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Here is Samantha's latest Billboard - Vicky Belo - KIDS




Father - Daughter Campaign of GAP Philippines

Summer and Casual - Armani Exchange

My Daughter Samantha

This is my daughter Sam who I love so much. She was born September 29, 2002 which makes her almost 6 years old this month.

Sam is one wonderful gift from God which I and my wife cherish. A product of what could have been love long time ago. Sam calls me Honey, an imitation of her mother's and mine terms of endearment. 'Honey' was one of few words she first learned to speak.

Everybody loves her antics, her ways of getting my attention when I was just too busy with something - slumping her body on the floor, making that chicken sound to indicate her wanting for a poultry sojourn.

Sam is my life on Fridays when I need to fetch her, on Saturdays when we spend time playing together and on Sundays when goodbyes meant another weekend.

Life Is Simple

I still remember the lazy afternoon chats I had with my siblings while my mother prepared for our afternoon choco fiesta. I can still recall the cold, rainy days when my father would till the land while I stared blankly and sadly into that bamboo window we used to have in the farm. While I remember them poignantly, I cherish those days when everything was just simple – in the eyes of that five year-old boy that I was.

Growing up in the family of five, I saw how father was burdened with providing us the decent meal, the pleasure of having new clothes to wear and the sacrifice of personal achievements for the family. He was hardworking, but life’s atrocities and hardship always fall badly on him. Tending five children is in fact hard to imagine. My father’s simple notion that we may after all live despite not having everything was my mom’s horror. He believes that being a full time farmer would give us the education that we need in the future, the luxury of life in our generation..

It was a choice he would put up forever.

It was my mother’s incessant, notorious nagging that would give father his horror too. And soon everyday quarrelling would transpire. My mother was my father’s polar self. She was disciplinarian and undiplomatic. Vivid to my memory was when my brother came home one afternoon crying, telling my mother his elementary teacher pinched him and dragged him through his hair. Mother was so enraged that only a good, mouth-slashing tirade would make her feel good. The teacher got her lesson – thru my mother. Her childhood disposed her of how she managed our childhood naughty antics. Not once do I remember how mom would get that old branch of tree to give me a good whipping. And another. And another. Mom’s discipline would not give me bad memory of childhood though. Because more than the whipping I appreciate the discipline she teaches, the manners she has instilled and the toughness I discovered in me. I cannot imagine them learning, anyway, the easy way.

These are the basic inspirations of my life – how I dreamt of making it different - entirely different from what I have experienced. I pursued my college education in a Manila university believing that with good school to back up my self-esteem would make me doubly successful. With my parents barely not earning a cent daily, my aunt would bring me where I wanted to be in college. It was in UST that I felt I should do best.

My mother died 10 years ago. Not seeing us as we fulfill the dreams she had for us. The results of her unique disciplining – a legacy I want to give back to my daughter Samantha. My father is now residing in our old farm house, still making his life the simplest that he chose. My marriage has just fallen apart right in front of me as I search for the life and dream I made – the dream entirely different from what I experienced.

I now remember that five-year old boy as he stares blankly and sadly into that bamboo window, in that cold, rainy day while a man, not too far away, tills the land. That boy who weaved his dreams, amidst life turmoils and travails, still believes that life is simple. It is only man’s bad decisions that make it intricate – and poignant.

The Librarian

It was the color of tree I remember,
More than the smile and the flirting
of guys,
of lovers,
of those astrayand
of those in between.

Amidst the deluge outside
and wrath that Frank can only bring,
there were news of heavy thunder.

Putting into halt
the transport,
the plans,
and the flirting.

On stage I see faggots in changing colors and hues,
You admire the changes of colors and hue.

Wonder where they were from?

The colors,and the hues.

Like a nightingale you sang,
And made my swirling mind swirl much more.
I feel the spirit that only YOU can give.

I saw the emotions and smelled the leaves
of Acqua de Gio,
of cigarettes
and of liqour.

Then Frank, the librarian brought more havoc
and turned day into night.

The faggots stopped.

The fun halted.

You said we have to leave.
My heart yearnedfor more days like this.
If not for Frank, the librarian.

We may have not met.

Poem of My Heart

We said it was forever.

We thought it was.I thought it was.

I am a man of my ambition,
of fulfillment,
of dream.

You are a woman of your own self,
of world,
and all it's infallibilities.

But it was fate which brought us together,
and it was her which torn us apart.
I once thought life is how I make it.
It wasn't.

It is how fate plays with us
that shapes it.

Life is imperfect. Oblivious.Uncertain.

No matter how much I convince myself
That life is mine alone to meander,
Life will always be

Someone else's dream to batter.