A flight out of Manila was really a flight out of a lifelong dream to become an architect.  The detour from Architecture to Fine Arts was a fate well accepted.  I threw my heart and soul into this world which goes by the name of "advertising" at seventeen.  At seventeen, I recall, I was perhaps the youngest delegate to the 9th Philippine Advertising Congress at the Hyatt in Baguio.  There were two guys who were too young to be there at that time:  myself and Mr. Guadalupe Billboards himself, Alvin Carranza.  I was 17, he was 19.  Both without dads.  Both at the helm of outdoor advertising companies.

Participating in the 9th Ad Congress opened me up to a whole new realm of advertising which I felt was more exciting than just erecting billboards.  I wanted in on the world of the creatives.  From the time of that Ad Congress in 1985, I was hell-bent to be a Creative.  I breathed it, dreamed about it, even talked about it in my sleep perhaps.  I had little stabs at the profession by running a small graphic design unit some years later but, that was just about it.  There isn't really much to be creative about in Bacolod where ad budgets are as thin as a piaya.

Fast forward to 2001.  I land a job in McCann-Erickson.  Upon the surprise invitation of my former boss, Venus Navalta, I find myself moving my family from Bacolod to Manila with a new position in the Media Department.  Media?!  What the....?!!!

Life isn't usually point A to point B.  I look back and see, I am so glad for such as thing known as Divine Intervention.  With all due respect to my ex-colleagues in the Creative department, I am just so glad and so content I landed in the Media department.  True enough, at 17 we hardly know what's best for us.