Wedding of the Opera (este, Phantom pala)

September 3-17, 2012. 

This was my first R&R when I didn’t go anywhere but within the gritty streets of Metro Manila - and Taytay, Rizal of course, as that’s where my fiancée lives.  We both flew in from Dubai, right after she had her working visa cancelled so she can focus on our wedding preps. The very next day after we arrived, we went to the US Embassy for our interview with the consulate. After surrendering our passports in the morning and doing a little bit of mall strolling in the afternoon,   we went to see the Phantom of the Opera at the CCP. This was my first, yet final relax gig for this vacation of mine, and glad I spent it with my soon to be wife.

I’d give my hands down to Les Miserables as my favorite musical of all time, but I got to admit, I didn’t expect that the Philippine run would be so good, I’m having some discernment problems whether I was hearing Ramin Karimloo as the Phantom or the one on stage, Jonathan Roxmouth (of South Africa) who lead the international cast of this famous stage extravaganza. I’ve seen the movie, starred by Gerard Butler, who undeniably gave justice to the role with the rockiness of his voice, and I’ve watched the 25^th anniversary, where Karimloo proved his worth as one of the rising stars of Broadway.  

Costumes by the lead casts of Phantom of the Opera. The designs had to be the same for all the plays staged anywhere in the world. 

Roxmouth, on the other hand, with a name I was not really familiar of, surprised me and (I guess) all the other Filipino Broadway fans with his sultry, rocky yet fragile rendition of Music of the Night and other duets, as the angel of music. He and the other cast such as Claire Lyon (as Christine) and Anthony Downing (as Raoul) gave bravura performances that I just had to stand up during the curtain call and eventually, start the trend among our co-lower box audiences.

While waiting for the play to start.

One thing that Phantom is ahead of Les Mis for sure is its stage setup. The rumored 15-million peso production design and props that turned CCP Main theatre into the Paris Opera House at the turn of the century silently sing of opulence worthy of being remembered for a long time. I mean, it couldn’t be ‘world-renowned’ for nothing, right?

But the best experience I’ve had watching the Phantom would be holding my fiancee’s hand while listening to All I Ask of You as sung by Christine and Raoul. This song, that for countless time she had asked me to sing over the phone when I was courting her, had become a resonating symbol of the romance I first felt for her. The romance, which for that night, felt warmer and more certain as the glitzy lights on that famous chandelier hanging from above. All her thoughts into the stage, she didn’t notice that all I did was to look at her face, with her eyes amazed at what I had taken her into. Then, it was as if I am loving her the first time – three months before our marriage.

Her eyes glow more than the lights of the Chandelier (above)

The following day – we finally went home – and the rest of my R&R became a big drama of wedding preps, licenses, and seminars, by which, I swear I would have not proposed yet  had I known of them. Hahaha! Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get! Champ 10/01/12

P.S.

I’m just kidding about the idea of not proposing. So before you get mad at me (again), I want you to think of me. Think of me fondly when you say goodnight  =)

Someone's Cooking

Yesterday, I was talking to Zaldy and Cyla on Skype when something dawned on me and gave me a sense of looming reality. Six months from now, our long-stalled wedding will take place, and up to that point, I thought that there’s just a lot of time left but I realized that we don’t. On the other hand, I may be worrying too much. Whatever I should be feeling right now, it doesn’t matter.  Prepare early then, you get everything in order.  My overriding principle in life is - If you can start today, do so. I was never a fan of procrastination. And besides, my beautiful fiancée must be worried 10x more than I am right now. So I’m giving her more favor than I am doing myself any help.

Honestly, it’s not really the wedding I am worried about. It’s the day after, and the decades that will follow. And I am not even certain that this anxiety is not that gee-I-can’t-wait feeling whenever I am waiting for my turn to sing karaoke (that is if I jam with people I just met or barely knew). There is just this truckload of questions. But one thing is for sure, there’s nothing more I would want than to grow old with my future wife.

I’m feeling what my good buddy, Mike Gadia, must have been feeling when he was just counting months before his wedding over a year ago. Whenever we got the chance to chat on Facebook, he’d just blurt out how frantic the preparations were. Back then, I didn’t get it. I had this impression that the brouhaha over weddings is just a girl thing, but I was mistaken. You’d really want it to be perfect, not because everything must be brilliant, but because you would want to start this married life perfectly.

Well, I called Zaldy and Cyla to discuss the choir’s preparation for the ceremony. We’ve got a list of songs that include those that will be sung for the first time by my beloved Sto. Nino Choir. Just as I had expected, I am hearing complaints of how difficult the songs were. But the dedication, of course, is there, and I admire how everyone is working hard to make sure that they’ll sing their parts perfectly. Included in the repertoire are:

1.     Beati Quorum Via – C.V. Stanford

2.     From this Moment – S. Twain

3.     O Magnum Mysterium – M. Lauridsen

4.     The First Time I Loved Forever – (Phil Madrigal Singers’ arr)

5.     When I Fall In Love – (Phil Madrigal Singers’ arr)

6.     Runaway – (Corrs, arr by my friend, S.E. Pacamparra – if he finishes it)

7.     Parent’s Prayer (Christian Song) – Steven Curtis Chapman

Passion in music is one of the few things that I and my fiancée share in common. As an accountant, I am in no way professionally related to her work as a nurse, so there would be a lot of dead air and one-way talking going on in our daily calls, but a topic on music would usually keep my Skype and phone bills climbing, LOL.

With six months to go, how do I consume my time prior to the date I will fly home to don on that tuxedo? Well aside from my buwis-buhay work here in Kabul, there’s three things I’ve found really fun to do:

1.     Watching MasterChef Australia

2.     Imitating those dishes I saw in MasterChef with the burner plate I’ve got in my room.

3.     Eating what I cooked and discerning if I can use it as an audition entry should there be a MasterChef – Afghanistan edition.

What if MasterChef hits NATO Bases in Afghanistan?

And of course there’s three things I’ve found not fun to do, and yet I still have to do them:

1.     Running (or brisk-walking) 2 kilometers a day on the treadmill to shed off extra fat I gained in eating my MasterChef entrees and main courses

2.     Running 500 meters more to shed even just a bit of my belly flabs accumulated over years of eating in US dining facilities, which would always serve supersized meals buffet style.

3.     Stepping on that weighing scale and seeing that I’m just losing a thousandth of a kilo after an hour of excessive sweating and leg-cramping exercises.

At 23 minutes,  I have walked/jogged  2,205 meters and burned 177 Cal

Doing all these things gave me two realizations. First, things you do for fun aren’t really as easy as they seem to be, you just don’t notice the difficulty as you are enjoying them. And of course - things that are not fun to do are never easy.

Even if the task is just to wait, it is never easy. 

It’s already 1 am and I gotta hit the bed. See ya.