Were you ever asked what your guilty pleasure is? For the longest time, my answer is eating proven. It’s a filipino street food, a deep-fried chicken gizzard that you can buy on carts next to schools at 4 PM when classes are over. Street food are known to be usual sources of Hepatitis B amongst filipinos. The fact that the oil is being reused and that it’s being sold on the street (sometimes without any protective covering whatsoever) is an easy indication that it might not be a healthy consumption. Yet, there I was in my early teens, standing outside the school using my last 20 pesos to buy two packs of proven.

To be honest, I don’t feel guilty of eating proven at all. It was good, and I usually eat it with rice or cucumbers and tomatoes, so it’s a meal. I also don’t eat it every day so I feel nothing with every bite. Now, in my late 20s, I realise what my actual guilty pleasure is it’s gossip, or chismis as we say in Tagalog. For the sake of this entry, I will be using “chismis” it just hits closer.

Some can argue that chismis is a necessary part of life, but some view it as a perpetual waste of time. I can agree to both. Chismis bonds people, it can make you feel included when you’re “in” on what everyone is talking about. At the same time, if it occupies your mind more than it should, and you find yourself engaging in abusive behaviour (such as bullying), then it’s not a good way to spend your time. You could be doing anything else.

I do love me a good chismis, but when I catch myself stopping everything to read about things that has absolutely nothing to do with me, I feel a weird twist in my tummy, and I immediately close my phone and run back to work or to whatever I was originally doing.

The chismis topic that actually make my head turn and drop everything is cheating! As luck would have it, these past few weeks I have been blessed with a few chismis of this exact topic that I cannot get away from, thanks to my algorithm. *shakes head

Cazzu, Angela, Nodal

I heard this chismis from Stephanie Soo’s podcast which is usually on while I take a bath or when working. The three people involved are musicians in Latin America, I’m not much into their music which means to say I do not know who these people are, but after hearing the episode, trust that I listened to a song or two from each of them.

From what I gathered, the chismis goes like this: Nodal, a Mexican musician, was in a relationship with Cazzu, an Argentine musician. They have a baby. Q2 of 2024, both announced that they ended their 2- year relationship, and just a month after, he gets married to another Mexican artist, Angela Aguilar. If you wish to learn more about the back story of these two, I highly recommend watching the video, Stephanie tells the story way better than I could.

In my POV, I understand that some people are quick to fall in love, and maybe some people just realised they want to marry their partner a month after being together, so be it. But Angela went to an interview saying that months before the public knew (which was June 2024), they were already in a relationship for several months before. However, the truth appears to be that it was May when Cazzu and Nodal broke up, so it wasn’t months in plural. An overlap definitely happened.

Angela also mentioned in an interview that all of the people involved were adults, and all of them were aware that there was no relationship in place anymore, there was infidelity, and no one got hurt. Cazzu was not happy with this statement.

Cazzu went on an interview last October. Being in a very public relationship and break-up, it was not a surprise that this incident would come up. She mentioned that she was at her limits with regards to this topic. Months after the news about the wedding broke out, she was quiet, she kept to herself, but the Angela interview is just telling an entirely different story, and she needs to straighten facts.

Cazzu said that it was a lie that all of them were aware of the relationship. She didn’t know. She knew about it the same time everyone else did, on the news. Angela also put words on her mouth saying nobody got hurt, when in fact the situation hurt her deeply. Not only her, but their daughter too. Their daughter who lost her father. Cazzu said that people in that situation are not all adults because there’s a baby involved, a baby whose life that we all should protect.

I don’t understand Spanish well, but her interview got me putting my attention into an hour-long video without subtitles (which is a win for me.)

Angela is getting all the hate as the “new woman,” while Cazzu is getting a lot of support. Even Mexicans would proudly say, “I’m from the same country as these two, but I’m with you, Cazzu.” But I think people are forgetting one key player in this story, who, for sure, knew what was happening on both sides of the story: Nodal.

My theory is, Nodal has it bad for Angela since they started working with each other, but that had been hindered by Angela’s age, so dude looked elsewhere (again, this is a theory). Now that Angela is 21, he’s free to pursue a relationship with her without being attacked by the public (like he’s not being attacked right now, lol.) I think, Nodal didn’t have the guts to break it with Cazzu because they have a child, and that even when officially, they’re still together, he’s already planning a wedding and all of these stuff with Angela. Angela is probably okay with it because Nodal said it’s over between him and Cazzu, and what would a relationship be without trust, right? So for Angela, that may be the truth.

I don’t know. We don’t know. We’re just third-party spectators on this messy love triangle.

Jam, Maris, Anthony

This is a chismis that literally shocked everyone in the middle of the night.

I found this one out because of my workmate (hi, Flora!) She asked on our group chat if we saw Jam’s Instagram stories. I don’t even know who Jam is, but Flora sent the message with such urgency so I stopped chopping potatoes to open Jam’s account and lo and behold, the hottest chismis that Filipinos didn’t know were coming this year.

I haven’t watched any videos explaining the incident so here’s a quick backstory: Maris and Anthony are a love team in the Philippines. That means they have multiple projects where they act as each other’s love interest. Love teams are an interesting topic to explore. I don’t know about other countries, but in the Philippines, when TV producers see that two people are great together (aka they have chemistry, people love them, and they attract in loads of endorsement), they would milk the hell out of that pair and give them projects together. Imagine all of their films, series, and ads, they’re acting as a couple to each other. More usual than not, these love teams end up being in a relationship in real life, which I’m not surprised by.

This seems to becoming a problem with Maris and Anthony’s love team.

Anthony has a non-showbiz girlfriend, Jam, but the fans don’t like to acknowledge that. They want to fill their delusions that Maris and Anthony are actually in a relationship, despite both of them denying it blatantly saying they’re just friends.

Q4 of 2024, Anthony mentioned in an interview that his relationship with Jam has ended and it has nothing to do with Maris. A few days after, Jam made an incredibly explosive move, but before that, let’s talk about Maris.

Maris is a beloved actress by the nation. She’s multitalented, and she’s hard to miss when she’s on screen! She was hated by an entire generation of ’90s kids when it was announced that she was in a relationship with Rico Blanco. Rico Blanco used to be the vocalist of Rivermaya a band from the ’90s which remains classic and beloved to this day. A lot of us were taken aback at first by the 25-year difference, but, to each their own.

This year, Maris mentioned in an interview that the 5-year relationship with Rico has ended, and it has nothing to do with Anthony? Sounds familiar? Let’s go back to Jam.

On the first week of December, everyone is talking about screenshots involving two famous actors. These screenshots were private messages of Anthony and Maris, and they were posted on Jam’s Instagram stories. The photos include a number of lewd messages, which I think is normal for adults who has the hots for each other, but what was wrong is Anthony was in a relationship when all of those were happening. I can’t imagine what type of heartbreak Jam went through when she first saw those.

It was a hot topic for the entire week. Some endorsements of the two actors even backed out on the same week the messages were publicised. It was a total trainwreck.

Maris spoke about the incident and voiced out how humiliated she was. She mentioned that Anthony told her they already broken up so she didn’t think anything was wrong about her pursuing the guy. I empathise with her. I don’t think people are evil by nature, and maybe she really did think they were broken up, but Anthony was just brushing his hair back thinking that Jam would be so kind to let him do what he wants just because.

The controversy is bad, while it is no contest that Jam was the hurt the most, I also feel heartbroken for Maris and how her career, that she worked on for a decade, would be like after this controversy.

Thoughts

Cheating is bad, whose fault is it?

When it comes to cheating scandals (for heterosexual couples, where the dude is the one cheating), the public has no mercy for the other woman.

She’s always called names and often deprived further opportunities, but there’s not much attention poured to the man. The man who was supposed to be trusted. The man who is in a committed relationship. It’s always “She already knows he’s in a relationship, yet she didn’t turn back” but it’s never “He’s already in a relationship, yet he didn’t turn back.”

Not that I’m saying it’s always just the man’s fault. I mean, girl, if you know someone’s in a relationship, walk away! What’s wrong with you? I’m saying, men should also be held responsible for the emotional and mental damage done to the their partners.

The public’s opinion

It’s always funny to me how people in scandals are always expected to speak up whenever these things happen. They don’t even give the human being a week or two to breathe, reflect, and organise their thoughts. This relationship has nothing to do with our daily lives but we hold our pitch forks asking them to speak in the midst of a panic.

Regardless of what they say anyway, we will be mad, because that’s not what we actually want to hear. This is why I think being a celebrity is such a difficult job. It does bring back loads of money, but in exchange of your being. In exchange of your image, and your being normal. Whenever they’re attached in any controversy, it never goes away. It dies down, but there’s always someone in the sea of the crowd who’d remind you of a stupid thing you did because you trusted.

Dealing with chismis

I find that I don’t get involved in any chismis in real life. Everything my friends talk about is celebrity chismis, which is a given since all stories are publicly available.

Have I been in a center of chismis before? I don’t know, and I don’t think people who knows me in real life care that much about me, because why?. I haven’t been in a situation where I was denied an opportunity because of a rumour, or something I allegedly did that was so bad.

Is that because of luck? Maybe, but I highly believe it is because of me not wanting to do things that I would frown at. Remember the golden rule? Do unto others what they want to do to you? That’s my motto in life as well. Do what you want to see in others.

How do you deal with chismis you hear? For PR purposes, I would say close your ears and go, but what I honestly would do is listen, analyse, and think about what you would have done in a situation.

You’ll never know, these chismis might leave you a valuable lesson that you’d pass on some day. I also think it’s a great opportunity to learn about other people and the world that we’re living in. Not everything is rainbows and ice creams, some people can be harsh, and they would use a lot of means to justify it. What’s important is you, how would you face those kinds of adversities? How can you be more human?