Some people consider it a tragedy that they don't get to choose their relatives. I do, too. But with Lala, I make an exception. I'm glad we were thrown together early on in life. She's my favorite cousin, not by default, but by choice. We have the same passion for good books, the same love for writing (although i hasten to add that she really is THE writer in the family),the same views about men ( long live Dan Tiller!), the same loyalty to good old UP, and the same conviction that lawyering is just incidental to our existence. We make each other laugh. We once made the same guy cry out of exasperation over our kakulitan. And as teen-agers, we tried to comprehend the characters in our lives we sometimes call relatives. Ten years later, we're still trying.;) She's so right when she said that we're cousins but we're friends first. Spoken like a Beauty Queen. Which, by the way, is what she once was. ;)