Miriam Quiambao : Looking back, looking ahead

**bonner** Thu May 06, 2010 5:55 am

STAR BYTES By Butch Francisco (The Philippine Star) Updated May 04, 2010 12:00 AM

Miriam Quiambao is beyond pointing fingers and doesn’t want to blame anybody for the breakup of her marriage.

Fall, but rise again.

That must have been the dictum followed by Miriam Quiambao when she impressively finished second in the 1999 Miss Universe pageant in Trinidad and Tobago.

Her shoes got tangled with her long dress during the pre-pageant night’s evening gown competition. She fell flat on her face, but remarkably got up fast — to everyone’s cheers and applause. Beauty pageant watchers attribute her having gone up to the semi-finals – until she finished 1st runner-up to the way she marvelously handled that situation at that very moment. Interviewed after the contest, she admitted that “maybe that helped me get noticed.”

Fall down and rise.

She went through this phase many times over even after the Miss Universe race.

As a television personality, she had her valleys that eventually turned into peaks.

Trying out acting early in her career, she proved to be quite hammy when she played Nelia Sancho, the beauty queen who went underground during martial law, in Magpakailanman.

But some seven years later, she got a Best Supporting Actress nomination from the Gawad Urian for playing Eugene Domingo’s battered secretary in Kimmy/Dora and competed alongside acting greats Gina Alajar and Gina Pareño. Today, Miriam has concrete proof that she has finally grown as an actress and was grateful when I gave her a copy of the 2010 Gawad Urian souvenir program with her picture in it (a scene from Kimmy/Dora) — plus a promise that I would later send her certificate of nomination, which she can frame.

Back in circulation and still looking as lovely as the day she became Miss Universe first runner-up, I know she will rise again and recover lost ground in show business.

However, she is still licking the wounds from the failure of her marriage — the most painful fall of all.

When Miriam was a newly-crowned queen, she publicly introduced to the public her boyfriend that time, Martin Bernardo, who — so everyone thought — was her perfect match. I personally met Martin and I was hoping they would end up together. But that didn’t happen. They broke up and Martin is now married and has his own family. While there was bitterness in their parting — “we eventually became friends and we’ve both moved on,” Miriam said.

The stabbing pain from the dissolution of her marriage to Italian businessman Claudio Rondinelli, however, is obviously still there — and she can’t seem to hide the trauma she went through during that two-year marriage that took even much longer to dissolve.

“The process was painful,” admitted Miriam, whose only consolation was the fact that the annulment and divorce proceedings were conducted in Hong Kong where she escaped being fodder to the tabloids. “In every step, we had to relive the experience of being in that marriage.”

And those proceedings didn’t come cheap. Her expenses alone reached the million-peso mark to get herself legally free. Of course, when everything was put in order, she got her share of what became conjugal property. She doesn’t want to go into figures anymore and wants to stress the fact that “all I got was my fair share.”

Looking back, she had already sensed early on that the marriage wouldn’t work, “except that we were in love.” Or maybe they were just in love with the idea of them being in love.

“During the honeymoon, I already saw a problem in our marriage,” she offered. Honeymoon in Boracay, where they were wed? “No, in Maldives, where we had our honeymoon,” she corrected me.

“So there was nothing to it during the wedding night in Boracay?” I bravely pushed. “You know how it is — brides get tired just planning their weddings,” she countered in response to what admittedly was a very personal question.

But in spite of the problem, they still went on with the honeymoon and even managed to take up residence in Hong Kong — “because we were in love.”

In the former British colony, Miriam was a pampered housewife — complete with a maid from the Philippines. Her husband was into the business of timepieces and she had all the watches she wanted, except that she didn’t need all those and couldn’t wear her entire collection on both arms without looking like a Japanese sentry during the Second World War (Japanese soldiers that time were notorious for confiscating wristwatches from civilians and wore them all at the same time).

“Claudio provided me well,” Miriam pointed out. “I was given an allowance.” But those material benefits clearly were not what Miriam longed for when she married Claudio.

“What I wanted was a deeper emotional bonding. Yes, we talked, we laughed — we had a good time — but everything was superficial,” shared Miriam. “We just couldn’t connect emotionally.”

As the union deteriorated, she discovered her husband’s extra-marital affair with a 22-year-old Brazilian model based in Hong Kong. It was a tragic liaison as the girl eventually died from allergic reaction to some medication. “Nakiramay pa ko!” (“I even condoled with them.”)

By the time Miriam discovered the infidelity, she was already drowning in that miserable marriage and as Startalk and Ricky Lo’s Funfare Update reported over the weekend (see May 2 edition of The Philippine Star), she almost killed herself — and felt she had to get out of it.

She and Claudio both wished their union had produced a baby, but “didn’t want that child born in that kind of a marriage.”

At several points in our conversation, Miriam would often stress the fact that she didn’t want to paint a bad picture of her former husband because he wasn’t really all that bad.

Could she have been the one at fault? She looked at me and with an impish smile said: “Maybe.” But at the same time she claimed that it was she who really wanted the marriage to work.

Miriam is beyond pointing fingers and doesn’t want to blame anybody for the breakup of her marriage. She may no longer find love in her heart for her ex-husband, but “the care is still there.”

From her end, she has to learn how to take care of herself because she is now on her own. But I have faith in her. I know that in time she will rise again.