From Music to VR Games: Fashion icon and entrepreneur Tweetie de Leon-Gonzalez opens up about family’s special bond

Tweetie de Leon-Gonzalez knows a lot about good brands. A jewelry designer, wife, mom, supermodel and actress, she has represented brands all her life—including her own TLDG Designs, a collection of handcrafted jewelry and home accessories. You can even say that Tweetie herself is a brand that represents mindful living and aging gracefully while continuing to fulfill her roles and possibilities.

Last year, Tweetie launched a swimsuit collection in collaboration with The Shape Shop. She has said in past interviews that she has an “insane love of the ocean and, consequently, swimsuits,” which prompted her to collaborate for the second time.

Thanks to her workout regimen (she plays tennis and squash, does yoga and Pilates), healthy diet (her rule of thumb is for her plate to be colorful from a variety of veggies), and busy schedule designing for and running TDLG Designs, Tweetie has kept her runway figure and creativity at peak condition.

So it’s no surprise that the way she chooses which brands to represent is the same way she chooses the brands she uses in her personal life. “I’ve been a PLDT Home subscriber since PLDT began offering an Internet service. It’s a familiar brand to me. It’s been a part of my life since I was young and if you grew up with a brand, you trust it,” Tweetie said.

Tweetie is one of the first to get the newly launched PLDT Home Gigabit Fiber plans, which have astounding speeds of 1Gbps to 10Gbps. Simply put, Gigabit Fiber Internet is the fastest measured Internet speed around the world today.

For a family of six very active Internet users, gigabit fiber is the perfect plan as her children’s need to be connected is “growing exponentially.”

A mother and an entrepreneur with an admirable work ethic, Tweetie is one of the most beautiful and creative celebrities in the country. She inspires not just her own children but young girls who dream of becoming many things as women—and she is living proof that it can be done. 

Tweetie has four young adult kids and when 2024 rolled along, their Internet needs leveled up. “Being connected is much more important now. Two of my kids are doing their thesis and they’re going back and forth with their professors and sometimes that goes on until way past midnight,” she shared. “At all times of the day, PLDT Home is available for us to use. I’m just grateful that it’s very consistent and reliable.”

Add another “baby” (her online shop) to the family and that makes five demanding “kids.” “As far as my online shop is concerned, I rely on the Internet heavily,” Tweetie continued. “I need to be able to reach out to clients and reply to emails. I research a lot of the time, I like to keep up with what’s new and what I can indulge in really. In the mornings I’m the one using the Internet to check on my friends, to check my emails, to check my stocks. That’s part of my lifestyle.”

Smart Home Entertainment

Tweetie loves being a mom. She says in a previous interview that as her kids grow and mature, “there are many things about each of them that I discover. How to raise and parent them together with my husband, Mon, is forever changing. I certainly learn a lot about myself just by watching how they have turned out.”

More than fulfilling the family’s individual needs, the Gonzalezes have also managed to use their connection as a way to regularly bond. Tweetie said, “Definitely Gigabit Fiber has improved our online experience because we don’t only use it for work, we use it for entertainment as well, which is big for our family.”

The Gonzalez family is all “big movie watchers with different tastes. We watch different shows individually, sometimes it happens simultaneously. Now we’re able to stream seamlessly. Whatever it is, whether it’s sports, work, academics, entertainment, almost every minute of our lives, we’re connected.”

Streaming is not just for entertainment, it’s also to keep up with her son’s football games. Alfonso is part of the UP Football team and Tweetie is sometimes too nervous to watch live, so she streams the game.

“We get to watch our shows uninterrupted. No more screaming, ‘Mom, there’s no Internet!’” she shared. “These may be little things to some people but it’s impacted our family a lot, there’s no more stress because there’s no issue with the Internet.”

Music is another passion the entire family bonds over. They have an enviable sound system that’s connected throughout the house and to their phones wirelessly so that each family member can control the music from their own Spotify playlists.

Needless to say, the music constantly playing in the Gonzalez home is multi-generational, and Tweetie reveals that her kids actually love the music from mom and dad’s generation. “We’re big music lovers, so having this system is very convenient when we have parties at home.”

It makes Tweetie and her husband Mon Gonzalez the “cool parents with the fast Internet” when their children’s friends come over and play games or stream movies and music. 

“My kids are more homebodies than I was when I was their age, and I think the Internet is part of that. They’re able to do the things they want to do at home, they don’t need to go outside. I’m grateful that as parents we’re able to provide that.”

When Tweetie tells her kids, “Don’t go out, stay here at home na lang and I’ll buy pizza,” they reply, “Mom, you’re so clingy!”

But, in fact, they do stay home because nothing beats Gigabit Fiber!

VR and parties

Having young kids in the house sure helps parents keep up to date with the latest in online entertainment. Tweetie says that when they have parties at home, the kids set up and upload Jackbox on the TV. Jackbox produces party games where participants try to beat each other by answering questions through their phones.

“I rarely play with them kasi laging puno,” she said with a laugh.

What she does enjoy is VR (virtual reality). Tweetie plays BeatSaber, a VR rhythm game where you slash the beats of adrenaline-pumping music as they fly toward you, surrounded by a futuristic world. “They say that after dinner it’s good to walk for at least 30 minutes. I do my BeatSaber—and it’s quite a workout.”

The kids, meanwhile, enjoy their games online. With their home network on gigabit fiber, Tweetie said there are no more screams of “Pa-reset ng Internet!” while they’re playing.

Tweetie added that all entertainment options become “part of a community of people enjoying collectively, being productive all together, and able to enjoy life together. If you can finish your work early, then you have so much more time to relax and activities to ponder. More people should get connected so that we experience the benefits of Gigabit collectively and more profoundly.”

She even has the time now to take photos of her products with care and attention to detail, and upload them on her website and social pages. “I’m able to finish tasks quickly, reach out to my staff and clients, and reply to inquiries. I’m like a customer care rep for my website. My connections have improved greatly, Internet-wise and personally.” 

This agility and flexibility are especially important now that Tweetie has undertaken a major expansion of her business—TDLG is once again designing a swimwear line and it’s about to blow up this summer.

PLDT Home’s reliable Gigabit Fiber connectivity has even given her siblings and in-laws reason to visit more often. “When they need to download something they come here,” she said. “My in-laws live nearby and my husband is the eldest in the family so he’s sort of like the patriarch. We all bond here in our home.”

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Editor’s Note: This article was provided by PLDT Home.