Same but different: Twins Gian Paulo and Gian Carlo
Angel Thoughts
We are back on the trail of twins, and this time they are the “double blessings” of columnist Marichu Villanueva and former broadcaster Jun Flores.
I met both of them when they covered the late President Cory Aquino in the Palace. I saw the romance bloom between the couple and the arrival of the twin boys, Gian Paulo and Gian Carlo, on Oct. 23, 1989. I am honored to be one of their godmothers!
Fast forward to the present, and the “cute” twins are now so good looking, confident, and highly competent professionals. Paulo became a doctor of medicine. He is now with the St. Luke's Hospital in BGC. Meanwhile, Carlo is now a commercial pilot with Philippine Airlines.
They are identical twins, so identical that casual acquaintances would find it difficult to readily tell the two of them apart. I talked to Paulo about life with an identical twin first.
“Having identical twins has been both a blessing and a challenge to our parents. Fortunately, even twins have certain marks and characteristics that distinguish one from the other,” he began. “As children, our parents would make us wear clothes that were alike all the time, and gave us toys to share and play with. We went to the same schools but most of the time we were placed in different classrooms to avoid our teachers and classmates to be confused.”
They had many common interests but their differences became more apparent as they reached adolescence.
“We no longer wore the same clothes since we eventually developed our own individual styles. One thing we had in common, though, is we prioritize comfort over fashion in selecting clothes or footwear.” They would even eat the same types of food but Paulo prefers Chinese cuisine less than his brother. “Much to my dismay, whenever I’m outvoted by my parents and my twin brother whenever they choose to eat at Chinese restaurants!”
Although they each had their own set of friends, they had many common friends. Paulo says he is an introvert whereas his twin brother is an extrovert. This meant that during parties, he was the wallflower while Carlo was a social butterfly.
The common question that the twins get from most people is, “How does it feel like having a twin brother?”
“It always strikes me as a philosophical question that I have to ponder on deeply to come up with a relevant answer. I just usually tell them that it’s like having a sibling who looks almost like you. Typically, they would be unsatisfied with this answer and would go as far as probing for, ‘Do you hear each other’s thoughts?’ or ‘Can you talk through your minds?’,” intimates Paulo. “I have to put it out here once and for all that these things only exist in fiction books or in movies. How I wish that these were true so that school and exams would have been easy-breezy for the both of us when we were younger”
“Now that I have had time to think about it, I can respond to that million-dollar-question in a realistic but notable manner. Being twins is like having a sibling who is physically and genetically-engineered to be almost the same as you but life experiences molds both of you to become psychologically and emotionally-distinct individuals.”
Carlo is amused former classmates and some friends still are confused about who is who.
“During our school days, we decided to have our own hair cuts to differentiate one from the other. The problem was, our teachers and classmates called both of us in our first common name ‘Gian,’ instead by our full names,” Carlo related to me. “Even our own parents at times also have trouble determining who they are talking to, especially over telephone conversations. This is because we also talk and sound almost the same tone or voice.”
“The only give away as to who is who is that I am friendlier and more ready to acknowledge with a smile anybody who mistakenly recognizes me as Gian Paulo,” says Carlo. “Perhaps, because, it’s my training as a commercial pilot to relate to people as warmly as possible. My twin brother is more of a serious type of person.”
And as fate would have it, Carlo married his college sweetheart Madeline Santiago who also has identical twin brothers. Carlo and Madeline were blessed with their 20-month-old first born son whom they named Ashton Callum. He was born on March 10, last year, one week before we had national lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “It is not far-fetched we can also have identical twins in the next generation,” happily concluded Carlo.