meet my husband, wewin espinosa. my honey. my funny. my bunny. mine.

mr and mrs antonio a. espinosa, jr.

october 20,2007

iloilo grand hotel

http://www.ewedding.com/sites/honeybunny

(thanks to myleene for the photo. i grabbed it from her friendster account.)

you wouldn't believe how horrified i was seeing my high school photo (top) with my hair looking so singed! and i was so dark!!! hahaha (that's me on the extreme left!) i bet most friends would be surprised by the transformation and wondering if i underwent hair treatments and skin whitening. hahaha yes for the hair treatments. i tried hair straightening and rebonding. back in high school, i was only shampooing my thick and frizzy hair. i didn't know the existence of conditioners then! to make things worse, i regularly used aquanet to pump up the volume of my bangs, for goodness sakes! as for my then dark skin, well, i guess my skin started to lighten up when i discovered the wonders of sunblock. i also avoided the sun as much as possible. nope i did not even try any of those whitening products popularly advertised by the filipino actresses. but i did try using pond's detox cream for sometime.

i still cringe everytime i stare at the top photo with riva, myleene, and leah from high school. i mean our hair is one thing and our attire needs a separate blog entry altogether! but looking at the "now" photo (lower photo also features myleene's daughter, bella. leah was in mindanao at this time and wasn't able to join us) i can't help but smile that after all these years, bad hair days included, we're still friends. we've had our ups and downs in our friendship,too, but i guess it was just a test on far we would go.

hooray for friendship! thank God we looked way so much better now!!! hahahaha

***Your Superpower Should Be Mind Reading***
You are brilliant, insightful, and intuitive.You understand people better than they would like to be understood.Highly sensitive, you are good at putting together seemingly irrelevant details.You figure out what's going on before anyone knows that anything is going on!
Why you would be a good superhero: You don't care what people think, and you'd do whatever needed to be done
Your biggest problem as a superhero: Feeling even more isolated than you do now
What Should Your Superpower Be?http://www.blogthings.com/whatshouldyoursuperpowerbequiz/

it was karaoke day for me and i was so surprised to see "love changes everything" from the musical "aspects of love" in the list! i had the privilege of watching the manila production some years back with my friends from theatre and it was such a complicated love story, i think i left the theatre with a splitting headache! but of course, the music i found divine especially this one. suddenly, a rush of varied emotions swept over me and i couldn't help but remember the pains, the foolishness, the pathetic years, the waiting, the almost-giving up, the apprehensions, and the spring of a new love. the deluge was too much to handle at one time. heck, love really changes everything!

Love, Love changes everything:
Hands and faces, Earth and sky,
Love, Love changes everything:
How you live and How you die
Love Can make the summer fly,
Or a night Seem like a lifetime.
Yes, Love, Love changes everything:
Now I tremble At your name.
Nothing in the world will ever Be the same.
Love, Love changes everything:
Days are longer, Words mean more.
Love, Love changes everything:
Pain is deeper Than before.
Love Will turn your world around,
And that world Will last for ever.
Yes, Love, Love changes everything,
Brings you glory, Brings you shame.
Nothing in the World will ever Be the same.
Off Into the world we go,
Planning futures, Shaping years.
Love, Bursts in, and suddenly
All our wisdom Disappears.
Love Makes fools of everyone:
All the rules We make are broken.
Yes, Love, Love changes everyone.
Live or perish In its flame.
Love will never, Never let you Be the same.

if there's one change that i am really adamant about is the change in chocolate content! news today in the US about substituting vegetable oil instead of cocoa butter in chocolate is alarming! how can that be chocolate without the cocoa? duh? name it something else like pseudo-chocolate or perhaps south-beach-diet chocolate or just name it something else. to actually append chocolate to it is a sacrilege!

oh no! whatever happened to purity? to perfection? to desire? to temptation? to dark and sweet?

i want my chocolate! the real one!

http://www.ghirardelli.com/

pretty soon i'll be single no more. it's an overwhelming feeling to be finally saying goodbye to thirty three years of being able to speak your mind on a lot of things. not that i will stop. me? never! life is full of things to discover and share with the persons you love and care about or even to the world! i will always have this space, this corner, my repository of thoughts and feelings.

i can't help but wonder, though, will i be limited to stories of wifehood and motherhood the moment i cross the threshold of married life? what will happen to the jorvy of today? the one who talks about chocolate cakes and body massages; who can rave and rant about the latest novelty finds; who endlessly talks about being in love; who stays in front of the computer for hours just to share views with others; who sings, plays the guitar and the piano; who fusses over little things; who reads books; who still aspires to work in an international organization; who still dreams of becoming an actress; who plans on going to trips all over the world?

how will this impending change affect her?

will i then be talking about waking up in the wee hours of the morning to feed the baby? changing diapers and looking for the best baby products? talking about my quest into finding the perfect cerelac flavor? or, perhaps talking about what color is best suited for our baby's room, the one that can match all his/her clothing? or, maybe i will talk about the travails of being a wife and how a nag i can be! perhaps i will also rant about my disappearing waistline and how ugly and "losyang" (unkempt; no finesse?unglamorous?) i would feel.

another chapter is about to close and a new one will open.

the scales are now slowly tipping over for marital life. it's just a matter of weeks now.

whoa. mrs. antonio a. espinosa, jr. will this new name make me less of a jorvelyn p. jaruda?

or, will i mutate into someone else? someone i don't have the privilege to get to know yet.

only one way to find out!

will have to walk down the aisle and leaf through the new chapter of my life.

ahh, such truth in the adage: the only thing that remains constant is indeed, change.

LIBRA - The Lame One.
Nice to everyone they meet. Their Love is one of a kind. Silly, fun and sweet. Has own unique appeal. Most caring person you will ever meet! However not the kind of person you wanna mess with...you might end up crying.

whether my trip to the US did me good is something that i still have to ask my family and friends. if you're a typical filipino, you would always yearn to go to the States. it represents something far-fetched, a dream, a world of opportunity, a "pot of gold" at the end of the rainbow. no typical filipino can be faulted for aspiring to go there at least once. some for vacation, perhaps, but mostly for work and the chance to earn dollars. i am not most so i went there for a vacation. still, i couldn't help but think of the vast opportunities that awaited my fate. once you're there, you cannot help but be lured by the lifestyle of the filipino nurses earning as much as $60 per hour for a 12-hour workday. some would even extend up to 16 hours a day! which does not leave pretty much time for leisure but in return you get your own house and car...and more! the disparity is indeed glaring. for an 8-hour workshift in philippine hospitals, you only get paid around Php 400-500 a day or roughly $9-10! if you further break it down into pesos per hour it's somewhere aroung Php60-70 per hour or a measly $1 point-something dollar per hour! see the discrepancy? so, economically, it's really a viable place to work your butt off in the US. same time, same effort, loads of cash!

but, as the saying goes, you win some, you lose some. the stakes are high, though, in exchange for the good life. you are uprooted from everything you have called home for half of your life. you will have to start everything anew from looking for a place to stay, meeting new friends, and trying to survive in a place where you are sometimes looked upon as an "intruder." can't blame them. you are an alien in their own country yet you earn more and gets hold of the higher position. it also doesn't help that you are just around 5 feet tall and has brown skin.

i returned home with dreams of working in the States one day. perhaps as a teacher. who knows? but after a month and a half of vacation, i just couldn't help but look forward to going home. i am glad i went there and saw how things work and go. i am glad i met my long-lost friends. i am glad i got to see different sights and been to places i've never imagined i could be in! it was fun. but it's just not home.

i have baffling thoughts these past few days. i was so bored i almost cried one night not knowing what to do! i hurriedly demanded that wewin go back to iloilo. it was a desperate and frustrating attempt because while here i am just nagging and looking for things to do, there he was busy with his commitments and working. for the nth time in my life, idleness is upon me once again.

this constant searching of who i really am and what i want in life still leaves me with no coherent answer. i can still recall sister yasa from dlsu asking me, "what is your passion?" for some it is an easy answer. for me, just confusion and indecision.

i felt i was destined for far greater things, oftentimes incomprehensible to everyone. i run here and there. i want to try this and try that! novelty excites me! traveling to new places and learning about new cultures piques my interest! i love sitting down in a corner and just read! i love spending time with people! oh, and i just love hunting for the best desserts in town! i also like taking photos especially when i am in it and i love creating things out of it! obviously i love expressing my thoughts and dreams to people! i am mushy and easily pleased! if wewin were to give me chowking's pork siomai with nai cha as a gift, i'd be most thrilled! i like playing with my niece, cloie, and enjoy singing nursery rhymes for her! i love baking and cooking! i can't wait for my next belly-dancing workout! did i mention that i am a sucker for body lotions, moisturizers, sunblock protection, lip gloss, and hair products? don't you just feel pampered going to the salon and have your nails done or going to the spa for a hard body massage? so, what's wrong with this picture?

in the movie batman featuring katie holmes as the lady interest of bruce wayne, she made this mind-reeling statement, "it is what you do that defines you." i literally stopped mid-air and with my mouth open, my mind flickered on and off wondering if that statement was a sign from heaven and really intended for me. so i asked myself, "what is it that you do jorvy that can define you?" and i said, "nothing."

and the baffling thoughts wouldn't stop as well as the still desperate and frustrating attempts to make wewin come home.