back when dayanara torres was our neighbor

Sometime in the mid-nineties, I lived with my family in a lovely neighborhood in Ortigas, Pasig. Really nice place to live. No squatters anywhere nearby, no stray dogs, no nosy neighbors or tambays. Security was top-notch; there were never any burglaries even if we left our doors unlocked. Boy, I loved that place. I bet we would have continued to live there if rent and association dues didn't get so ridiculously high.

It was a semi posh-ish village - the kind with of huge, well-kept houses with modern architecture and manicured lawns, big purebred dogs and fancy cars. We had a few neighbors who were celebrities, no usiseros assailed them; that kind of village.

But our family didn't live in one of those big celebrity-level houses; we lived in one of the humble (but fancy) townhouses on Firefly Street. Our particular block was a row of neat, modern-looking three-floor duplexes with french bay windows; twelve units labelled A to L. Each unit's front gate faced the street; all our back doors were sliding glass ones that opened into a wide garden and a large swimming pool, shared by all townhouse owners. I lived with my mom and sibs in Unit L.

In our row of townhouses, two units away from us stayed Miss Universe 1993, Dayanara Torres.

After turning over her crown in the 1994 pageant, she stayed in the Philippines (where Miss U was held that year) and became an actress and a TV show host.

Image from here.

She moved into our street a little over a year after we did. I sometimes caught glimpses of her and she was often close enough to talk to. I never met the beauty queen though. At least not exactly.

I did have one odd interaction with her, and even if I was never a fan of hers, I wished I'd said something witty instead of skipping away like a guilty busybody.

It was December 31, 1996. I was an awkward teenager. Every 31st of December, NU 107 counted down their top hundred hits for the year, beginning with #100 sometime in the morning and ending with the #1 song at exactly 12 midnight. My Walkman was affixed that entire day; for some reason I found it necessary to know what those hundred were. I ate, breathed, watched TV and did everything with my headset on. I was lucky my mom didn't mind my mental absence on New Year's Eve.

Sometime in the late afternoon / early evening, I hoped to lessen my loserly boredom by taking a stroll. Still with my Walkman attached, I thought of going over to the far end of the pool to sit and dip my feet.

Halfway there, headphones still in place, I heard the DJ say something that sparked a clever idea in my head - and if you know me, you'd know that I find clever ideas important and that I enjoy wallowing in my musings. I don't recall what exactly that thought was, but I do remember pausing to ponder on it. I stood motionless where I was, hands on hips, head tilted upward, eyes on a small cloud to help me focus.

Careless buffoon that I was, I hadn't noticed that I stopped just outside one of our neighbors' open sliding glass doors. The innards of unit J were dimly lit but nonetheless exposed, and the owner happened to be right there at that very moment. I was jolted back to consciousness when I realized she was addressing me in a not-exactly-friendly tone. Since I was plugged into my radio, I couldn't make out what she said; it might have been along the lines of What the hell are you doing hanging around outside my house!?, considering that I looked suspiciously like a too-curious bystander over there.

Unit J happened to be Dayanara's unit, and yes, I was being spoken to by the beauty queen-turned-actress herself. I swear, I didn't purposely loiter outside her house to stalk her. But you know how protective celebrities can get about their privacy.

There she was, unself-conscious in the comfort of her own home, laid-back but still gorgeous. My guy friends would have surely wanted to be in the position I was in - looking upon Dayanara who wore only a thin, oversized olive-green shirt that showed off her figure and her mile-long legs. But I couldn't care how sexy she was; I was more concerned that she glared at me with eyes ready to shoot lazer beams. I think I made her mad.

Pretty eyes, by the way.

I also noticed that she was hanging up her laundry in the living room (It was a rule of the association that no one was supposed to hang laundry outside, to maintain the classy aesthetics of the village. Each unit did have large enough laundry areas, but sometimes we had to improvise). She had one of those foldaway aluminum racks; she was decking it with her delicates and her underwear. Right in my line of vision was emblazoned a thickly-padded push-up bra, the secret of celebrities.

Now I knew Dayanara's secret.

I didn't have time to snicker at this awkward, unglamorous sighting of a former Miss Universe. And considering she might've been pissed because I seemed to stick my nose into her personal business, this was certainly not an appropriate moment to make friends. With my lack of presence of mind, all I got to do was drop my jaw like a stunned goldfish and run for cover before she called security on me.

I thought maybe I should've apologized at a later, less vulnerable time, in the way a good neighbor should. But I never bothered to. It was just Dayanara Torres anyway.

I didn't really notice when she moved out, or whether she was still living there when we moved in '97. I didn't even notice when she left the country.

She returned to Puerto Rico in '98 I think; as far as I know she did a bit of recording and was later married to singer Marc Antony (and eventually divorced). I suppose she's more of a private individual now, maybe living in some classy neighborhood where there aren't any dumb kids catching her laundering her undies.

back in 1994, when miss universe was held in our country

I didn't realize that it's been a month since I last updated this blog with my reminiscing. :p Anyway, I return to my fond remembering today with something from 1994.

This morning, I watched the 2010 Miss Universe pageant on the telly. I was happy to see that the Philippines' Venus Raj made it as far as fourth runner-up. Congratulations pa rin! Venus looked really gorgeous; she could have done better in the Q&A, but she still did pretty well.

Is it just my imagination, or are these beauty pageants a bit faster-paced now? Ah, well.

After watching, my memory rolled back to the time that Miss Universe was held right here in the Philippines back in 1994. It was a big thing, and I kept hoping we pinoys wouldn't do anything embarrassing during that whole period. It was all good.

For the opening production in which the candidates paraded one by one, the beauty queens sang and danced to a techno number with samples of Gary V's Hataw Na. I'm not so sure that was a good idea, but it kept viewers entertained at least. But even more cringe-worthy was a duet between Peabo Bryson and then-reigning queen, Puerto Rico's Dayanara Torres - they did a sucky rendition of A Whole New World , pinoy variety-show style, which was pretty much unnecessary to the program.

Miss Philippines 1994 Charlene Gonzales was a real charmer. Even the spokesmodels at the side count her as one of their favorites.



Big hair and immaculately-lined lips were glamorous then, and it wasn't so bad not to be a skinny waif. She was pleasantly witty too:

Host: ... You guys have a bunch of islands here. How many islands are in the Philippines?
Charlene: High tide or low tide?

That answer of hers became a catchphrase and a punchline for several months.

In those years, it was an annual Miss Universe tradition to have little girls (dressed up as little Miss U candidates) sing that You Are My Star / When You wish Upon a Star medley in the final evening gown competition. Charlene wore a strapless yellow-and-gold number, and to this day that's the mental image I have of her.

Charlene only made it to the top six though. She didn't get to answer the final question that made Sushmita Sen India's first Miss Universe: What is the essence of being a woman?

Even beyond the pageant, after most of the candidates and organizers left, there were still bits of Miss U aftershocks in the country in the following few years. For one, Charlene succeeded in penetrating showbiz promptly after, so we saw a lot more of her. She confessed this to be one of her goals for joining Binibining Pilipinas / Miss Universe.

Her career is still successful to this day. And I think she looks a lot prettier now that she's older:


Miss Australia 1994 Michelle Van Eimeren gained fame as an actress here as well, but she is mostly remembered as actor Ogie Alcasid's ex-wife. In the touring period before the pageant itself, Ogie acted as the jeepney-driving tour guide to the candidates, and I'm guessing that's when they fell in love (I remember watching a talks show [cheap of me, I know] guesting Ogie and the favorite candidates, including Michelle; Ogie was asked about a rumored blossoming romance with Miss Australia and he gave a generic we're just friends answer. Michelle's reaction was captured on camera - she didn't say a word but she was looked pretty much betrayed). Lately Michelle Van Eimeren is back in local showbiz news due to Ogie's engagement to songbird Regine. Since Michelle was a celebrity here for a while, gossipmongers thought of thickening the plot by phone-patching Ogie's ex-wife all the way from Australia.

Who could forget Miss Mauritius Viveka Babajee? She remained in the Philippines for some reason - maybe she hoped to be lucky here - but that proved to be a mistake. She was villainized as a pawn of Lolit Solis in the infamous Metro Manila Film Fest scam, for which she is remembered for the words, "Take it! Take it!". Solis went to jail and I think Babajee was shamefully deported after that.

We also saw a lot more of Miss Universe '93, Dayanara Torres, since she chose to remain here after the 1994 pageant. She too had a career of hosting, singing, dancing and (bad) acting. She had a thing with actor Aga Muhlach for a while - whether it was a real off-screen romance or just a love team to sell their crap movies, I don't know.

Aga is now happily married to Charlene by the way. See photo above.

This reminds me - Dayanara Torres was our neighbor for a short time. She wasn't the friendly neighborly type, and neither were we, so there isn't much to reminisce about that. Still i think that'll be the topic of my next entry. :) Cheers!

back when we wore thick-soled worker boots

Fashion websites say boots are chic must-haves for ladies these days - high ones, sleek and streamlined, with high heels. It looks fab on them models on the runways; I'm not sure it would look so hot on a chubby(ish), everyday-person type like myself in the streets of a tropical country, so I'll pass.

I kinda miss wearing boots though. When I was a teenager, I thought boots were uber cool, versatile and so damn grungy. They were perfect for hiding ugly feet (and legs) too.

It wasn't like the sleek-and-sexy kind of thigh-high biker chick footwear pervading the fashion spreads of today, of course.

Thick-soled worker boots were one of the staples of early-to-mid '90s fashion. They used to be exactly that - worker boots, i.e., shoes worn by construction workers and the like. First seen on the anti-glam boys of Seattle grunge as anti-fashion statements, kids who watched MTV thought they were cool and bought themselves some.

The most popular kind were the Dr. Martens, called "Docs" or "DMs" for short. DMs have this yellow-and-black tag sticking out like a sore tongue at the back of boot's mouth. When you wore those boots you didn't want to tuck the tags in; you let them and hang out proudly for everyone to see that you wore authentic DMs.

8 to 10-hole DMs (the most popular height) cost about P3,500 - 4,000 back then, so they also became a status symbol. Though they were originally associated with the grungy working class in the US, they were worn by rich kids in manila.

Of course wherever there are fad brands, there exist several knockoffs. The not-so-well-to-do in Manila wore Marikina-made boots, some with a black-and-yellow tag to mimic the authentic but obviously fall short.

Guys wore them with their slouchy jeans and sometimes with an even slouchier button-down plais shirt.

Girls wore them with just about anything. Shorts and a hooded shirt. Jeans, shirt and vest. A button-down granny dress, unbuttoned from above the knees downward for extra sass. If they wanted to be a true fashion victim, girls completed the ensemble with a hat adorned by a large sunflower.

Girls also wore babydoll dresses with boots. The look was popularized by Alicia Silverstone. We couldn't help noticing how cute she looked in the Aerosmith Cryin' video and tried to emulate her. There was also a lot of that look - albeit ridiculously exaggerated - in her movie, Clueless.

In my practical-and-well-grounded upbringing, I thought it was ludicrous to spend 4,000 bucks on a single pair of shoes, so I wore locally-made 6-hole knockoffs. I didn't feel too bad about that since I made no pretensions about being rich, and I was happy with my perfectly good pair of boots. As long as they didn't have a fake yellow-and-black tag, I did not look like I tried too hard. I just let those authentic DMs stick their tongues right at me.

I happened to go to a girls' private school, where I was surrounded by other girls whose parents could afford to splurge on their little darlings. Some of those girls have been seen to don their Docs with their uniforms after classes, or at the annual school fair - which looked ridiculous actually. They even wore their skirts longer than prescribed to make it look like a maxi dress; it was cool that way.

By the time I went into college, I had acquired a pair of authentic DMs, bought from a friend's garage sale, still in excellent condition. I've never minded wearing second-hand stuff as long as they're in pretty good shape; besides, I didn't want my boots to look new, I wanted them shabby and worn and grungy.

I loved those boots to bits. I wore them with shorts, with jeans, with baby dolls, with long dresses (sans the sill sunflower hat). I wore them to class, to rock concerts, to road trips, to parties and wherever; I even once contemplated on wearing them to a formal event. I eventually wore out the insoles, but I wasn't willing to let them go yet so I glued in replacements peeled out from a forgotten pair of sneakers.

I loved boots so much I even had a plan to save up for ones that went up to my knees. I thought it would look cuter with babydolls.

Within a few years I got tired of them and sold them in my own garage sale (they were still in good shape!), together with the floral granny dresses and overworn babydolls. Which was just as well, since fashion was evolving away from grunge. By the late-90's, I found a new footwear-love in platform sandals.

Sometimes I wish I hadn't gotten rid of my old pair of DMs. Just for nostalgic reasons. It's not like I'd go out wearing them with my new babydoll dresses now - I'd totally look like an old person trying too hard to dress like a teenager stuck in a time-warp, and I wouldn't want that. Some fashion forecasts say they've spotted celebs trying to bring back the grungy granny-dress-and-boots look, but it doesn't look like it's gonna fly. We'll see.