Covering Southeast asia from home

Not every married couple who has a fight buys a house when they make up (a kiss usually does the trick). Not every man who has the chance to spend his anniversary with his wife out of town would choose to celebrate it at home instead. Not every woman who lives 10 minutes away from her office and from Makati’s fabulous shopping malls moves to the suburbs 15 kilometers away.

Besides, aren’t the suburbs the stuff Erma Bombeck, Tupperware-party, my-god-what-are-we-doing-in-the-boondocks, overpriced-Skyway nightmares are made of? Not anymore, it seems. Or, even if they are, this couple got a lot more in exchange when they changed zip codes.

Creative consultant for advertising Ed Ramirez and his wife, People Asia editor in chief Joanne Rae Ramirez, last year began a new stage in their life after 17 years of marriage.

Joanne was forced to confront what the years had accumulated – things she had almost forgotten were there but whose presence when they would be taken out of boxes was strangely comforting. She’d throw open a closet and out would come tumbling down books, magazines, vinyl records, remnants of ‘80s fashion, a basket she has had since she was single, the baby shoes of her son (teeny pairs that wouldn’t even fit his toes now) and the first gifts he gave her.

But moving to a new house does something to you that goes beyond the necessity of trimming down one’s stuff. You’re forced to examine the life you’ve led in the place you’re leaving behind. It’s like a route marker of sorts: This is us in the old house, this is us in the new one. We were into country living in the old house, we are showcasing our Asian roots in the new house. We were very happy then with our home, we are happier now.

"Though our old house on Marconi St. was in a very strategic location, it wasn’t very private, like in the morning the cabs and delivery trucks passing on the main road would make such a racket," says Joanne.

A self-confessed rat pack, she admits, "Our house had a lot of nooks and crannies, which fed my habit of not throwing away things but just collecting them. The first months we were here, I was mourning over a mirror, just a rattan-framed mirror, that we had left behind. That was the hardest thing about moving, I had to get rid of so much junk," she says.

"We got rid of her clutter!" says Ed Ramirez. He just wants to make that very clear.

The one thing they didn’t throw out was Joanne’s collection of Kennedy memorabilia. As STAR Allure’s editor, she gets a lot of ribbing for that in the office. Joanne has been a Kennedy watcher from the time she was in grade school even though JFK had long died by then.

"I worship legends," she says. "I guess I’m fascinated by Camelot, by JFK because he overcame great odds. He was the first Catholic president of the US, he overcame back pain, never mind if he slept with every bombshell in Washington, idol ko pa rin siya. In my high school yearbook, I said, ‘I will only marry my dream man after I have met a Kennedy.’"

She has vinyl records of JFK’s speeches, Kennedy coins, mugs, coffee-table books, election pins, magazines and an autograph of Senator Edward Kennedy whom she met during her stint at the Office of the Press Secretary during the Cory administration.

When John F. Kennedy Jr. died, CNN got wind of her Kennedy memorabilia and tracked her down for an interview. Joanne laughs and says, "That was my 15 minutes. A former classmate who was in New York said, ‘Why are you crying on TV?’ I wasn’t! I was just showing them the collection."

How does Ed feel about this? "Once he told me, ‘Joanne, they’re all dead.’"

Joanne says, "I realized that the first step toward having a beautiful house is to get rid of your clutter." This is not to say that the Ramirezes’ townhouse is minimalist. Joanne’s love for home accessories, particularly those coming from Southeast Asia, sees to it that her house will always be a repository of interesting finds.

Most of the wall pieces are old if not antique and were bought right in BF Parañaque while many of the accessories were hand-carried back home from abroad, including dinnerware from Bangkok and bird cages from Beijing. If not for those damn airline restrictions, she would probably bring home an entire section of a flea market!

"Home is where the heart is," says Joanne. "And Ed has poured his heart into this project."

Aside from being a CMMA awardee in advertising, Ed Ramirez is one of those rare creatures that have the patience to accompany their wives treasure hunting in markets and the skill to make home repairs and to create things from scratch. As any housewife will tell you, there’s nothing sexier than a man who knows how to use his power tools.

In the lanai, Ed patiently covered one wall with bamboo, one pole at a time. He also created a layered fountain using an antique stone grinder that they bought in Carcar, Cebu. In the living room, he converted an old ceramic jar into a lamp and rewired a floor lamp so that its shade is now a salakot from Bangkok. The piece de resistance, however, is the light in the dining room: It’s an inverted umbrella from Chiang Mai made of handmade paper – one of those pieces that Joanne took home but didn’t know what to do with it. When Ed saw it, he studied it every which way, wired it, put some bulbs and inverted it. It’s now a curious light fixture with a beautiful patina, like an antique parchment paper that you inherit from your grandmother. You wouldn’t even know it was an umbrella before.

"I just started experimenting with it and saw its potential because it’s a beautiful if not a useless piece," he said.

What also makes their house very special is that it’s the first home that the couple owns, having leased in the past years their house in Makati.

"We decided to buy this after a big fight," says Joanne with a chuckle. (Whose fault the fight was we didn’t ask.) "It was like a vote of confidence on our future together and we put our savings here. After we made up, we went house hunting in Pasig, Makati, Quezon City and Parañaque."

What attracted Ed and Joanne to BF Parañaque was the community – never mind if they had to deal with a dishonest broker who tried to put one over them. The subdivision is a self-contained community with businesses offering services for those without maids, mini supermarkets, home stores, a night market called Ruins, laundromats, car repair services, etc.

The difference between being in the suburbs and being right smack in the middle of the city, says Joanne, is that in the suburbs you "wake up to a silence broken only by the chirping of the birds." She muses, "Parang iba ang hangin sa suburbs? I love the sunshine and stillness of the morning. The tradeoff is really the distance, but Ed doesn’t feel it because his hours are also irregular like mine. What attracted my son Chino to the neighborhood is that he’s able to play basketball in the covered court anytime."

Chino is Ed and Joanne’s only child. Now 16, he attended his first prom the night before we visited their home. "Buti na lang, I was busy putting plants here and there. It took my mind off it," says Joanne. "It was like a rite of passage for me: my only child going out on a date."

The townhouse has the kind of lived-in, sit-anywhere-you-want atmosphere. Its Southeast Asian flavor highlights the fact that these neighboring countries share a tradition in the crafts, particularly those made in Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines.

When Joanne first saw the house, it was a typical townhouse with a cramped ground floor yet she fell in love with it right away because she saw the possibilities for improvement. "My husband says I have no defense against a vendor, or in this case a broker, because it shows in my eyes that I like what he’s offering," she says with a laugh.

There was unused space behind the living room wall and on the side of the house to extend the living room. A friend of theirs, interior designer Tess Vargas who owns The Bowery in BF Parañaque, "set us in the right path." First, they retiled the floor with textured Spanish tiles and got rid of the gray marble. They hired Tess’ construction firm and removed the solid wall between the living room and the pocket garden. They installed glass doors to bring the outdoors in and to give it a restful spa-like ambience thanks to Ed’s handiwork as he’s the gardener in the family. (One Valentine’s Day many years ago, he gifted Joanne with a plant instead of flowers. Maybe it’s not very romantic, but hey, it’s still alive today.) Ed has put together bromeliads, dapo, a neem tree to discourage mosquitoes and other vines. It is a green garden – a man’s garden – with very few flowering plants. At one corner is Ed’s waterfall feature with a couple of gold fish. Beside it is a birdcage topped with another salakot.

The main feature of the lanai is a wooden corn mill, also called a money mint because it represents hard work and the consequential prosperity, according to Mary Ann Fucoy of Indo Treasures, the store where Joanne bought a lot of their furnishings.

The money mint’s texture is replicated in the trellis over the lanai, which is made with posts from old bridges and the pathway that has old traviesa or railroad tracks covered with pebbles. On one side is a wooden bench that’s so heavy it took six men to carry it.

There’s a nice weathered look to the wood used in the lanai. Ed explains, "We’re partial to wood. It softens up the concrete look. It’s natural and it’s romantic." He hates it when people paint over wood. So Joanne and Ed had workers strip the paint off their front door and staircase to bring out the natural grain of the wood, and wouldn’t you know it – the front door was a beautiful narra!

At night, the couple spends time in the lanai having wine or coffee and some conversation. Sometimes, it is also here where they "fight and thresh out their problems."

"It’s also nice when it rains because the roof is not extended all the way so water runs down on the wall and onto the plants, creating a mini waterfall" says Ed. "We enjoy this space so much we’ve stopped going out to those cozy places," adds Joanne.

When asked why more men are now involved in fixing their homes, Ed says, "I guess it’s a changing world. The values of culture change with the times. Unlike before it was only the man who was the breadwinner, now it’s both husband and wife, and both of them consider the home as a place to enjoy themselves."

In the living room, designer Tess Vargas installed a huge mirror framed by a bomo (part of a krobongan, an Indonesian shrine) from Madura. Mary Ann says Madurese pieces are very ornate, showing movement and energy in the design, and are not easily copied.

Joanne saw this piece outside Indo Treasures while driving in BF and snapped it up along with other pieces, such as a carved Balinese panel that was used in old houses to let the breeze in, a carving that was part of a leg of a matrimonial bed converted into a lamp, a hand-woven mosquito net from Yogjakarta, and loro blonyo or wooden statues of the rice goddes Dervi Sri and her consort Raden Saboro against a stained glass screen from Jo Liza’s. Mary Ann says that most Javanese homes have statues of a couple to greet visitors when they come in. The goddess Dervi represents prosperity, but when paired with Raden they represent good marriage and a loving home.

Old pieces were recycled in the townhouse as well: the sofa was slipcovered; an antique cabinet from Ilocos was converted into a media cabinet; the reupholstered dining room set, which has a hint of plantation design, was imported from Florida and bought by Ed during a sale in Makati Cinema Square.

In fact, many of Joanne’s collections are recycled or at least they’re pieces that were used for different purposes many lifetimes ago. An antique wooden baby carriage from China is now a low table for her Russian matryoshka dolls, birdcages from Beijing house her egg collections, a jodang (wedding chest) in the bedroom is now a bed stool.

Joanne and Ed disagreed on only three things. First, Joanne likes happy colors while Ed likes earth colors. They compromised on yellow for the living room, a shade that’s bright in the morning and darkens a shade or two at night. Second was the bedroom. Ed thought putting full curtains around the bed was too feminine, so they got half a canopy. Third was a curtain of beads to between the dining room and the kitchen. That’s where he drew the line: absolutely no beads.

So did the renovation put a strain on their marriage?

"Not that much," Joanne says. "Maybe because Tess Vargas was here, her company undertook the renovation and she helped us decorate."

Ed says, "We had many things in common and doing it brought us closer together."