Crowns and chandeliers

This holiday season, the French capital of Paris was full of crowns and chandeliers decorating stores, restaurants and clubs…as if Paris never had enough of chandeliers! But the royale combination of crowns and chandeliers was never more apparent than this season of Christmas.

Coming into Bacolod for the holidays was New York-based Hinobaan Princess Conchita "Chita" Reyes whose Melanie Griffith voice and Marie Helvin classic face has been missed sorely in this city's social scene.

Footloose and fancy free, she has several suitors in the Big Apple but has chosen single blessedness, which she has missed for several decades. She devotes most of her free time now to ballet, taekwondo and yoga classes. With her impish laughter and her graceful gait, I doubt if Chita can stay single for long… However, choosing between a crown and a chandelier pose, she obviously took the crown.

Sisters-two Pangging and Panee Rosales sailed into town also for the holiday season. These local Hilton girls are the most fun-loving and sweetest from Iloilo. Busy making loads of money in their real-estate and pharmaceutical businesses, they bombed into the Bacolod night scene and came out unscathed and triumphant with several hearts thumping for their constant crystal-clear laughter. Pangging chose a regal chandelier pose while Panee took a bunch of crowns for her calendar pose. Here's hoping to see more of these gals on this side of the Guimaras Strait. Making sure that no brute gets in their way was Iloilo's social arbiter Nonoy Ybiernas and bon vivant Bob Jarder.

I'm still dreamy-eyed from my trip to Paris last November where I finally entered the new Paris Opera de la Bastille! For starters, I took in two operas--"L'amour des trois oranges" by Serguei Prokofiev and "Der Rosenkavalier" by Richard Strauss. Of course I took the most expensive seats, since IT IS OPERA! And I wasn't disappointed.

The crowd was trés elegant and this new edifice built by the man behind Yves Saint Laurent, Pierre Berger, is surely one of the best theatres built at the end of the last century. The interiors are in matte minimalist black with the stage curtain split by a single silver stripe. The balcony and boxes are highlighted by Klein blue fluorescent lights.

Of course, everyone races to the bar for the intermissions where only champagne pops for the select few as cashmere and sable drip onto the floor, dragged by the most lithe and nimble bodied socialites as their gallant escorts carry the evening's programs, whispering the next act's important scene into their perfumed ears. I love Paris in the fall when the ballet and opera seasons start. It is the height of sophistication and luxury which no other world capital could ever equal! You must experience it once in your life.

MY PRAYER

May my choice of priorities this year be pleasing to You, my God-as pleasing as Jesus' offering.*