It’s the start of a typical day in the life of Pia Guanio, Monday through Sunday, and what punishing schedule she follows!
She tarries a bit in bed and, after a happy yawn, she does stretching exercises and crunches right in her room. She goes over the day’s broadsheets and then she hops over to the bathroom, fixes herself and a set of three outfits (one for the gym) she needs for her noontime show, Eat, Bulaga! She lives alone in her Pasig City condo and she doesn’t have any factotum (alalay).
By 11:15, she leaves home for Broadway Centrum (on Aurora Boulevard, Quezon City) where Bulaga! is telecast "live" everyday. She drives her own car. "I’m a very solo-flight kind of girl," she boasts. She arrives at the studio at 11:45, swaps kisses and "Hi’s!" with her Bulaga! co-hosts and other people around and takes what she calls "my brunch" before she’s called for her segment (usually the quiz portions).
"Food in the studio is catered," says Pia. "It’s very much welcome because I don’t cook at home."
If it’s a Tuesday or a Thursday, after Bulaga! at around 2:30 p.m., she hies off to a gym on Timog Avenue, also in Quezon City, for a two-hour workout, very convenient because it’s a stone’s throw from the GMA Studio.
"I have to be at the studio before 5 o’clock for 24 Oras (hosted by Mel Tiangco and Mike Enriquez) where I do the showbiz segment. Before airtime, I read naman the tabloids to keep up with current events. I have to," she stresses. "Otherwise, mahuhuli ako sa balita."
Before, she added with a laugh, "I’d check out the papers only to find out what was written about me. Now, I have to read what’s written about everybody else, all the news all the time, and not only about showbiz."
Every now and then, she does field work and rushes to a non-TV hosting job. Otherwise, she’s home at 8 o’clock – unless she has a dinner out with her boyfriend of six years, Mike Jacob (a stock broker, brother of Christine Jacob) or with her family. Bedtime is before midnight. She spends her free time before that watching soaps and, later, the newscasts.
"I keep up with what Marina is up to, you know," she says.
On Sundays, she enjoys a few more minutes of luxury in bed before she prepares for her 4 to 5:30 p.m. show S-Files (she replaced Janice de Belen co-hosts with Paolo Bediones, Joey Marquez and Richard Gomez "who are super-nice to me, treating me like their kid sister").
And then, well, it’s Monday again and back to the crazy ringing of the alarm clock and another week of hectic schedule.
No regrets, though.
"Why should I?" says Pia (who had to give up co-hosting, also with Paolo Bediones, the mid-morning Sunday show The LG Digital Challenge, also on GMA). "I have work and I get good pay and you’ll never know when this will last."
She’s now what Lyn Ching used to be – all over the place, the Apple of the GMA bigwigs’ eyes.
"I’m lucky, I guess. I have to keep on proving myself, I have to make good. Or else, they might take all these away from me," she laughs, knocking on wood.
Where does she get all the energy?
"I also wonder where. But I guess it comes from enjoying what you’re doing. I thank the Lord everyday for being able to do what I love to do most. I do my homework everyday and make the most of what I’m given."
And what does she have to sacrifice for, you know, "all these"?
Not so much her love life, but her social life.
"I don’t see my family as often as I used to and I miss that a lot."
At 27, says Pia, "I never imagined I would go this far."
She finished AB Communication Arts (major in Broadcasting) and started work in media as intern at Probe Team Productions and then as radio news producer/newscaster on DWRT FM Manila. She moved to Loren Legarda’s The Inside Story first as researcher and then as segment producer until 1998. From June 1999 to Oct. 2000, she was executive producer of Lakbay Now (for Lakbay TV) and began her hosting job as host of City Talk and San Mig Light Six-Packers (also for Lakbay TV) and worked as a radio reporter (Caltex Roadwatch, as Caltex’s Traffic Angel) for 89.9 DWTM, 99.5RT, 103.5Klite and 88.3 Citilite. After hosting several shows both on ABS-CBN and Studio 23, she jumped ober da bakod to rival station GMA in October last year.
"I owe where I am now to ABS-CBN," she acknowledged, turning her ID from Kapamilya (ABS-CBN) to Kapuso (GMA).
"ABS-CBN will always be in my heart."
Yes, her Kapuso.
(E-mail reactions at rickylo@philstar.net.ph)