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Love and EDSA





I am working at UNDP Philippines again, and go to work via EDSA every day. The traffic I had learnt to take in stride. I sleep, or spend my commuting time reading the billboards.

One small, black-and-white billboard had Maricar Reyes talking about diamonds. Beautiful and wide-eyed, below her face runs the test: "Because I take love seriously."

A few hundred meters away is the big, black-and-white billboard of Hayden Kho. No longer naked but covered in expensive, white winter wear, Hayden is promoting his perfume made in Paris.

When a female friend sent me the alleged sex video of Maricar and Hayden, I only watched it for a few minutes. The couple was making love, not having sex. I could not bear to pry into the privacy of two lovers sensuously kissing each other's faces and lips and bodies. They were fully naked, but it was not porn. It was erotica.

Her billboard upheld the importance of being seriously in love.

His billboard said a stink can be pushed at bay by a spritz of perfume.

Their images are done in black and white because it is classic, and they wear white because it is prim and pure. Whether their respective enterprises prosper I do not know. But they certainly know how to evoke the power of colors, of words, of images -- especially on an avenue choked black by diesel fumes.
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