TOPAZ HORIZON

Been veeeeery busy these past few weeks preparing for two weddings of two very good friends. So I've been neglecting my blogging work from PayU2Blog and that's money down the drain! So I'll be blogging a lot this week to catch up.

Anyway, I want to know what you guys do to earn money through blogging. I know blogging is supposed to be just an online diary, an outlet of thoughts, but I'm a writer and I write for a living. I gotta get paid whenever I write! So even if this is an online diary, if I can earn from it, I will!

When I went to the Nuffnang Awards in Singapore last October, I met many bloggers who are literally earning thousands of dollars through their blogs. They told me about selling ad space on your blog and manipulating the best SEO tools (SEO means search engine optimization) so that you earn a lot from Google Adsense. Like I said, these people earn thousands of dollars from their blogging!

Me? Let's see... I've earned about $750 from the paid blogging network I belong to and P5,000 from Nuffnang. That's from months and months of being a member so divide that up and that's really just pocket money for me (about 3K-5K a month). From Adsense, not much at all, around $60, which I haven't been able to cash out because they'll only send you the money if your earnings have reached $100. Clearly, I have no idea how Adsense and SEO works! If you know of any class or seminar that will educate me on this, drop me a comment below!

I started coloring my hair when I turned 18. That's because I started getting tons of white hair at the back of my head when I was 15. It's a genetic thing--my mother's family are the salt-and-pepper type. Since I didn't want to be gray in my teens, I begged for hair color and Mama allowed me to do it at 18. So I've been black, mahogany, chestnut, warm brown, bluish black, red, strawberry red and even blond since then.


Obviously, I love coloring my hair! And since I've found Louis Phillip Kee in 2006, I have discovered the glory of highlights. I tell ya, folks, Louis is the best hair colorist ever! You have to be the adventurous type though to appreciate the many layers of colors he puts on your hair. The last time I visited Louis was in late October, where I had my hair colored bright red with blond highlights and dark red lowlights.


Then I became pregnant in November and my husband has forbidden me to have my hair colored. Ditto with my OB. Now, I'm taking prenatal vitamins, which I believe are the best multivitamins ever. I've taken vitamins before but my body's really changed with prenatals--my nails are so strong, for example, and my hair grows really fast now. That's great, of course, except that my roots are showing!


Now my hair is red, blond and 3 inches of dark brown. It doesn't look good at all! Of course everyone says, "That's okay, you're pregnant." And, just to assure y'all, I really won't get my hair colored till after I give birth, but... Don't I look weird???

My dearest darling friend Mariel Chua just became Mrs. Alvin Jimenez over the weekend in a beautiful wedding at Cebu. Ohhhh, it was such a lovely wedding! Perfect for two of the nicest people on earth.

I don't have a lot of photos of the wedding, but I do have pics of me! Nyak! Sorry, folks. Don't ya worry--I'll try to get Mariel to give me pics (her photographer was Pat Dy! The most fabulous wedding photographer ever!) but then I can just send you over to her blog as soon as she comes down from her happy cloud and comes around to updating it! Meanwhile, here are some photos from our trip:

I'm matron of honor! Mariel chose a sunny yellow for me to match my personality. Of course, our friend Kate Torralba did the gowns. I'm wearing purple shoes under this gown but I forgot to take photos of it!

Vince and me! He was supposed to wear a tie with the suit but it was really really hot! I look so pregnant, don't I?

With the Summit girls. Most of them don't work with magazines anymore, however, all nearly gone to their next adventures.

The cathedral was huge! Huge! It's really rather beautiful inside but the pics we got didn't do the church any justice. When we finally buy a new camera, we'd take more photos. 

Here comes the bride! In a creamy tiered lace confection. That skirt is fully beaded and is layers of different kinds of lace. Mariel, you look divine!

The ceremony had us laughing and crying. Very romantic. But I have no photos! At the beach reception, the newlyweds cuddle.

Ianne Evangelista and me. She used to be the editor-in-chief of Cosmo and she gave that up to get pregnant and have a baby girl. After meeting her little Claudia--the smartest 2-year-old girl in the world--I totally understand!

Aside from making the gowns, Kate also sang a few songs. She is amazing at the piano, by the way, with a deep melodious voice. This girl can sing better than she can sew, and that's saying a lot about her musical talent!

Me and Kate with the bride. I'm holding my tummy because I ate too much and it felt really heavy. This photo is a variation of the photo from my wedding (click here for that pic)!

That's Kai, the maid of honor. Kai's Mariel's best friend since they were little kids. She's just as nice and smart as Mariel.

Mariel and Alvin, congratulations! May all the happiness in the world bless your marriage. Vince and I are so happy for you--such a great adventure ahead!

Got an email today. One look at it and I knew it was a demolition job. The email said it was presidential candidate Manny Villar's house but I've been to one of Villar's houses (we shot it for a magazine feature) and his decorating taste certainly does not look like this:


There are many more photos but I'm lazy to post them all. I'm sure you'll get it in your inbox soon anyway, if you haven't already.

Like I said, I've seen how Villar lives. Villar's home decor is actually more shabby chic—floral, wood, comfy seating. I personally am not a fan of his taste in decor but hey, it's not my house! Besides, Villar is one of the richest men in the country so I always thought he'd have a fabulous house and it turns out he actually doesn't. Well, it's not ugly, not like it was constructed out of stainless steel drums, but he sure doesn't live as well as certain people I know! And one more dead giveaway that this ain't his: Villar loves photos. His house is literally covered with picture frames of him and his family. The house above has no photos.

Now, I'm not voting for Villar in May (I like another candidate. My only clue for you is he has a pretty wife) but I think this email is just disturbing.

This house isn't Villar's. I can tell because I'm a magazine editor. Those photos were obviously taken by a professional photographer—the flooded-with-light look gives it away. If Villar wanted to keep this house hush-hush, why would he have it photographed by a team of professionals? It's just stupid. As a journalist, I quickly investigated whose house this is and found this blog entry: Is This Really Mugabe's Mansion?. Mugabe is the president of Zimbabwe and he's been holding power since 1980, so he's like our Marcos.

Anyway, so now the house is supposedly Mugabe's but after further investigation, it turns out it also isn't! It supposedly belongs to the biggest movie star in the world. Who's that? Tom Cruise? Brad Pitt? Angelina Jolie? Puh-leeze. They don't even hold a candle to this guy! The biggest movie star in the world is Shah Rukh Khan, with a fan base of a billion. Yes, you read that right—a billion! He's Bollywood, baby, and everyone in the film industry knows that Hollywood is so much smaller than Bollywood.

My V-Day post was popular with the ladies but I didn't post all the comments because some girls said they'll break up with their boyfriends because they're not as great at gift-giving as Vince is. Oh my! I don't want anyone getting heartbroken, okay? Then there was this one comment that said she now has hope because it's her dream to marry a rich man one day and she loves how Vince "rescued" me from "poverty" and that I am "a true Cinderella."

Let me tell you about Cinderella. Yes, she was always portrayed as this poor girl whose lot in life improved when the prince fell in love with her. But though gold-diggers everywhere worship her as their heroine, let me point out the facts in the story that everyone conveniently looks over:

1. Cinderella was the daughter of a nobleman so she wasn't poor. Her stepmother and stepsisters made her their slave but no matter how many times she washed clothes or scrubbed floors, that doesn't change the fact that she had very aristocratic blood running in her veins.

2. Being of noble birth, Cinderella had been educated to become the wife of an important man. Her grace, her charm, and her dancing skills didn't just appear out of nowhere. That's why when the prince met her, she knew exactly what to do because she's been trained all her life for that moment!

3. The prince is still a man and being a man, he gets attracted to pretty girls. Being a prince, he also knew that he had to get a suitable wife. Imagine if Cinderella showed up at the ball in her rags. Will the prince even spare her a glance? Perhaps. And then he'd have her thrown out of the palace!

I'm not being a pessimist here, just stating the facts. Even Diana, Princess of Wales, was adored because she was the modern-day Cinderella, the girl-next-door who caught the eye and heart of the Prince of Wales. Now, who lives next door to a prince anyway? Someone just as wealthy and aristocratic! And Lady Diana, daughter of the Earl of Spencer and a member of an old noble line, has more British noble blood in her than all of the Windsors (they're Germanic).

So while those telenovelas and movies love that storyline, it just doesn't ring true. In real life, you usually fall in love with someone who's just like you--same school, same neighborhood, same church--which means you're usually from the same economic background. Of course this changes when you start working. Your circle widens, and the more money you make, the more people you meet. But somehow people still end up with people who are still the same. Devout men marry pious women, intelligent men marry smart women, crude men marry women with no manners, vain men marry shallow women and so on and so forth.

With Vince and me, it wasn't any different. Sure, my family was poor when we met but we weren't always poor. Things just got bad economically in our teens. But my parents had already planted the seeds--sent us to exclusive private schools, made us read the Shakespeares and the classics, taught us good manners and right conduct, the works! I knew how to use all those forks and knives in an elegant dinner setting, I knew how to dress for every occasion, I knew how to make small talk.

So when Vince met me, it wasn't like he had to cross huge distances for us to understand each other. For one thing, Vince preferred speaking English because he spent his childhood in London and Hong Kong. Imagine if I didn't know how to speak English! That'll be the end of it! Next, Vince is a writer and I am, too, so we hit it off immediately because we shared a passion and a love. Next, we both love books and we love to read, and that definitely increased the attraction because we can't stand people who don't read books! Plus, there are an infinite number of things people who love books can talk about. And it's been 11 years and Vince and I are still having long conversations!


Nope, I'm no Cinderella but I do love my love story because it may sound like a fairy tale but it's real, it's love. I didn't marry Vince for his money or his looks or his brain or his whatever. I really did marry for love! So, to you gold-diggers out there, yes, a well-off lifestyle can be achieved by marrying a rich man--it's been done before!--but it's so much better to become rich first yourself. Then you value your own worth, you know you belong in the same world and, most important of all, you didn't need a man to make your dreams come true. Cinderella will tell you the same thing!