Ali Sotto thrives in Mexico City

A most welcome part of our recent visit to Mexico City, courtesy of Princess Cruises, Mexicana Airlines, Nuevo Mundo Travel Agency and Casa Blanca Hotel was meeting up with Ali Sotto and husband Omar Bsaies, and discussing their life today and preparations for Christmas.

After having taken in the sights of Mexico (from an Indian word meaning "belly button of the Universe" – the magnificent pyramids of Teotijuacan built 400 BC, 45 minutes from the city center, the much-venerated Virgin of Guadalupe in the Basilica, the Xocalo or city square, the Museum of Anthropology tracing the Indian Culture of Mexico, we settled down to a quiet visit with the couple.

Ali has been traveling a lot. She had just returned from Manila, then to Texas, then Tunis to visit Omar’s mom and the rest of his family. "And as he promised me before, he took me back to the most romantic city in the world: Paris," Ali enthuses. She remembers having been there in 1995 for a telesine with Cesar Montano, Tirso Cruz III, Rez Cortez and Dranreb, but her mom passed away so suddenly she had to leave.

Christmas with Omar

This will be the second Christmas she will be spending with Omar. In the past, "I’d leave around Dec. 26 to join him, always spending Christmas with my children, my Dad and the rest of my family," she says.

"This year, too, will be the very first time I’m having a fresh pine tree for Christmas! Ang cheap ko talaga. I love the smell of it."

Eldest son Chino is flying in for Christmas with one of Ali’s close friends Ellen Suarez. Her other son Miko, however, will be left in Manila to promote a filmfest entry.

Ali says there are similarities as well as differences with the way Filipinos and Mexicans celebrate the Christmas holidays. There is also the nochebuena on Christmas eve, the midnight mass, but no simbang gabi, caroling, aguinaldos for the inaanaks. Jan. 3 (Dia de los Reyes Magos) is when one gives gifts to the children; the Posadas Reenacts Mary and Joseph looking for a room at the inn; and on New Year’s Eve they eat 12 grapes, one for every month of the year, for good luck.

"When I was in Manila, I used to get caught up in the rush – shopping, wrapping and delivering gifts I’d somehow lose the spirit of the season. I was too tired to even enjoy the holidays. Dito mas nararamdaman ko – the true essence of the celebration. True, being away from my loved ones leaves a void, an ache inside of me, pero I count my blessings na lang. I look at what I have and not what I don’t have."

Ali took us to the Ciudadelo for souvenir shopping, a quaint taco restaurant after which we stopped by their home in Bosques de la Lomas (literally hills in the woods) with its numerous trees and hilly terrain for some wine and chitchat with Omar, and on to the Zona Rosa of the outdoor cafes and the cosmopolitan life for dinner.

The short visit confirmed what Ali’s friends had been saying all along – that this second chance at married life was good for her as well as for husband Omar, also on a second marriage.

As a young boy growing up in Tunis, North Africa, Omar already knew in his heart that his future was in the international field and that he would marry a foreigner. Straight out of high school he applied for and got a scholarship to the University of Minnesota, completing a Bachelor’s Degree in International Relations in an unprecedented two-and-a-half years after which he returned to Tunis to serve out his duties.

However, his ‘subversive’ activities while in the United States where he had began questioning his government’s policies had reached home and it was clear he was not wanted there.

Promptly returning to the US as a political refugee, he pursued two Masters Degrees in Economics and International Relations at the University of Colorado and started a career in Business Development. It wasn’t until five years later that political amnesty made it possible for him to return to Tunis.

Today, Omar returns on frequent visits to his father and has brought Ali there twice.

Like Ali who has two children by Maru Sottto, Miko and Chino ages 19 and 20, Omar has two by a previous marriage. Ali sometimes still wonders how she had agreed to get married again, having announced that after a failed first marriage she was decidedly against going into it again.

The love of his life

Next year, she and Omar will celebrate their tenth year of having known each other. The love story started in Brunei in 1992 where Ali and Ai Ai de las Alas had been invited for a performance and Omar was posted with the US State Department. Two years later he visited Manila and a month later she visited Bangkok where Omar had been transferred. This is when the romance turned serious until the wedding in 1996 in Palawan, and eventual move to Mexico City November last year.

"The love of my life," Omar refers to her lovingly. Ali’s picture hangs over the fireplace at their beautiful multi-leveled home, tastefully decorated with artifacts gathered from his 20 years with the US State Department and assignments in six countries.

"Baby," Ali warmly returns the gesture and really, they are like two teeners in the throes of young love instead of being 40 and 54 years of age.

There is no doubt Omar is completely devoted to her, writing her poems effusive with messages of love that Ali would like to publish in book form. Confessing to being an obsessive-compulsive especially about neatness, Omar says he found it difficult at first to adjust to married life especially when "she is just the opposite."

Ali misses her friends most, hopia, and texting which is non-existent in Mexico. "Thank goodness for e-mail," she tells us by which she can communicate with Boyet de Leon and Sandy Andolong, Myla Gumila (who has been to Mexico to visit with her), Melissa de Leon, Pip and Lyn Cruz, friends at GMA-7, and members of the Oasis of Love community she had belonged to.

But having decided to take the plunge, Ali went into it wholeheartedly.

"Alam mo naman ako, si Miss Friendship. On my second day here, I already had a barkada," she reveals. Most of her new friends are Filipino expat wives like her and members of the diplomatic circle.

Ali has also been taking Spanish lessons with a teacher, and a computer study course with the University of Maryland, and when she feels proficient in the language hopes to land a job.

She enjoys her life of working out, puttering around the house, going out with friends, and attending to their pets – Tunis, a two-and-a-half year old Doberman she brought all the way from Manila; Mex ,a three-year old abandoned Beagle they adopted; and Brazen, "the cat who thinks she’s a dog" Omar had brought from his last post in Washington, DC.

"I intend to retire soon," announces Omar, marry Ali again in Tunis on our fifth year of marriage, and live in the Philippines."

Seeing them so happy, one can imagine how he must have felt those many months before Mexico when they were apart, and he penned the lines of this poem:

Lately,
The birds are silent
The trees are weeping with the wind,
The world has come to a stop,
Heavens have dropped their constellations,
And I have joined them to lament your absence.
Lately,
Even God is sad.

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