’s Day. Buddha-Bar Manila, the country’s top destination restaurant-lounge-bar, offers the most ideal Valentine’s venue for a complete romantic vibe that will make it a night to remember.
I’ve known this man since I was 10 and he was 15. I am now 27. He’s my eldest brother’s best friend and classmate from elementary through college. He’d sleep over on weekends, and vacation with us here and abroad—that’s how close he is to our family. He has an older married sister he is not close to.
When it comes to romantic relationships, we all know the drill: boy meets girl (or boy meets boy, or girl meets girl) at school, at work, in a café, through a common friend. They hit it off, go on dates, get to know each other for weeks, months, even years. If all goes well, they fall in love and officially announce to the whole world (thanks to Facebook) that, yes, they are a “couple.”
For someone who traffics heavily in the realm of love lives, Marcelo Santos III rues the fact that he doesn’t have much of one. The 22-year-old first-time novelist and online video sensation says he doesn’t have time for romance, no matter that his surprise best-seller is titled “Para sa Hopeless Romantic.”
I am quite a contented married woman with a broad-minded husband and three in-college children. Until two years ago. I read a well-written article in a Filipino magazine published in the United States and sent my feedback to the writer. I was surprised when he answered me. That started regular e-mails between us, where we talked about everything under the sun.
Romance chooses no occasion—especially not for us old fogies. We neither wait for it nor worry about it; it happens when it happens. In fact, this Valentine’s Day we had resigned ourselves, quite happily, to waking up with my five-year-old granddaughter Mona asleep between us.
“R is for Romantic,” MFK Fisher writes in “An Alphabet for Gourmets,” ”… and for a few of the reasons that gastronomy is, and always has been connected, with its sister art of love.”
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