COSMOPOLITAN PHILIPPINES - Fun Fearless Female

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  Pick-Me-Up Playlist: 5 Songs To Listen To On Particularly Bad Days

  Posted on March 6, 2012 03:00PM | 5 Comments »
  
  

  I had been warned: 2012 would be a bad year for my sign. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, while the year was off to a great start, it seems Lady Luck has turned her back on me for now…and negativity started hounding me.
  
  Funny how the universe works. It’s when everything comes crumbling down, when every wall, every foundation you painstakingly built turns to rubble around you, that you see light so bright, you can see everything so clearly. When nothing else is obstructing your view, you see that one thing you needed to do—that one thing left to do: start building from the bottom and work your way up again.
  
  We all learn something new from every downfall, every pain. And, the foundation would hopefully be stronger and sturdier, and tempered with experience. Never be afraid to fall then build again, because it’s precisely this capacity to build that makes us invincible.
  
  Being invincible is not about never being destroyed or defeated. It’s about always, always doing all you can to rise after every fall. It’s about knowing no one can defeat you but your lack of faith in yourself, so if your spirit is intact, then nothing can break you.
  
  I can go on and on about how to be stronger and how to make something good out of every bad event in your life, but we have to be real: it starts with our own little ways of coping. Mine is through music, as I’m sure it is for millions of other Pinays and people the world over. There are five songs that automatically go on LSS mode in my head whenever I’m feeling down and out. They are actually rather random (and from different times in my life), but all of them have lines and melodies that instantly make me feel good, hopeful, and more importantly, stronger.
  
  
  
  Check out my list, and share yours with us—we all need new songs to add to our own lift-me-up playlists. Let’s sing our hearts out at a videoke sesh soon, k?
  

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  Happiness Is...

  Posted on February 24, 2012 07:00AM | 0 Comments »
  
  

  Last October, I discovered that a show I've been dying to see for years would be staged in Manila: You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown. I was invited to the early press launch, where I got to meet the cast, talk about the production, and share my personal memories of the Peanuts gang. I'd like to think that I have a history with the characters, since they were a big part of my life growing up.
  
  When we were living in New York, my mother worked for a company that had a close relationship with the Peanuts brand. They had their own Snoopy blimps that would cover major sporting and community events, and were even sent to other countries! My sisters and I all had Snoopy toys and clothes that my mom would get from work and, purely by coincidence, we had the entire '80s-era Charlie Brown's 'Cyclopedia (a 15-volume hardbound set that we still have to this day) that taught us all we needed to know about the world in the pre-internet age.
  
  My love for the characters was reignited last year when I went to Hong Kong for work and visited the Charlie Brown Cafe in Kowloon. I went absolutely crazy running around the restaurant and taking photos of every piece of memorabilia. I ordered anything that had Charlie's face on it and brought home a keychain of my favorite character, Schroeder. After that, it seemed like I was suddenly seeing them everywhere. Moleskine came out with a 2012 Peanuts planner (which I am currently using) and the soon-to-open Uniqlo has a whole line of Peanuts graphic T-shirts (which I will be first in line for when the store opens in June).
  

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  Love In The Time Of Fuerza Bruta

  Posted on February 21, 2012 12:00PM | 0 Comments »
  
  

  I've always been a Valentine's Scrooge. During Valentine's season each year, I always stop myself from rolling my eyes and launching into a tirade about V-Day being the biggest piece of marketing B.S. built around a saint who is little known of and a bow-wielding, winged baby in diapers.
  
  Just like the past 12 years, I spent the 14th of February this year not celebrating the occasion. No candlelit dinner dates. No red-foil wrapped gifts. No fancy, floral bouquets. Instead, I attended the premiere showing of Fuerza Bruta at the Manila Hotel Tent with my best gay friends and sister (for some reason, they all didn't have dates either). As far as I was concerned, it was just another weeknight out with friends. Only, instead of going to a club or a bar, we were all collectively watching an international show that was described as "unusual, interactive, and dazzling" by its local promoters.
  
  

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  Creative Inspirations

  Posted on February 20, 2012 06:00PM | 0 Comments »
  
  

  

  
  It's common for artists to sometimes lack inspiration and be left staring blankly on an empty canvas for a variety of reasons: stress, lack of energy, or personal problems. But, artists often employ certain habits or rituals to help squeeze some design concepts and ideas out of their exhausted minds.
  
  Some people take a stroll, some sit quietly at their chosen spot, while some drink up to get the creative juices flowing. While creativity is really about creating something new, it doesn't hurt to look at the works of  fellow artists on books, magazines, or online.
  
  While it's not bad to get inspiration from different sources, you have to apply your own concepts on what you do. So, if, like me, you often need visual inspiration for your work, let me share with you some of the creative websites I visit regularly when I feel my creativity is lackluster.

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  Home Is Where The Heart Is

  Posted on February 13, 2012 10:00AM | 0 Comments »
  
  

  Working on the "At Your Place" page--one of our newest additions to Cosmo--every month never fails to excite me. I love going into rooms and homes that have been lovingly decorated to reveal the personalities and lifestyles of their owners. The nifty ideas they use to organize even the smallest of spaces are so ingenious that I'm inspired to use them, or even come up with my own.
  
  
  This month, we featured Nichole and Bernard Mercado's starter home (look up p.147 in the February 2012 issue), and we culled ideas on how Nichole took into consideration her hubby's design preferences when she fixed up their house. Of course, being married, this applies to me since my design preferences (and organizing habits) are sooo different from my husband's! In a nutshell, it really boils down to (a lot of) inventive compromising.
  

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