Saw this while looking for ribbons on my mom’s stash on what-not’s.
That was me — a good decade ago, working as an entertainment reporter for a Manila-based Japanese newspaper. I was also moonlighting a lifestyle and features reporter for the publication’s Tokyo-published and distributed magazine. My forte: Filipino actors, actress and various TV personalities, plus local destinations meant to entice the Japan-based Pinays to take a visit to the motherland and spend some yen for the local economy.
Anyway, as you can see, a much younger and much, much slimmer me was seen standing in front of the local phenomenon that was the Sex Bomb Girls. Ten years ago, these girls were the “It Girls” of the local Tinseltown and anything these girls touched were turned to gold. I remembered that I had to finish the rest of the afternoon variety show where they used to dance in order to corral them for the interview. While watching them gyrate on stage, I was floored on how the people screamed and went crazy with every thrust of their hips. They were simply phenomenal (incidentally, “Phenomenal” was also the name of their debut album back then). After the show, I was ushered inside the dressing room expecting to see vixens but was surprised to see these girls a few years younger than me who were equally playful and nice at the same time.
The interview with these girls remained one of the best interviews I had simply because it was just like talking to your girl friends and shooting the breeze. I didn’t have to act like a serious reporter and I just had to be myself.
Behind the first picture was again me (sporting busy eyebrows – euuuuw) after an interview with one of the Philippine’s sex sirens in the early 2000s. Yes, that was one of her R-rated movie posters at the back.
While I was looking at the picture earlier, I suddenly had a bout with nostalgia. I used to be really afraid that I won’t really amount to anything and that I’ll die without achieving anything in life. I was afraid that I wasted ten years of my life being such a loser, jumping one job from another and burning my pockets traveling. But after seeing this, and realizing that I did this when I was barely out of college and having the opportunity to get published in a foreign country (I know it’s a not a well-known magazine and distributed to Filipinos only, but still…not everyone gets published in Tokyo) I realized that I shouldn’t be too hard on myself.
As the hubby said, I’ve done quite a lot in my life: took risks, learned my lessons, lost opportunities and won some of my battles. Indeed these are wicked memories. Life is good.
LIFESTYLE WANDERLAND 