Celebrity doppelganger: Me and Marc Abaya. (No, I don't look like him.)

It's fun going back through old journal entries and reading your younger self write about yourself, when you were younger. It's like reading about another person. Well, mostly. Several times I'd come across entries that are, after several years, mostly embarrassing I'd want to delete them; but what the hell. These entries were from me.

Several years back, when I first decided to use a photo of myself as my userpic in Livejournal, I received a surprising comment: "You remind me of Marc Abaya from Sandwich." I don't know where the comparison was taken from. It was flattering; but it was also scary because of the undue expectations it might have raised (mostly imagined by me). I know I'm not ugly but I'm not some good-looking rock star, either. And I certainly don't look like Marc Abaya.

Anywho, that was from 2002. It was a fond, but half-forgetten memory.

Two years after that, I decided to grow my hair until I started hearing comparisons to Jay Contreras. This one I understand: It's the hair. People see a lanky, scruffy guy with long, curly hair and they'll wonder if that guy was the Kamikazee singer. Nevermind that I don't have the visible arm tats. It was amusing at first; then I grew tired of it. Mostly because I think I started growing my hair before Jay Contreras did.

Last year, I had my hair cut (good-bye Jay Contreras comparisons!) and reluctantly returned to the hair I had from five years ago. It was December last year when, while I went to a fiesta in Cavite and singing in a karaoke, one of the friends of a co-worker said I looked like Marc Abaya. Oh wow. Another Marc Abaya comparison, after 8 years. And still I don't get where the comparison came from.

I may have found the answer last night when a friend sent this SMS: "Jade, you have the same smirk as Marc Abaya."

Whoa. I replied, saying that may be the reason I have had at least two previous instances when I was compared to that guy.

"Maybe," he replied in another text message. "I'm watching Habang May Buhay. I was like, there's something odd familiar with his impish grin.

I smirk like Marc Abaya? Kaya pala. But it sounded silly, people saying I look like someone else because of our smirks. (Was I even smirking in that photo I posted in Livejournal? The host where I stored the photo is gone now and I forgot what that photo actually looked like, except that it was of me in a swimming pool.) Now I want to find a photo of him smirking so I could decide if our smirks really do look alike.

And I just realized that this entry is two weeks too late for Celebrity Doppelganger Week.