Filipino Singer-actress Regine Velasquez is not giving in to pressure to get pregnant, she told Inquirer Entertainment during a break from a show in southern Philippines Cebu City during the annual Sinulog Festival.
"If you keep thinking about it, hindi darating (it won't come). I just don't want to get disappointed," said Regine, 41, who recently got married with longtime boyfriend singer-composer-actor Ogie Alcasid, 43.
Regine said Ogie wants his next baby to be a boy and named after him - Herminio III. Ogie has two daughters, Leila and Sarah, with former wife, 1994 Miss Universe Australia Michelle van Eimeren.
Regine added that she is also open to trying "other options" like fertility treatments, in case she doesn't get pregnant this year.
"That is a reality that we have to accept," she said. "I'm obviously not that young anymore. I'm open to it, but we'll try the 'natural' option first."
Ogie and Regine flew to Bohol province during the Christmas holidays. They plan to spend their honeymoon in Positano, Italy, sometime during the summer.
"I think I'm more in love with him now compared to when we first started living together three years ago," said Regine. "It's true that you only get to know a person better if you live with him. Ogie is very kind and loving. I call him Baba while he calls me Honey. We make each other laugh."
Regine said the cash donation (over 1 million pesos - US$22,550) that she and Ogie received as gifts at their wedding has been distributed to the five charitable institutions they support. "All of them were very happy. To celebrate our anniversary every year, Ogie and I will try to come up with a fundraiser - it could be a show or a bazaar. This is so we can keep giving financial aid to these foundations."
Regine said she and Ogie want to build a Gawad Kalinga village in Bulacan, her hometown. The couple also donated to charitable institutions Child Hope Asia, Bridges Foundation and CURE (Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy). As its ambassador, she is also actively helping Operation Smile.
The Philippines is all set to embrace a futuristic undersea project to rival those in Maldives, Dubai and Fiji, according to a Filipino team of developer and architects, which is set to build an underwater resort hotel in Palawan.
Dubbed as the Coral World Park, this multibillion-peso project will set the record as Asia's first underwater resort development and the biggest undersea living in the world once the project is completed by 2013.
Picture this: You wake up to a picture perfect view of frivolously swimming manta rays and fishes or hold a meeting in a restaurant submerged in the pristine waters. Say what? All this isn't science fiction according to an all-Filipino team behind the project.
Taking the helm is Singapore-based businessman Paul Monozca, who is known for his advocacies of helping Filipino sports teams and the overseas remittance business. Partnering with Mo?ozca is renowned eco-architect Jose "Pinggoy" Manosa, who will take charge of the architectural design of the Coral World Park.
It's high time we brought sustainable development underwater because there have been similar projects elsewhere in the world that have been proven successful," Monozca told Inquirer Property in an exclusive interview Wednesday.
He cited global warming and the rising water levels as factors that pushed him to look into the possibility of exploring the readiness of the country for this kind of revolutionary development.
Pegged at some $150 million, the undersea structure takes pride in its 24 undersea suites or pods called "Anemones," which are submerged 60 feet below sea level with a fascinating 270-degree view of the sea. The 15-foot-high Anemones will be built by a US firm that specializes in submarines.
Several units of these Anemones will be open for public viewing at reasonable rates while majority are for ownership. Each 50-square-meter Anemone (the size of two-bedroom condo unit) can be customized per owner's preference. It can be used as a private villa, a receiving or entertainment room that could cater to as many as 15 people.
Filipino ingenuity
How can one move from one pod/suite to another? The Coral World Park will be built with submarine technology. The mode of transport will be through glass bottom mini-submarines to be powered by the first mobile hydropower system, which generates up to 1 megawatt of electricity. This will use a patented water recycling and pressure chamber invented by an all-Filipino team of engineers, Monozca said.
"The project will show to the world Filipino ingenuity as 80 percent of the project will be run and manned by Filipinos, from engineers to architects down to personnel," Monozca said. When completed, the proposed underwater habitat will be the biggest in the world.
Also part of the futuristic project is a 50-bedroom onland boutique hotel complete with amenities like casinos, spa, business center and an underwater restaurant to be named -Starfish," which could seat as many as 200 people in its 600-square-meter dining area. A seahorse-shaped science center aptly called "Seahorse Science Center" will be built for tourists and will serve as the park's marine observatory and conservation center showcasing the richness of marine life in the Philippines.
The project is expected to pour in billions of investments and will help create thousands of jobs for the people in Palawan and neighboring provinces.
Conservation tourism
Funding will come from Monozca's Monaco-based group, which counts investors from the United States, the Middle East and Russia. As an aggressive venture in ecotourism business, the project also aims to replenish the coral reefs in the area and would advocate conservation tourism in the country.
Monozca related that everything has been in the planning stage since last year. He identified a group of islands in Coron as the site for development owing to its perfect geography, clear and cove-protected waters and rich marine life. The islands of Palawan hardly experience earthquakes and are not prone to visiting typhoons that occasionally hit the country.
The construction is set to start soon and will be completed in two years, according to Manosa, who said this would be "my biggest project so far in my professional career." Manosa is behind some of the biggest projects like the San Miguel Building constructed in the 1980s and the Brent International School.
"I was overwhelmed myself when the project was offered to me. Even my family is excited about this; my grandchildren are asking when they could visit the underwater resort," Manosa said.
The group dispelled fears of security as the whole resort will be tightly guarded. The proponents also envision a cashless system of transaction as everything will be made via specially issued bracelet cards similar to the function of a credit card.
The group promised strict adherence to protect the environment and the biodiversity of Palawan. They said no marine life will be harmed during the course of its construction to its operations.
Former US defence chief William Perry said North Korea was capable of producing one nuclear bomb a year and that Washington should consider high-level talks to defuse tension, in an interview published Wednesday.
Perry, who served as defence secretary under president Bill Clinton, told the Nikkei daily the US government should review its policies towards North Korea and impose economic sanctions to reiterate its stance against Pyongyang's nuclear programmes.
Then, Washington should coordinate policies with Seoul and Tokyo before eventually sending a special envoy for direct talks with Pyongyang, Perry told the Nikkei.
Perry suggested former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and former US senator Sam Nunn, an expert on nuclear arms reduction, as possible candidates for such talks, the Nikkei said.
The interview was released in Japanese, with no original English text immediately available.
If North Korea dedicated all of its recently unveiled uranium enrichment facility to making weapons-grade fuel, it could build one nuclear bomb a year, Perry told the paper.
Perry said he had been briefed by American scientist Siegfried Hecker, who recently toured a new uranium enrichment plant with 2,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges at North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear complex.
The facility is likely designed for making fuel for a civilian reactor and not bombs, but there is no way to confirm whether North Korea has another facility to build nuclear weapons, Perry said.
The former defence chief said he still believed in diplomatic solutions to the North Korean crisis.
Korea tensions came close to 'war', says China diplomat
SOURCE: AFP
UNITED NATIONS: A top Chinese diplomat told a Security Council debate on Tuesday that hostilities between North and South Korea had come "close to fighting a war."
China's deputy UN ambassador Wang Min told a Security Council debate with youth from around the world that tensions between the North and South had been very high "especially in the past two days. It came close to fighting a war."
China has blocked Western attempts to condemn North Korea's November 23 artillery attack on a South Korean island which set off the new tensions, according to diplomats.
Wang said China and all 15 members of the Security Council wanted a peaceful end to the tensions, when asked about the Korean hostilities by a 14-year-old Chinese-American Wang Yuqi at the special debate with 150 teenagers.
"Their feud has gone on for decades, it did not start yesterday," Wang said. The two have remained at an official state of war since their 1950-53 conflict which was only halted with a truce.
"Therefore it is unlikely that the problems can be resolved overnight," he added.
"First of all we hope that they can remain calm, we hope that they will refrain from engaging in any conflict," Wang said.
"Next, what we hope for is for them to sit down to negotiations that will discuss how the problems between them can be addressed through peaceful means," Wang said.
