TOPAZ HORIZON

Loved this post from the blog of my dearest friend, Faye. She listed the Top 5 Bitches in the Bible. Very good list except that, as I am a Born-Again Christian and read the archaic King James version, Lilith does not exist for me. Her list goes:

1. Bathsheba - for committing adultery with King David and allowing the king to assassinate her husband Uriah so that she can become Queen.
2. Delilah - well, we all know her story. It's full of S's--Samson, secret, super strength, sleep, scissors, snip, snip!
3. Lilith - dunno her but Faye says she's supposedly the first wife of Adam who left the First Man Ever because he wanted to do the missionary position all the time. Hahaha! Lilith, missionary can be fun!
4. Salome - she danced for King Herod then asked for the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter as her reward. May silver platter nga ba? Must read my Bible again...
5. Sarah - she was Father Abraham's wife. And she was drop-dead gorgeous. And so scaredy-cat Abe asked they pretend to be siblings because he was scared the king of Egypt will execute him to have Sarah (see what David did). Sarah agrees but when Egypt royal asks for her to share his bed, Sarah willingly obliges. Nothing like a king!

I add to Faye's list:
Esther, the queen who seduced her Persian king to command the execution of Haman, his most trusted (and her most reviled) adviser.
And Rahab, the woman who helped the Israelites bring down the mighty walls of Jericho. Oh, what's so bad about helping the people of God? She was from Jericho! She betrayed her own people!
And Jezebel, the Phoenician queen who had prophets killed left and right, even telling her king to kill a man just because they wanted his vineyard.
And Job's wife, who told Job to reject God after all his trials. You have to read that story to understand why everyone thinks God's worst trial to Job was keeping his wife alive!

I'm sure there are more. Let me read up again... =)

For those of us married and unmarried, statistics about marriage will always be interesting. So when I saw this study from the Manolo for the Brides site, I just had to share it with you. It's a very interesting entry but what caught my eye is this fact:

"Divorces reached a peak in the early eighties at a rate of about 40 percent (which was the highest level since the 1950s), and divorce has since entered a 20-year decline. The current rate of divorce is about 30-34% in any given year, and is lower among the college-educated (about 20%), Catholics, Muslims, and atheists. In a comparison of various religious denominations, the group that actually performs the worst are Baptists and Evangelical Christians, so I guess it makes sense that they seem to be most concerned with the idea of a divorce epidemic."

Oh my goodness. I'm an Evangelical Christian. Yikes! Come to think of it, in my former church,which was Baptist, so many people are unhappily married. In fact, in my family alone, my older brother is separated from his wife. But my Catholic relatives seem to be making their marriages work. Now I married a Catholic. And his family is like solid rock.

Then Vince said he read in The Economist that studies have shown that the wealthier the couple is, the less likely they are to get divorced. I dunno why that is but perhaps these couples have more to lose, like their reputations, social standing, and their money, so they work on their marriage harder.

So why is it that Baptists and Evangelical Christians perform the worst in marriages? Well, I noticed in my former church that the wealthier couples, like my parents' friends, are very happily married. And those who aren't doing well financially also don't do well in their marriage. So maybe it isn't about religion or lack thereof (after all the statistic says that atheists are actually in strong marriages). It must be money.

I guess we should be thankful that there is no divorce in the Philippines yet. We're such a poor country! Well, I guess that's why Filipino men are infamous adulterers then. Gee, divorce or adultery? Which is the lesser evil?

I'm a pop music fan and for me, after Madonna, Britney Spears rules. I really love Britney Spears. She exploded into the international scene in 1999, just when my love story with Vince was beginning. So her superstar career is as old as my love affair, and whenever I hear a Britney song, I can pinpoint a Vince memory. This makes rock-fan Vince cringe, of course, haha.

Man, I know all the biggest songs from all her albums: "One More Time," "Sometimes," "Oops... I Did It Again," "Lucky," "Stronger," "Girl in the Mirror," "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman," "Toxic," "Everytime," "My Prerogative," and "Do Somethin'." So now that's she's getting back into shape again and going to the recording studio, I really hope Britney's back!

In this video, don't you just miss her? She was so cute and innocent back then. Anyway, this song, "Sometimes," was my song for Vince when we were still dating. Did you know he asked me to marry him a month after we met? The guy scared me witless but in my heart I was singing,

"Hope that you will wait for me
You'll see that you're the only one for me!
I want to believe in everything that you say
'Coz it sounds sooooo good
But if you really wanted me, move slow
There's things about me you just have to know..."

Vince, I'm glad you waited eight long years for me to finally make up my mind. And everything you said not only sounded good, it is all good. And I am with you now day and night. Your silly rabbit has finally stopped running away.

... really took me by surprise. It was held a week before the wedding and I was very sick with the flu. I wanted to stay in bed so I got quite annoyed that Vince and Kate insisted I had to fit my gown one last time. Vince had to drag me to Kate's atelier and when I got there...
So pardon my bleary self in these photos. I may have looked like a wreck but I was so so so happy this whole night.

Thanks - Kate, Mariel, Lana, Marcie (who provided these pics), Kat, Alvin, Francis, my surprise guests that I met that night, and of course, Vince!