Positively Filipino | Online Magazine for Filipinos in the Diaspora – The Magazine

Capsule Living in Dubai: OFWs and the Price of Proximity

Michael G. Lucero — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 18:11:28 +0000

Inside Joyah’s blue-toned capsule room in Dubai, a neat, well-lit space holds only what she needs to rest. Family photos on the wall bring home closer, turning a small private space into something personal and grounding. (Photo by Joyah)

After a ten-hour shift, an overseas Filipino worker closes a door no wider than a bed. Behind unmarked doors and narrow hallways in Dubai’s city center, many OFWs end their long workdays inside spaces barely wider than a mattress, shutting a door that offers both privacy and restraint.

Rented monthly, furnished minimally, and designed for efficiency, capsule rooms are not about comfort. They are about survival. As rents rise and commutes grow longer, living small has become a deliberate choice for OFWs who want to stay close to work, control expenses, and continue supporting families back home. In one of the world’s most expensive cities, the meaning of home is quietly being reshaped.

Why Capsule Living

Dubai’s major job hubs—Deira, Bur Dubai, Business Bay, Dubai Marina, and Al Quoz—are where work is concentrated and rent is highest. For OFWs earning modest salaries, even a shared room near the city center can take up a significant portion of monthly income.

Cheaper housing farther away in places like Sharjah or Ajman comes with long daily commutes that drain time, energy and money. For many workers, the savings from lower rent are outweighed by exhaustion and the loss of rest after extended shifts.

For this reason, proximity matters more than space. A small private room close to work means more sleep, fewer daily expenses and a predictable routine. Capsule rooms emerged as a practical compromise—minimal personal space in exchange for affordability and location. Choosing a capsule is not about comfort, but strategy. As Faisa shared, “If you work in the city and do not earn much, you choose to save, because every dirham counts.”

Who Chooses Capsule Living

Faisa sits inside her butterfly-accented, pink-toned capsule in Dubai, posing for a quick selfie in a neatly kept softly lit space. Within the compact room, personal touches and color bring warmth and personality to an otherwise minimal living space. (Photo by Faisa)

Capsule living is most common among OFWs who are living alone in Dubai. Many residents do not have immediate family members working in the city. For solo workers, renting a capsule makes financial sense.

Those with family members in Dubai often choose larger rooms, shared flats, or villas where rent is divided among relatives. Cooking becomes a daily routine in these households, significantly lowering food expenses. In contrast, capsule residents are usually single occupants who prioritize location over space and accept higher food costs in exchange for lower rent and shorter commutes.

Capsule residents represent OFWs who make conscious trade-offs to keep their overseas employment sustainable—choosing proximity, affordability, and time over comfort and space.

Life Inside a Capsule Room

Inside a capsule, a bed fills most of the space. There is just enough room to sit up and store a small suitcase or folded clothes. Proper lighting, air-conditioning and ventilation make the room liveable in Dubai’s climate. A solid door, often with a lock, separates one tenant from another. That door matters. It offers security and a sense of ownership, even within a very small space.

Privacy, however, comes with discipline. Noise travels easily through thin walls, and many residents work different shifts. Calls to family in the Philippines are usually made in the kitchen or on the terrace. Movies are watched with headphones, and even small movements require care to avoid disturbing neighbours.

Bathrooms, kitchens and laundry areas are shared. Schedules are followed closely. Missing a shower or laundry slot may mean waiting until later in the day or another week. The kitchen is largely functional. Many residents eat out on workdays, relying on nearby Filipino restaurants. Cooking is usually done on weekends, with viands prepared in batches and stored in shared refrigerators.

There are clear physical limits to capsule living. You cannot stand up inside. Belongings must be reduced to essentials, and storage is minimal. Before sending a balikbayan box, the folded cardboard is often kept inside the capsule while items are collected over time. On packing day, the box is unfolded in the kitchen or hallway and sent out the same day so it does not block shared spaces.

Beyond physical constraints lies a quieter challenge: confinement. Capsules offer privacy, but within a space that allows only sitting or lying down. Adjusting to stillness, learning to live within limits, and respecting the rhythms of others become part of daily life.

Coping and Adaptation

Flor’s capsule in Dubai reflects her choice of privacy over space, a small but personal room closer to work instead of a larger place far away. In this compact setting, she finds rest and routine, valuing time and convenience over size. (Photo by Flor)

Inside the capsule, personalization is subtle. A family photo taped to the wall. A small shelf for essentials. Preferred lighting that softens the narrow space. Cleanliness becomes a form of care. As Joyah shared, “I clean it every day and try to make it look nice, even though it’s just a small room.”

Much of life happens outside the capsule. Long work hours and side jobs mean the room is mainly a place to sleep. Meals and breaks extend into the neighbourhood. Cafes, Filipino restaurants, parks, and public beaches become extensions of daily living.

Sundays are often devoted to church services or Bible study, sometimes hosted in Filipino family homes. Weekends may include karaoke with friends, or camping trips. Movement, shared company, and open spaces balance the confinement of the weekdays.

Community also exists within capsule residences. Shared living requires respect, quiet hours and cooperation. Flor, who chose capsule living to rest properly, noted, “The hardest part is getting along with the people you live with.”

Becoming Normal in Dubai

What was once seen as unconventional has become part of Dubai’s housing reality. Capsule living is no longer limited to tourists. It is now used by service workers, office staff, and professionals who prioritize location and cost over space.

As demand has grown, these accommodations have become more regulated and standardized. While quality varies, capsule living is now a recognized response to the needs of a diverse migrant workforce.

Inside a capsule, a bed fills most of the space. There is just enough room to sit up and store a small suitcase or folded clothes.

Capsule living is often described by size, but its meaning runs deeper.
In these small rooms, priorities become clear. Comfort is measured by rest, not luxury. Privacy is valued as recovery. A capsule may not allow one to stand, but it offers safety, quiet, and sleep.
Here, home is redefined. It is not measured in square meters, but in purpose. Temporary, imperfect, and deeply intentional.
At the end of the day, an OFW closes a small door in the heart of Dubai. Inside, there is little room to move, but enough space to rest, plan, and dream. In that narrow room, sacrifices live alongside hope. And for now, that is home.

Michael Lucero is a Filipino civil engineer from Palawan who has been working as an OFW in the Middle East since 2006 and is currently based in Dubai, UAE. He writes narrative stories and blogs on Filipino life abroad, craftsmanship, and the quiet intersections of engineering, music, and everyday survival far from home, including guitar-related writing at jmjguitars.com.

More articles from Michael G. Lucero

APO Hiking Society, Leah Navarro and Filipino Diasporic Capital

Cesar Polvorosa Jr. — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 18:11:17 +0000

APO Hiking Society in their early years: Boboy Garrovillo, Jim Paredes and the late Danny Javier (who passed away in 2022). Photo credit: Cesar Polvorosa from the Retrospective Video/Slide Show Prior to the Concert last Aug. 29 in Markham

When I left the Philippines for Japan in the 1980s to pursue graduate studies, I brought with me something that seemed almost incidental at the time: a cassette tape of the APO Hiking Society’s greatest hits.
It was the age of cassette tapes, long before Spotify playlists and YouTube made it possible to carry an entire musical universe in a cellphone. My APO cassette connected me to home while I was living in Japan. I listened to it in my studio apartment and, just as importantly, played it for Japanese and other mostly fellow Asian classmates and friends. My close friends developed a liking for APO Hiking Society. I still remember one of them telling me, “Play again the tape of the three guys.”
Music, the universal language, became an informal ambassador.
I did not think of it in those terms then. I was simply a young Filipino graduate student carrying familiar sounds into an unfamiliar environment. But looking back, that cassette was an early example of what I now think of as diasporic capital: the cultural knowledge, memories, relationships and networks that Filipinos carry across borders and use to create connections in their new homes.
Decades later, on August 29 of this year my wife, my sister and I found ourselves in a theater in Markham, Ontario, watching and listening to APO again.
The setting could not have been more different from my graduate-school days in Japan. Instead of a cassette player in my apartment, there was a full concert stage at the People’s Theatre for the Performing Arts. Instead of a handful of Japanese and international friends discovering Filipino music, there was a packed Filipino Canadian audience singing along to songs that had accompanied two generations of Filipinos through courtship, friendship, family life and growing up.
APO returned to Toronto after 22 years. The concert, “Heto nAPO Sila sa Toronto!,” was the culminating event of the inaugural Manlilikha Arts and Music Festival, organized by Likha Filipino Cultural Hub in partnership with Adhika. The festival was not simply a celebration of Filipino culture in Canada as proceeds were directed toward relief and rehabilitation efforts for earthquake-affected communities in Mindanao through Art Relief Mobile Kitchen.
That combination struck me. A concert built around memories of Filipino music was simultaneously creating resources for people impacted by natural disaster. That, too, is diasporic capital.
More than Nostalgia
The APO concert in Markham was a stirring nostalgia trip for many of us. It was a reunion with a Philippines that we carried with us when we left.
For many, APO's music is inseparable from memories of a particular Philippines. Songs such as Panalangin, When I Met You, Show Me a Smile, Ewan, Pumapatak na Naman ang Ulan and Batang- Bata Ka Pa are not simply recordings. They are markers of time. They take us back to school, university, first loves, barkada gatherings, family occasions and the moment of being young in a country going through significant changes.
Distance turns music into a kind of portable homeland. This is why diaspora communities frequently invest so much in concerts, festivals, food, dance, literature and other forms of cultural expression. These activities are sometimes dismissed as nostalgia, as though they were simply attempts by immigrants to recreate the past.
But that misses their economic and social significance. A diaspora does not merely preserve culture. It circulates culture. It demonstrated that the culture Filipinos carry abroad can be an asset—a form of diasporic capital that connects generations, strengthens communities, supports people back in the Philippines and introduces Filipino creativity to the wider world.
And APO provided a particularly powerful infrastructure because its music could bridge generations. The older generation watched in concerts. The younger generation watched on cellphones.

APO Hiking Society performing last Aug. 29 in Markham, Ontario (Photo by Cesar Polvorosa, Jr.)

Demographics
One of the most interesting things about the concert was the demographics. There were many people around my generation who had come to see APO in person. For us, it was almost magical hearing these songs live after so many years.
But there were also younger Filipino Canadians in the audience. They did not necessarily experience APO the way we did. They did not have to wait for a favorite song to appear on the radio or search through record stores for an album. They grew up in an era when music was instantly accessible.
Some were watching the stage through their cellphones, recording the performance and presumably sharing parts of the experience with friends and followers.
My FB friend, APO co-founder Jim Paredes, informed me that APO appeals to a much younger demographic as well. He said in a PM that according to Spotify almost 75 to 80 percent of APO listeners are 40 years and below, while the older generation dominated the concert goers. It is testament to the timeless appeal of APO’s music that younger audiences are attracted to a group whose musical history began decades before they were born.
Both generations were participating in the same cultural moment. That is what makes diasporic capital more interesting than nostalgia. Nostalgia looks backward. Diasporic capital can move backward and forward simultaneously.
It carries the cultural memory of one generation and gives another generation an opportunity to reinterpret it.
Geography of Filipino Music
The presence of Leah Navarro added another dimension to the evening. Navarro is not simply another OPM singer appearing as a special guest. She is part of the musical history that many Filipinos of my generation carried with them overseas. Her career is intertwined with some of the defining music of the Philippines during the period when APO was also becoming a major force in Original Pilipino Music.
Her presence in Toronto also reflected another important feature of diasporic culture: artists themselves become part of the diaspora.
Navarro lived in Toronto for years before returning to the Philippines in the late 1990s. As she declared on the stage, she considered Toronto her “second home” to the cheers of Torontonians, us included.
She was not simply bringing Filipino music to Canada from the Philippines. She was also an artist with her own history of migration and connection to Canada.
Her appearance alongside APO therefore represented something larger than a reunion of Filipino performers. It particularly resonated when she sang her signature songs, Handog ng Pilipino sa Mundo and Isang Mundo, Isang Awit.
A cassette can cross a border. So can a singer. So can a song. So can a memory.

Leah Navarro performing last Aug. 29 in Markham, Ontario (Photo by Agnes Lopez Manasan)

From Filipino Audiences to Other Communities
There is another aspect of diasporic capital that deserves more attention: its ability to introduce Filipino culture to people who are not Filipino.
When I brought my APO cassette to Japan in the 1980s, I was not thinking about cultural diplomacy. But that is effectively what was happening on a very small scale.
My Japanese and other foreign classmates and friends did not have to travel to Manila to encounter Filipino music. They could encounter it through a Filipino graduate student.
This is how diaspora networks often work. Filipinos claim space in different settlement societies and invite other communities to partake. This matters because a country's influence is not determined only by its government, military or corporations.
People carry countries with them. They carry language, food, stories, music, professional expertise, entrepreneurial connections and cultural practices.
Diasporic capital is therefore both cultural and relational. The APO concert showed what happens when some of that capital is mobilized deliberately.
The connections ran in several directions: from one generation to another, from Canada to the Philippines, and potentially from Filipino culture to the wider Canadian community.
Music as Social Infrastructure
Communities accumulate trust, relationships and cultural memory. Those are broadly social capital and specifically, are components of diasporic capital in overseas settings.
That accumulated capacity can be mobilized such as the APO concert. The organizers had to bring together performers, a venue, sponsors and community organizations and attract audiences. People shared the event through their social networks. The festival created opportunities for younger Filipino artists to appear alongside performers whose music has been part of Filipino life for decades.
This is not simply entertainment. It is community-building which has economic consequences. Diasporic capital therefore not only exists in the abstract. It becomes visible when people organize.

Image of 1982 Best of APO Hiking Society (Cassette). (Source: Discogs.com)

Philippines Carried Abroad
There is also something particularly Filipino about the way music travels through the diaspora. The Philippines has long had a culture of musical participation. Filipinos do not merely listen to songs. We sing them.
We sing at family gatherings, birthdays, parties, reunions and community events. Karaoke has become one of the most recognizable manifestations of this cultural habit, but the impulse goes deeper than karaoke. Music creates participation.
That helps explain why a group like APO can remain meaningful across generations. Their songs provide common reference points. A younger Filipino Canadian may discover an APO song through a parent, an online video, a cover version or a concert. The original context may be unfamiliar, but the song can acquire a new context.
This is how culture survives migration. It does not remain unchanged. It is carried, translated, remixed and sometimes rediscovered.
The cassette I brought to Japan was already doing that. The music acquired new listeners and a different meaning because it was being heard far from Manila.
Forty years later, APO was doing something similar in Markham. Only this time, the transmission was happening on a much larger scale.
Closing the Circle
After the concert, as we were leaving, a chance encounter happened that made the evening feel almost scripted.
I accidentally ran into an old Filipino friend from the same graduate studies program in Japan who also happened to be a fellow UPSCAN (UP Student Catholic Action). We talked about those years, and naturally the conversation turned to the music of our generation.
For a moment, the geography of the past seemed to collapse. I thought about the young man I had been in Japan, carrying an APO greatest-hits cassette from the Philippines.
And then I thought about sitting in a Markham theater decades later with my wife and sister, listening to the same musical tradition surrounded by multi-generation Filipino Canadians.
The circle had closed. But perhaps not, because diasporic capital does not really move in circles.
It moves in networks. It moves from Manila to Tokyo, from Tokyo to Toronto, from parents to children, from artists to audiences and from one community to another. It can begin with something as small as a cassette tape and eventually become a concert, a festival, a fundraising effort or a new generation discovering music that predates them.
That may be APO Hiking Society's most enduring legacy.

Distance turns music into a kind of portable homeland. This is why diaspora communities frequently invest so much in concerts, festivals, food, dance, literature and other forms of cultural expression.

Their music has given Filipinos abroad golden nuggets to remember. But it has also given us a treasure to share. And there is an important difference. Memory preserves the past. Sharing creates the future. It was a reminder that migration does not sever people from where they came from. It gives what they carry with them new places, new audiences and sometimes new purposes.
The music of our generation had traveled a long way—from a cassette in Japan to a concert in Canada. But the more important journey was not the music itself. It was the network of people, memories and relationships that carried it there.

Cesar Polvorosa Jr. is a professor of International Business and Economics at a Canadian university whose research and writing examine development, institutions and Filipino diaspora. He authored a book chapter on Filipino entrepreneurship in Canada published by the University of Toronto Press. He was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in Poetry, and his poetry and short stories had been anthologized in Asia and North America. He is also an occasional contributor on economics, geopolitics, and international affairs to BusinessWorld.

Growing Up Filipina and Finding Country Music

Cat Rian — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 18:11:09 +0000

Cat Rian wearing traditional Filipino gold earrings from Pampanga, gifted to her by her grandmother. (Photo by Lisabeth Jo)

In my family, every holiday came with one guarantee: someone was going to sing karaoke. Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays, it didn't matter. The microphone was coming out, and more often than not, it ended up in my hands.
If Thanksgiving was the warm-up, Christmas was the headliner. My mom, Grandma, and the whole family would all take a turn at the mic, and my pick was always Merry Christmas, Darling by the Carpenters. In my house, at least, nothing is more Filipino than Christmas karaoke.
But the song I remember most is The Keeper of the Stars by Tracy Byrd. It's the song my parents danced to at their wedding, and a family gathering never ended without my mom singing it at least once, while dancing with my dad. Looking back, that's where country music found me.
For readers who didn’t grow up with it: country music is a style born in the rural American South, built on storytelling. Think guitars, fiddles and steel guitars and songs about everyday life: family, home, love, heartbreak and getting through it. Nashville, Tennessee, is its hometown, which is why so many of us end up there. At its heart, it’s just people telling true stories.
My grandparents immigrated from Pampanga to Las Vegas, where I was born and raised. I sang anywhere anyone would let me, from church to family parties, and eventually in residencies on the Las Vegas Strip. My family always encouraged me to go after everything I loved, and that took me to Stanford University, then to Berklee College of Music in New York City, and finally to Nashville. And once I landed in Nashville, my family decided to make Tennessee home too.

Cover art for "Family Tree," Cat Rian’s new single out November 13, 2026 and available for presave here: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/catrian1/family-tree?ref=release (Photo by Lisabeth Jo)

In Nashville, if you're a woman in music, you're often the only woman in the room. I noticed pretty early that in a lot of rooms, I was also going to be the only person of color, woman or man. I've come to see that as a strength. I get to bring a new perspective to every room I walk into and every song I write, and the writers I've worked with here have embraced that in a way I'm really grateful for.
Filipino family values and country family values are really similar, and, since moving South, I've loved exploring that overlap. Both are built on the same foundation: family comes first. The people you come into the world with, the people who raise you up and support you, are the most important people you'll ever have.

So it's only fitting that my new single, Family Tree, is all about my family. It’s a twangy, stompy, front-porch jam about every Filipina eldest daughter's most dreaded rite of passage.

I could gush about my family all day, so getting to share them with my new neighbors and friends here, and hearing how much they relate, has been really special. Some of my favorite days now are spent driving out to the middle of nowhere, Tennessee, to my family's new home in the country, and eating chicken adobo outside by the river while the leaves change. It's a beautiful melding of cultures, and I've been enjoying every bit of it.
So it's only fitting that my new single, Family Tree, is all about my family. It’s a twangy, stompy, front-porch jam about every Filipina eldest daughter's most dreaded rite of passage: bringing someone home to meet the parents.
Family Tree comes out November 13, just in time for the holidays. If you need me, I'll be singing karaoke with Mama.

Cat Rian is a Filipina American country-pop singer-songwriter in Nashville. Find her at catrianmusic.com and @meowimcatrian. Pre-save “Family Tree” here: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/catrian1/family-tree?ref=release

Nanay Seryang’s Folk Tales: Voices of Love

Nanette Carreon-Ruhter — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 18:11:01 +0000

Nanette at three months with Nanay Seryang (Photo courtesy of Nanette Carreon-RUhter)

I owe my love for stories to my nanny, whom we called Nanay Seryang. She could have filled a book with Filipino folk tales, if only she could read or write. Her gift was born of memory and imagination, carried in the music of her Ilonggo tongue and the lull of her stories that cradled me through childhood.
I remember that when I was five, she lay on the floor beside my bed each night, her voice rising through the shadows as she told me of the kapre who lived behind the great acacia tree outside our window. She would point to the drifting clouds and whisper, “See that? Smoke from his giant pipe.” And I, wide-eyed and willing, believed what I saw. “He’s waiting to catch little children who are not asleep yet,” she would warn in a half-playful, half-serious tone. I would pull the blanket over my head, safe beneath her stories.
Outside my grandmother’s house was a cement heart embossed on the ground. Nanay said a nuno sa punso lived there. To this day, I do not really know what a nuno is. The phrase literally means “ancestor of the mound,” but to us children, he was simply a friendly dwarf. Nanay warned us never to step on his home. If we did, we had to say, “Tabi-tabi po” (“Excuse me, may I pass?”), a small apology whispered to the unseen.
She told us of the manananggal, a self-severing, witch-like monster who hated the smell of garlic, and of the aswang, a witch who prowled after dusk. Her voice would drop to a hush when she said, “Don’t stay outside too late. She might find you.” And we, obedient and trembling, would huddle closer to the glow of her stories.
Sometimes, in an even softer tone, half prayer and half story, she spoke of the Diwata sang Bukid, the mountain spirit in flowing white robes. If we tended our garden well, Nanay said, the diwata would bless us. Her tales lulled me to sleep and opened the first pages of my imagination.
Her stories wove more than fear or wonder. They taught me to listen to voices beyond my own, to respect what I could not see, and to believe that kindness carried its own quiet power. Long before I could name what love was, I had already felt it in the way Nanay lived, in her hands that worked without complaint and in her eyes that watched over me as fiercely as any guardian spirit. She was, in her own way, the diwata who blessed my childhood.
Sometimes I watched Nanay wash clothes in the backyard, her arms strong and sure, the rhythm of rinsing and wringing like a song of endurance. She chewed betel nut, which stained her teeth a deep red, and she was proud of it, a small badge of habit and heritage. Her iron glided over our clothes with quiet mastery. She taught me to press collars first and to press hard enough to smooth the day’s wrinkles away.
From Nanay, I learned that love could live quietly in daily work, in the steady rhythm of hands that never rested, in the care folded into freshly pressed clothes, and in the patience that stitched order into every day. At night, her voice would soften into song. Her lullaby, “Ay, ay, kalisud, kalisud sang binayaan…”, an old Ilonggo love song, carried both sorrow and sweetness. I had memorized every word long before I understood its meaning. Perhaps that is how love begins, not in grand gestures, but in the music that lingers long after the singing stops.
Whenever Mama got mad at me for something I had done wrong, or sometimes had not done right, Nanay would take me aside, wrap me in her arms, and gently explain why Mama had reason to be angry. When my parents quarreled, their voices rising like thunder through the house, Nanay would whisk me away to the servants’ quarters and distract me with a game of sungka, a traditional shell game.
Those moments came too often. One night, my grandmother arrived and spoke to my parents behind closed doors. I hovered nearby, my heart pounding, sensing something I could not name. Through the thin wooden walls, I heard her say that it was best for them to part ways.
Before my tears could blur my sight, Nanay pulled me close, wiped them dry, and whispered, “Akon’g palangga…”, my darling girl. Then she took my hand and led me to the corner store to buy hopia, my favorite treat. In her embrace, I felt protected and loved, sheltered from the storm.

With Nanette’s mother and Nanay Seryang holding her, at two years (Photo courtesy of Nanette Carreon-RUhter)

Looking back now, I realize that Nanay gave me more than comfort. She taught me what love looks like when it has no words, how it can steady a frightened child and hold space for peace when the world turns loud. In her arms, I first understood what safety felt like, a stillness that needed no promises, only presence.
Even now, when life grows uncertain, I return in memory to that small, heart-shaped mound outside my grandmother’s house, to the scent of hopia still warm in my hands, and to Nanay’s tight hold, my tiny hand disappearing in hers as she assured me that life was good and that God would always be beside me.
Nanay’s presence stretched across generations and seasons of my life. She stayed with our family long after I had children of my own. When I had outgrown the need for a nanny, she cared for my youngest brother, Butch. She became our mama when our real mother went to Spain to complete her doctorate in Spanish philology.
In Mama’s absence, it was Nanay who stood beside me through my quiet milestones. She was there the day I first had my period, teaching me a folk ritual I still remember. “Jump several times so you’ll grow tall.” Then, with gentle seriousness, she told me what it meant to be a lady.
Nanay was still part of our family when I began dating in college. In the 1960s, reserved families did not allow unmarried girls to attend dances without chaperones. She became my official chaperone and my unofficial commentator. She had strong opinions about the boys I dated and clear preferences about who deserved my time. When I broke up with Eddie, who would later become my first husband, and began seeing someone new, she refused to chaperone me.
During those years, she formed her own circle of friends among my classmates’ yayas, a lively community of women who waited in the “chaperones’ room,” trading stories and laughter about their alaga, whose virtues and mischief they compared with equal pride.
In later years, my grandmother employed Nanay as her mayordoma, the one who oversaw the household and supervised the other household help. She became my grandmother’s sous-chef and, without meaning to, my second cooking instructor. Nanay would secretly save a few Spanish olives for me, my favorite treat, much to my grandmother’s mild annoyance, since they were imported and pricey.

Nanay and Nanette In the early ‘80s when Nanette visited home from Hong Kong

When my husband was assigned to Hong Kong in 1979, I had to say goodbye to my Nanay. When I took my boys to bid farewell at my grandmother’s house, I slipped into the kitchen while my cousins captured the moment in the living room. Nanay Seryang was diligently preparing lunch for us.
As I rushed to embrace her, she gently pushed me away and said, “No, I smell like garlic, and it will be all over you,” as if I had any qualms about it! I refused to let her go and tightened my embrace.
“Nay, you know that if you were younger and stronger, I would have taken you with us,” I said, our eyes misty with emotion.
“Ay sus, akon’g palangga, nagalakat ka na gali. Ma-miss gid taka.” “Oh, my darling, you are leaving already. I will miss you so much.”
She must have taken a quick shower while we ate because, when it was time to leave, she stood in line to give us her final embrace. I could feel her heartbeat as hot tears dotted my shoulder.
Knowing that we would return home every Christmas helped ease the pain a little. For several years, I made sure to bring her pasalubong, a small gift from our travels, each time we came back.
Then one day, Mama told me that Nanay had returned to Iloilo for good. Her eyesight was failing, and she wanted to rest. I was deeply saddened. I never had the chance to speak to her again or to write to her daughter in Iloilo, in the Visayas. Nanay could neither read nor write, and mail rarely reached her remote barrio. The distance between Hong Kong and the Visayas felt wider than oceans.
I never learned how Nanay passed away. Sometimes my soul still cries because I did not fly to wherever she was and give her one last embrace. I wonder if she was cared for in her old age, if she ever thought I had forgotten her, and if she, too, had longed for me. The unanswered questions remain, like stories interrupted before their final lines.

Long before I could name what love was, I had already felt it in the way Nanay lived.

Yet Nanay’s voice has never truly left me. I hear it in the hush before a story begins, in the rhythm of a sentence, and in the silence that follows a word spoken with love. She taught me that stories can shelter us from fear, preserve what distance threatens to erase, and carry the presence of someone we have lost. Though she could neither read nor write, she gave me the first language of my heart, a language made of memory, tenderness and imagination.
For forty-four years, I have taught English and literature, often telling my students that my first teacher was Nanay Seryang. She taught me beneath the shadows of childhood, with folk tales, lullabies, warnings and whispered endearments. Every story I read, teach, or write is, in some way, an answer to the stories she gave me. Through literature, I keep her voice alive, and through that voice, the woman who could not write her own stories continues to shape mine.

Nanette Carreon‑Ruhter stands as a Honolulu‑based writer shaped by years in international classrooms and a deep devotion to Filipino stories. She previously taught at Hong Kong International School, Taipei American School, and Singapore American School, and has guided creative writing workshops for Filipino immigrants throughout Hawaii. Her essays explore family, identity, and the ways memory becomes a home that travels across generations. She is finishing her memoir, Before Time Slips Away, written for her seven grandchildren. When she’s not writing, she’s on the pickleball court, in the kitchen, traveling with family, keeping close ties with friends and former students around the world, and enjoying life with her husband, Jim.

More articles from Nanette Carreon-Ruhter

[Sponsored] Maybelle Francisco Opens Doors Through Language and Community

Contributed — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 18:10:41 +0000

Immigration lawyer Maybelle Francisco

For a Filipino family facing an immigration concern, the first step toward legal help can be the hardest. There may be worries about cost, uncertainty about what to ask, or fear that a complicated story will be misunderstood. At Maybelle Francisco Law based in New Jersey, the welcome begins with familiar words: “Tuloy po kayo. You are welcome here.”
For Founder and Managing Attorney Maybelle Francisco, that invitation expresses the kind of practice she is building: one where people can explain their circumstances, ask questions, and feel heard. Her approach brings together legal experience, Filipino language and culture, and an understanding that immigration decisions often affect an entire family.
Born and raised in the Philippines, with roots in San Miguel, Bulacan, Francisco attended the University of the Philippines before earning her Juris Doctor from Mitchell Hamline School of Law in Minnesota. Her background in immigration and global mobility informs her work with individuals, families, and employers navigating the United States immigration system.
Among the firm's most appreciated offerings is its free initial consultation, which has drawn interest from Filipino communities across all 50 states. For someone unsure where to begin, the opportunity to speak with an attorney without an initial consultation fee can make seeking help less intimidating. It provides space to discuss concerns and begin understanding the next possible steps before deciding whether to retain the firm.
That first conversation matters because an immigration question rarely exists in isolation. A parent may be thinking about children waiting overseas. A professional may be worried about keeping a job. A couple may be planning when they can finally live together. Listening carefully helps bring those concerns into focus alongside the legal issues that require attention.
Francisco's fluency in deep Tagalog is another connection Filipino clients appreciate. Familiar expressions and a shared language can make difficult conversations easier, especially when someone is describing family relationships, personal hardship, or experiences that are hard to explain in English. Paired with her ability to listen and empathize, that fluency helps clients feel comfortable telling their stories in their own words.
The connection extends beyond the attorney. The firm's staff also speak Kapampangan, Bisaya, and Ilokano, broadening its ability to relate to Filipinos from different regions. These language capabilities help make assistance more approachable for community members who may otherwise hesitate to reach out. They also reflect the diversity within the Filipino community, where shared heritage includes many languages and distinct experiences.
Financial accessibility remains part of that welcome. The firm offers flexible payment plans, recognizing that legal expenses must often fit around rent, childcare, and support for relatives in the Philippines. Being able to spread payments over time can help families budget for representation while meeting other responsibilities. Discussing these arrangements also gives clients a clearer picture of the commitment involved.
Francisco takes a particular interest in cases where relief may initially seem out of reach, examining the facts and researching the law to identify options that may have been overlooked. Her approach combines thoughtful strategy, thorough preparation, and careful execution to pursue every viable path toward resolution.
Working under her supervision, Francisco’s team helps clients feel supported at every step, answering questions, explaining what comes next, and easing the burden on families navigating an uncertain process.
Francisco’s commitment to giving back extends beyond her legal practice. By supporting Filipino American events throughout the Northeast and beyond, she helps bring communities together to celebrate their heritage and share Filipino culture with younger generations. These events offer space for cultural expression and help keep connections to the Philippines present in everyday American life.
For younger generations, such celebrations can be an introduction to traditions they may know mainly through parents and grandparents. Hearing Filipino languages, encountering cultural expressions, and sharing community experiences can encourage curiosity about their roots. Francisco's support reflects a desire to help that heritage remain visible, understood, and valued as Filipino American families grow. The goal is to encourage young people to see Filipino culture as something they can participate in, carry forward, and share with friends beyond their own community.
Her practice brings these commitments together: making legal conversations more accessible and supporting the community whose stories give that work meaning. The welcome at Maybelle Francisco Law recognizes that people arrive with more than documents. They bring hopes for their children, responsibilities to loved ones, and plans shaped by years of effort.
In that setting, “Tuloy po kayo” carries a practical promise: an opportunity to begin, to be listened to, and to discuss the path ahead with someone who understands the importance of both family and belonging.

To contact Maybelle Francisco:
Website: www.maybellefranciscolaw.com
Phone: 201-338-7442

Soulful Iloilo

Maria Carmen Sarmiento — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 17:36:24 +0000

First Museum of Philippine Economic History (Source: Wikipedia)

Although Iloilo City is recognized as a UNESCO center for creative gastronomy, many establishments have succumbed to the unfortunate trend of adulterating just about every dish with sugar. The results are syrupy kinilaw nga tangigue (mackerel ceviche), caramelized native chicken inasal--even treacly pancit molo and batchoy broth. Valenciana (the Ilonggo version of paella or the Kapampangan bringhe) has an ibus (suman) identity crisis.
That is the kind of fusion my fellow foodie and contributor Dr. Vic Salas has termed con-fusion of the worst sort. I blame it on the past three generations–and growing– of palates corrupted by local fast food sweet spaghetti. The food manufacturing conglomerates have jumped on this lucrative bandwagon. Supermarket shelves overflow with Filipino spaghetti sauce (and ketchup), all uniformly and execrably sweet.
But thankfully, there is more to do in Iloilo City than merely add to the alarming rates of Philippine diabetes: one out of five Filipino adults is pre-diabetic, and another estimated five million are full-blown cases, with probably three million more untested, and still to be diagnosed. Old churches may bore you, but there is nothing quite like the town of Miag-ao’s Santo Tomas De Villanueva’s magnificent yellow sandstone and coral facade with its bas relief of the desanctified St. Christopher holding on to a coconut tree as he keeps the Christ Child safe.
Mansions and Third Spaces
A few hundred pesos gets you past the heavy hardwood double doors of a handful of neo-colonial pre-WW II mansions to ogle at how the Filipino one-percent used to live. Your inner nepo baby can fantasize what it might be like to have had crony haciendero and cacique, or oligarchic rent-seeking ancestors. The Consing Mansion facing the Molo Plaza lets you soak it in for free, sans the heirloom furniture though. Also known as the Molo Mansion, its ground floor has been adaptively reused as an emporium for Filipiniana souvenirs. Food, ice cream and coffee kiosks cover the grounds, with ample parking in the back. Occasionally, the mansion’s second floor is open for art exhibits or even yoga classes.
Iloilo stands out for its wealth of non-commercial Third Spaces. These are communal places apart from work and home, where you can quietly steep in the Culture. The civilizing concept of a Third Space is akin to that of a respite in this often cruel, stress-filled world. Third Space is welcoming, neutral ground where one can come and go freely, without formal obligations such as the offer of legal tender. Best of all, many Iloilo Third Spaces are right in the City, such as its well-tended Plazas and the famous Iloilo River Esplanade where you can safely stroll, and in some areas, even bike, go fishing, walk your dogs or join a zumba class. All right, the last might set you back P20, but it’s one of the few things you can still buy with that coin these days. Also popular is the Sunset Boulevard where, by late afternoon, released office workers and families may park their cars and picnic, or graze upon the wares of itinerant fishball and fruit vendors, while gazing upon (you guessed it) the flaming Iloilo sunset.
Then there are the free government-run museums with cheerfully solicitous student docents plucked from among state college and university Tourism and HRM classes. The former Elizalde-Ynchausti Trading House, now the Museum for Economic History, is the first of its kind in the Philippines. Seamen contributed significantly to prosperity throughout Panay and the Visayas. Thus, it’s apt that there is a Maritime History Museum in the old Post Office or Aduana. The former Iloilo Provincial Prison with its magnificent skylight has likewise been repurposed into the National Museum of Western Visayas. Visitors may participate in activities like trying out the various ways of wearing a handwoven Visayan patadyong, or enjoy playing Philippine games like sungka and sipà.
The UP Visayas Museum of Art and Cultural Heritage (UPV MACH) is also free, and open on Mondays, which is the usual day when most museums are closed. Here one gets commensurate bang for one’s proverbial buck, as there are seven air-conditioned galleries under one roof, featuring native weaves, traditional farming and fishing implements and prehistoric pottery from Isla de Gigantes and other Iloilo sites. Changing exhibits on contemporary and classic Filipino art, have featured paintings by Filipino masters, such as works by Juan Luna, Felix Resureccion Hidalgo and Fernando Amorsolo, on loan from the Lopez Museum. The Lopez Family which founded Meralco and ABS CBN, has its roots in Iloilo City. UPV MACH actively collaborates and partners with individuals and institutions.

UPV Mach Heritage Building designed by Juan Arellano with Riccardo Monti sculptures

Art and Architecture
The entrance to the historic Art Deco building, which was designed by the government architect Juan Arellano, is flanked by massive bronze sculptures depicting Law and Order by the Italian sculptor Francesco Riccardo Monti whose major works are also in the University of Sto. Tomas and Sto. Domingo Church. Four more figures symbolizing civic life grace the tall arched doorway. Monti was assisted by the local Molo artisans: Juan Siendo, Pedro and Cirilo Sabiano, in the execution. He and Arellano had worked together previously on the Manila Metropolitan Theater. Those are also Monti’s solemn winged angels on top of the Quezon Memorial pylon. The UPV MACH building was originally the Iloilo Municipal Hall but was commandeered by the invading Japanese Army during World War II. In peacetime, it was turned over to the University of the Philippines.
Although the high school and the College of Management and the Extension Law School are still on the Iloilo City Campus premises, the main building is now all UPV MACH’s and is administered by the UP Visayas Office of Initiatives for Culture and the Arts (OICA). This was the fulfillment of the first UPV Chancellor Dionisia “Dan” Rola’s dream. Her personal art collection has found a permanent home in a mezzanine gallery.
UPV OICA Director, Prof. Martin Genodepa (a sculptor in his own right) explained that by engaging students, scholars and the community in the experience and study of art and cultural heritage, UPV MACH seeks to raise their awareness and appreciation of diverse yet inclusive social, political and economic realities. Apart from the numerous galleries and exhibition spaces extending to the corridors, there is an intimate performing arts hall which has staged free recitals by the pianist Cecile Licad and plays by local faculty and student repertory groups.

UPV MACH Prof. Martin Genodepa (in white shirt, right of center) with Cecile Licad concert on screen in background

UPV alumnus Sen. Franklin M. Drilon has been instrumental in the fruition of many of these cultural initiatives, including performances by the Philippine Philharmonic and Ballet Philippines at the Iloilo Convention Center (ICON). ICON, the airport and the Esplanade were among Drilon’s many projects. He joked about how he was Senate President by day, then the Iloilo district engineer by night. His pork barrel was the gift that keeps on giving to his home province. Because of its modern infrastructure, even with Iloilo rush hour traffic at its worst, one can still usually get from point A to B of this 75 square kilometer city, within a tolerable 15-30 minutes or so by car, and even faster on a pedal bicycle. Iloilo is also known as the bike capital of the Philippines. Compare this with the 40 minutes to an hour just to make it from Cubao to Makati, or from UP Diliman to the Ateneo, on a good day that is, and the very real risk to one’s physical safety of riding a bicycle on Metro-Manila’s major thoroughfares.
The coexistence of modern convenience with old world charm is why it is said that in Iloilo, “the past is always present.” Considered one of the most livable cities in Pilipinas Nating Mahal, it is a favorite among retirees and digital nomads. Those who are staying for longer than the usual holiday might want more lasting social and intellectual interactions, beyond fleeting 80 decibel conversations at the usual bar or club.
Reading Culture

Silent Book Club 5000 at LS Cafe, Mandurriao, Iloilo City (Source: Facebook)

The previous Iloilo City mayor, Jerry P. Treñas, whose only daughter Raisa Treñas-Chu carries on his legacy, has called his bailiwick “The City that reads.” Crowds mill about the Iloilo Mega Book fairs which pop up several times a year and invite queues at the Big Bad Wolf Book Sales in Iloilo malls like SM, Robinson’s or the Ayala Atria. For those who cannot afford to buy books, the City Government has set up free open-air libraries: first, in Plaza Libertad, just a stone’s throw away from City Hall, and three more for now in the Plazas of Molo, Mandurriao and Jaro.
Like-minded readers get together every month outside the libraries. The Iloilo Books4Books Club started online during the COVID 19 pandemic when FB friends would post about what they were reading. Exchanges of books followed. After the lockdown, they started meeting regularly face to face. Yuri Catedrilla Alejandria doesn’t let his BPO job interfere with managing these convivial monthly meetups and discussions at the Book Latte in Mega World Festive Walk. The gatherings usually number between 12-20 regulars. They decide on which book to take up. Often, it’s the original text of a newly released Hollywood blockbuster such as Wuthering Heights or Frankenstein, or a limited Netflix series like East of Eden. Thus, the meetups may be a blend of book and film club. Philippine classics such as Noli Me Tangere in the easily understandable translation by Soledad Lacson Locsin have also been selected. Book Latte is open 24 hours a day and has a mini library in its mezzanine. Patrons waiting to check into their hotels or to go to the airport can browse over their coffee and meals.
Attendees to the Silent Book Club 5000 (the Iloilo City zip code is 5000) might reach over 40. Monthly meetups are usually at the LS Training Center’s picturesque al fresco cafe in Mandurriao. As in other Silent Book Clubs worldwide, you bring your own book to read while you quietly sip your beverage and munch on your snack. After 30 minutes, you put your books down and chat with the others at your table. They might be strangers, but what brings you all together is your shared love of reading and the life of the mind. This is safer and less stressful than dating apps in searching for companionable kindred spirits.
Unlike other options on social media which might require you to pay several hundreds to the organizer, who turns around and solicits for so-called “social impact” charitable projects (whatever those might be), the Silent Book Club and Books4Books meet-ups are for free. No solicitation allowed. You just pay for whatever you might consume at the venues. Silent Book Club 5000 organizers even raffle off gently used books, hand-made journals and bookmarks.
Outside Iloilo City itself, there are private initiatives to encourage literacy and an appreciation of the creative arts. Another Drilon, the painter Rock, transplanted his Magnet Gallery and Cafe from traffic-paralyzed Katipunan Avenue in Quezon City to his seaside hometown Dumangas, when he returned to Iloilo, to care for his elderly mother. Magnet in Dumangas, Iloilo also has a visual arts gallery and cooperative, a film society and a free community library. Poetry and Spoken Word nights are open to all. Volunteers lead monthly story-telling sessions with children. Rock’s wife, the One News anchor Ces Drilon, has been a picture-book reader, patiently providing her own translation in a mixture of Ilonggo and Filipino for a young live audience. She also sent a third of her personal library to Dumangas. There are similarly privately funded and managed libraries in the Iloilo towns of Tigbauan and Carles.

Ces Drilon at the Magnet Community Library in Dumangas (Photo courtesy of Rock and Ces Drilon)

Creatives Everywhere
The creative culture of Iloilo is not only in its cuisine, architectural heritage and museums, or in the colorful street murals and monuments which one may freely enjoy. There are talented buskers everywhere. Their live acoustic strumming and singing are more conducive to leisurely strolling around the malls, than the usual intrusive pounding and throbbing of electronic beats over the PA system. In return for the brief pleasure that a busker gave you by openly sharing her song, you can walk away or respect the artist through a monetary token of your appreciation. This is not mendicancy, but a gracious exchange.

Considered one of the most livable cities in Pilipinas Nating Mahal, it is a favorite among retirees and digital nomads.

Artists everywhere need community support to survive and to thrive. On weekends, the five members of the Ambahan Typewriter Poets Collective whose Hiligaynon tagline “Te ka’y gapaminsar ako, gasulat ako.” (I think, therefore I write), usually set up near the Molo Mansion parking lot, or outside Book Latte along the Mega World Festive Walk. Aside from the typewriters, their self-published books of poetry and fiction, as well as calligraphy implements and scrolls are also laid out on their tables. One may ask for a personalized poem, or bit of flash fiction, or have a scroll inscribed in baybayin badlit or Hanuno’o Calligraphy, the specialty of erstwhile M.D., Bert Palmares.
As poet Ges Jaicten observes, people often do not realize that they need poetry in their lives--until they have one personally written for them.   Although money changes hands, it is not a purely commercial transaction. There is an unquantifiable and indefinable trust between the “buyer” of the poem and the poet who creates this, involving nuances of meaning, labor and costs. It is this trust in its many forms, that helps to strengthen a community as well as our souls, just as good food does for our bodies. In Iloilo, you find plenty of both.

Maria Carmen Sarmiento is an award winning writer and the former Executive Director of the PAL Foundation. She can be reached at menchusarmiento@gmail.com; menchusarmiento@ymail.com.

More articles from Maria Carmen Sarmiento

The Monsters We Brought With Us

Peter Bautista — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 17:36:18 +0000

Bautista’s first book, Tiktik: A Summer of Three Names

I was playing outside with my cousins at my lolo's house in Nueva Ecija when we came across a mound of dirt beside the roots of a tree. There was a small opening in it, the kind of hole I might have stepped over without noticing.
My cousins told me to stay away.
"Why?"
"There's a dwende living there."
"A what?"
They explained that a dwende, a small spirit who doesn’t like to be disturbed, lived inside the mound.
I was somewhere between ten and twelve, old enough to be skeptical and young enough not to test the possibility. My cousins were not whispering or trying to frighten me. They were firm but matter of fact. Do not step on the mound. Do not disturb whoever lives there.
I said okay and walked around it. I did not believe in the dwende. But I believed my cousins enough not to step on its house.
Until then, Filipino folklore had mostly reached me as a story. Older relatives told me about creatures they had heard about growing up. I saw them in Filipino komiks and in old black-and-white movies during summer visits to the Philippines. The mound was different. It attached one of those stories to an actual place: a tree on my lolo's property, a patch of earth my cousins knew how to behave around.
It did not turn me into a believer, but it made the stories feel physically present.
Of all the creatures I encountered during those visits, the manananggal left the strongest image. Onscreen, a woman separated at the waist. Her upper body grew wings and flew into the night, leaving her lower half behind. It was bizarre, frightening in concept, and impossible to forget.
It would be easy to retell that memory now and make the fear bigger. But I did not spend nights in the Philippines worrying that one would fly over the house. For me, the manananggal remained entertainment. I remember fascination more than terror.
I was born in Manila and moved to the United States when I was four. I grew up very American, but in a Filipino family. During visits to the Philippines, parts of being Filipino became more active. I understood Tagalog better than I could speak it. Calling older cousins Kuya or Ate felt natural there even when it felt strange in the United States. At the beginning of a visit, I sometimes needed to be reminded to perform mano, bringing an elder's hand to my forehead as a sign of respect. By the end of the summer, the gesture came naturally again.

Author with parents and younger brother in the Philippines during the early 1970s

The folklore worked in much the same way. In the Philippines, it was everywhere. It appeared in relatives' stories, komiks, old films, and the landscape itself. Back in California, it became quiet. Those stories simply had fewer places to emerge.
At school, explaining one of them would have required explaining the world around it. The spectacular part traveled easily. A woman splits in half and flies away. But the stories didn't quite mean the same thing without the people who told them or the places where I'd heard them.
Years later, when my own children were little, I went looking for books rooted in Filipino culture that I could read with them. I could not find the particular kind of book I wanted to place in their hands. I wanted an adventure built around the strange and frightening creatures I remembered from my childhood.
I began imagining that I might write one, but I did not write it then. Work, raising children and running a household took up my time. The idea never disappeared completely. I just kept putting it off.
As my children grew older, I began to get some of that time back. I started thinking again about the manananggal, the tikbalang (a humanoid equine creature) the kapre (a hairy, cigar-smoking, tree-dwelling spirit) and the warning call of the tiktik (a shape-shifting creature).
The idea eventually became my middle-grade novel, Tiktik: A Summer of Three Names, about a Filipino American girl sent to her grandmother's village, where family secrets and creatures from Filipino folklore turn out to be connected. Writing it let me spend time with stories I had received only in pieces, and to understand why they had stayed with me and what I might do with them now.
This fall, one of those creatures made a much larger journey. DreamWorks Animation's Forgotten Island, which opened in theaters on September 25, introduces the Dreaded Manananggal, voiced by Lea Salonga, as the most feared creature on its island.
When I learned that the manananggal would appear in a major American animated movie, my reaction was immediate recognition. A creature I once knew from relatives, komiks, and old black-and-white films was about to appear before children who might never have heard the word before.
I cannot say what every child will make of it. Hollywood can introduce the manananggal to a new audience, but the version someone remembers from childhood may be different, shaped by whoever first told them the story.
On October 7, I spoke about those same creatures at the Philippine Consulate General in Los Angeles. I'd been invited to speak at the opening of “LORE: A Filipino American Story,” an exhibit marking Filipino American History Month.

Presenting at Philippine Consulate in Los Angeles

I began with the mound. When my cousins warned me about the dwende, they were also teaching me how to behave on my lolo's land. The creature came with a rule. More than 40 years later, I still remember both.
Then I asked the room the question I had been asking myself since I started writing the book. Who told you? I asked people to turn to the person beside them and name the creature they remembered and the person who first described it.
One woman told us about her yaya, the nanny who helped raise her. Whenever she misbehaved, her yaya warned her that a tiyanak would chase her. The tiyanak is a creature that cries like a lost baby to lure people close. She still remembered exactly how the warning went.
The tiyanak was only part of what she remembered. There was also her yaya, the warnings she gave her, and that particular time in her childhood.
My dwende came from my cousins, and her tiyanak came from her yaya.
After my talk, Kirby Araullo spoke about Forgotten Island, and Waverley Lim spoke about The Mask of Haliya. Listening to them, I thought about how quiet these creatures had been for me in California. Now a manananggal flies across American movie screens, and Filipino creatures appear in graphic novels and middle-grade books like mine.

For me, the manananggal remained entertainment. I remember fascination more than terror.

As a kid, I could only find these creatures on summer visits, in komiks and old black-and-white movies. That night I was sitting in a room full of people who had brought them to Los Angeles.
My children never got the book I had imagined reading to them when they were little. By the time I finally wrote it, they were older. Raising them came first, and I would choose the same way again.
This fall, American children had a chance to meet the manananggal on a movie screen. I hope some of them left the theater and asked a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, or cousin whether they had heard of it. I hope the answers differ.
My last slide asked the audience one more question. Where would your story begin?

Receiving certificate of appreciation from Consul General Adelio Cruz

I already know where my story would begin -- beside the roots of a tree at my lolo's house in Nueva Ecija, with a mound I did not believe in and still chose not to disturb.

Peter Bautista is a Filipino American author who lives in Southern California. Born in Manila and raised in the United States, he is the author of the middle-grade novel Tiktik: A Summer of Three Names. Its sequel, Tiktik: A Christmas of Three Names, is scheduled for publication in November 2026. He is also the creator of readtiktik.com, where readers can explore Filipino folklore and take the Filipino Creature Quiz. Follow him on Instagram and TikTok at @readtiktik.

One Family’s Three-Generation Call to Serve

Maria Antonia Bosa Van Espen-Boonen — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 17:36:11 +0000

An undated photo of United States Navy Chief Petty Officer Santiago Busa.

On September 27, 2026, a remarkable chapter in a family’s history was honored as retired Chief Petty Officer Santiago Busa, who served in the United States Navy from 1945 to 1965, posthumously received the Congressional Gold Medal, one of the highest civilian honors bestowed by the United States Congress.
In a particularly poignant moment, his widow, Engracia Busa, was there to receive the medal on his behalf. The occasion was made even more meaningful as the family celebrated Lola Grace’s 102nd birthday—a remarkable milestone for the woman who stood alongside him through the years of his service.

A photograph taken on September 27, 2026, aboard the Battleship USS Iowa, showing Mrs. Engracia Busa, widow of U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Santiago Busa, holding the Congressional Gold Medal she received on behalf of her husband.

During World War II, Lolo Santi enlisted at the U.S. Naval station in Guinan, Samar—in the province of Eastern Samar in the Philippines. Prior to that, he had been active in the local resistance against the Japanese occupiers of his beloved island of Samar. During the Korean War, his ship was part of the task force that evacuated U.S. Marines and Korean civilians from the besieged port of Hungnam. His dedication and abilities saw him rise rapidly through the ranks, earning a promotion to Chief Petty Officer ahead of his peers—a significant distinction for Filipino sailors at the time. Lolo Santi served as the senior non-commissioned officer in charge of several important billets at duty stations in Pearl Harbor, San Diego, Seattle, and San Francisco.
While the recognition celebrates a lifetime of military service and sacrifice, it also offers a fitting moment to reflect on a legacy that has continued across generations—not only through service in uniform, but through a commitment to representing and serving one’s country abroad. From the decks of warships and military duty stations to the U.S. Army and the diplomatic service, and now to the generation of American and Philippine foreign service officers, this is a story of duty, family, and a shared calling to public service.

A photograph taken on September 27, 2026, during the Congressional Gold Medal Award ceremony held aboard the Battleship USS Iowa in San Pedro, California. Mrs. Engracia Busa, widow of U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Santiago Busa, is seated in the center, surrounded by family members and relatives. Standing fifth from left is Consul General Adelio Cruz, Philippine Consul General in Los Angeles, California.

Among those who carried this legacy forward is Santiago “Sonny” Busa, Jr., a retired United States Army officer and senior American diplomat whose career has been marked by a similarly enduring commitment to public service. Uncle Sonny earned his dual degrees in Engineering and National Security Studies from the prestigious United States Military Academy at West Point in 1976. After his military service, he transitioned to the U.S. Department of State as a Foreign Service Officer. His diplomatic assignments included the Philippines, Kuwait, Honduras, Ethiopia, and Hong Kong. He served as Consul General in Kuwait and Ethiopia. His final assignment with the State Department was as a Visiting Professor of International Relations at West Point. Uncle Sonny retired in December 2010.
His journey from military service to the world of diplomacy meant navigating different cultures, building relationships, and advancing the interests of the United States around the world. His career reflects how the meaning of service can evolve over a lifetime—from wearing the uniform to representing a nation through diplomacy.
His sister, Beverly Busa, was also a senior career American Foreign Service Officer who specialized in financial management for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Auntie Beverly’s diplomatic postings included Jordan, El Salvador, Bangladesh, Philippines, Ghana, and Liberia, where she managed financial operations. She was cited for meritorious service as part of the first team into Iraq to establish the U.S. Embassy during the war there. Her professional competence resulted in her selection to attend the highly selective National Defense College, a breeding ground for the highest levels of government and military officers.

Photograph taken in 2018 in Manila, Philippines. Seated from left are Mrs. Ceres Busa, wife of Mr. Santiago Busa, Jr., and Mr. Santiago Busa, Jr. Standing behind them, from left to right, are Ms. Ma. Antoinette Bosa-Villa and Ms. Maria Antonia Bosa Van Espen-Boonen (author).

What makes this story particularly meaningful to our family is that the tradition did not end with Uncle Sonny’s generation. His daughters, Danae and Eirene, have followed him into the United States Foreign Service, carrying forward a commitment to international service in their own right. Danae is posted in Thailand, and Eirene is in Moscow. His nephew, John Huson, the son of his sister Pauline, is a Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, following the service of his father and grandfather who also are military veterans.
In our own branch of the family, my sister Ma. Antoinette Bosa-Villa, and I have likewise chosen careers in the Philippine Foreign Service. I retired in December 2022 after 23 years in the Department of Foreign Affairs, including foreign assignments in the United States and Europe, while my sister, Ma. Antoinette, is wrapping up her tour of duty at the Philippine Consulate General in Los Angeles, California. She was previously assigned to the Philippine Consulate General in Hong Kong and the Philippine Embassy in Singapore.
There is also a lesser-known chapter in our family history that explains why some members of the family carry the surname Busa, while our branch uses Bosa. The difference in spelling may have resulted from the way names were recorded in official documents and civil registrations at the time. Two spellings have remained part of the family story, linking two branches that, despite the difference in name, share the same roots.
Seen together, these journeys form a remarkable family story. The Congressional Gold Medal honoring the service of a generation that came before us is not simply a recognition of the past; it provides an opportunity to reflect on how the values of duty, service, and commitment can be carried forward. From the U.S. warships to the U.S. Army, from military service to diplomacy, and from one generation of public servants to the next, the family legacy continues—not as an obligation to follow a predetermined path, but as a testament to what it means to dedicate one’s career to the service of country.

Lolo Santi served as the senior non-commissioned officer in charge of several important billets at duty stations in Pearl Harbor, San Diego, Seattle, and San Francisco.

October is Filipino American History Month, a time to recognize and celebrate the history, contributions, and longstanding connections of Filipino Americans in the United States. The story of the Busa/Bosa family embodies the shared values and history that help bridge Filipinos and Americans, with family members across generations contributing in their own way to the strong and enduring ties between the Philippines and the United States.

Maria Antonia Bosa Van Espen-Boonen is a retired Philippine foreign service staff officer and diplomat based in Brussels, Belgium. Her writing draws on both personal and professional experiences, spanning more than two decades of government service and diplomatic assignments in the United States and in Europe. She is a recipient of the Department of Foreign Affairs 2014 Outstanding Employee Award.

More articles from Maria Antonia Bosa Van Espen-Boonen

FilAms Among The Remarkable And Famous, Part 83

Mona Lisa Yuchengco — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 17:35:43 +0000

Manny Crisostomo, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Photojournalist

Manny Crisostomo (Source: Wikipedia)

Born in Guam, part Filipino and part Chamorro, Crisostomo studied at the University of Guam and later at the University of Missouri. During his school years, he interned at the Pacific Daily News and worked for the Newson as a reporter. However, he was rejected from a full-time position at the PDN by the chief editor and offered a position of a technician in a photo laboratory. Due to this assignment, he grew interested in photography and soon became a photojournalist. As a staff member, he worked for the Columbia Missourian, then joined the Jackson Citizen-Patriot and the Detroit Free-Press as a photographer.
In 1987–1988 at the Detroit Free Press he worked for 40 weeks on a series about student life at Southwestern High School. In a city full of violence, he tried to show ordinary kids and their life. The photographs were supported with a 12-page article A Class Act, the Life and Times of Southwest High School. In 1989, the series was honored with the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. Crisostomo donated the money award to the school.
In 1992 he published Legacy of Guam: I Kustumbren Chamoru, dedicated to his motherland. As of 2020, Crisostomo works at The Sacramento Bee. In 2020 he published his fourth book Echoes in the Dance. In 2022, he had an exhibition "Pacific Gathering" at the East-West Center Gallery.
Abby Espiritu, Actor

Abby Espiritu (Source: abbyespiritu.com)

First generation Filipino American actor Espiritu voices Yasmine, the first Filipino character in @StreetFighter, gaming’s most international roster. Since its franchise debut in 1987, the roster of fighters included were from Japan, China, Brazil, India, Thailand, France, Russia, Jamaica, Mexico, South Korea and other countries but never from the Philippines. Yasmine becomes the series’ first Filipino representative. Yasmine’s fighting style is arnis, her attacks have Tagalog names, and her story also uses Filipino family terms adding cultural context.
Twenty-nine year old Espiritu is a Los Angeles-based actor best known for her voiceover roles as the English voice of Ajaw in the award-winning global phenomenon video game Genshin Impact; as well as the English voice of Romin Kassidy, the current female lead in the popular and long-running Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise. You can also hear her in Disney Channel's Hamster & Gretel as Naya, the head cheerleader, and in the 2023 blockbuster Barbie as part of the ADR group providing the famous "Hi Barbie!" lines. Other notable credits include Misao in Rurouni Kenshin (2023), Liliana in Re:Zero, and Elegg in NIKKE.
She is also an on-camera actor from a number of TV/web commercials. Her biggest on-camera project to date is her role as the "Empanada Girl" from the 2021 Super Bowl commercial for DoorDash, which was seen by 100 million people. Abby starred alongside Tony winner Daveed Diggs and the cast of Sesame Street.
Francis Lejara De Los Reyes III, Engineer and Professor

Francis Lejara De Los Reyes III (source: Civil Construction and Environmental Engineering)

A graduate of the University of the Philippines at Los Banos, De Los Reyes is an environmental engineer, academic and global sanitation advocate. He is the Glenn E. and Phyllis J. Futrell Distinguished Professor and Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate in the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering at North Carolina State University.
De Los Reyes is most known for his research that combines modeling, bioreactor experiments, and molecular microbial ecology to address problems in environmental biotechnology and engineering, and his public outreach for improving sanitation in developing countries. His works have been published in academic journals, including Environmental Science & Technology and Applied and Environmental Microbiology. He is also the recipient of the 2022 Rudolfs Industrial Waste Management Medal from the Water Environment Federation.
De Los Reyes is a TED Fellow and WEF Fellow as well as a Board Certified Environmental Engineering Member of the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists. He was elected as a corresponding member of the National Academy of Science and Technology, Philippines (NAST PHL) for his contributions to microbial ecology, biotechnology and environmental engineering, particularly in the Philippines. Moreover, he is an elected member of the Philippine-American Academy of Science and Engineering, where he has held leadership roles such as chair of the board and president. He also served as the founding vice president of the Filipino American Performing Artists of North Carolina, an organization promoting Filipino culture through the arts. Additionally, he has served on the editorial boards of several academic journals, including Transactions NAST Philippines and ACS ES&T Engineering.
Lily Brasch, Student

Lily Brasch (Source: Jewish United Fund)

When Brasch was born, her parents, an American father and Filipino mother, were told that she would not live past the age of four due to a rare muscle condition, non-progressive muscular dystrophy. At 24, she graduated from Columbia University. In an interview with philstarlife.com, she said, “My family has always been my greatest source of strength, especially my parents. My father taught me to challenge limitations rather than automatically accept them, and my mother has led by example my entire life. My Filipino mother is the most confident and self- assured human I know. My mother always believed in taking control of whatever life throws your way and finding the good.” During her graduation, she used a mobility scooter to traverse the stage. She added, “If my story helps even one person to believe in oneself, then every obstacle was worth it.”
Rigoberto Advincula, Professor/Researcher

Rigoberto Advincula (Source: UT Oakridge Innovation Institute)

Advincula is a Governor's Chair Professor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) - University of Tennessee and Group Leader, Macromolecular Nanomaterials (MACRO), Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS) at ORNL. His research and group interests are: design, synthesis and characterization of polymers and nanomaterials capable of controlled-assembly, nanostructuring, and self-organization in ultrathin films and monoliths. This includes functional macromolecules, coordination polymerization, polymer brushes, electropolymerization, and preparation of nanoparticles and hybrid materials.
Dr. Advincula has led major projects including a fiber composite project with the DOE, EERE, AMO. He has a number of major awards with the American Chemical Society (ACS) and Fellow Honors; FRSC, FIMMM, NATAS Fellow, PMSE Fellow, Poly Fellow. Most recently he received Fellow status with the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) and the International Prize of the Society of Polymer Science of Japan (JSPS). He is most passionate in mentoring young minds into the STEM disciplines.
Advincula earned a BS in Chemistry from the University of the Philippines, a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Florida, a Post-Doctoral from Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research and from Stanford University.
Hapibel Duque, Special Education Teacher

Hapibel Duque (Source: JeFferson Elementary School District)

Duque spent 21 years of her life living inside a cemetery in Pasay City, Manila. She was determined to get a college education so she worked long hours at a mall in Makati until she earned a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Education at the Technological University of the Philippines. After passing the board exam, she taught in public schools in 2010, and then earned graduate degrees in special education and early childhood education that helped her come to the United States. Now at 37 years old she is a special education teacher in Daly City, California. The Summit Express writes, “Duque teaches students with autism and intellectual disabilities, managing the largest special education classroom in her district and guiding learners once considered unreachable toward independence.” She founded a Special Education Center in the Philippines and earned multiple awards including Outstanding Global Educator of the year in 2023. She plans to pursue doctoral studies, hoping her “journey from a cemetery to a classroom in America will remind others that perseverance, consistency and faith can rewrite even the most unlikely beginnings.”
Jared Dane McCain, Basketball Player

Jared Dane McCain (Source: Wikipedia)

McCain is of mixed racial heritage: his mother, Jina, is both white and Filipino while his father, Lance, is African American. He is a professional basketball player for the Oklahoma City Thunder of the NBA. He was a consensus five-star recruit and ranked among the top players in the 2023 class. He played college basketball for the Duke Blue Devils before being selected by the Philadelphia 76ers in the 2024 NBA draft. McCain represented the U.S. at the 2022 FIBA U18 Americas Championship held in Tijuana, Mexico. He has gained recognition on social media by posting basketball-related content, personal vlogs and participating in trending dance challenges.
Liberty Zabala Simmons, Journalist

Liberty Zabala Simmons (Source: Facebook)

Simmons is a four-time Emmy-winning morning show reporter and fill-in news anchor at DC News Now. She is also the anchor/host of Veterans Voices, an annual half-hour special dedicated to the military and veteran community across the DMV. She also serves as an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve.
She previously worked as a reporter and weather anchor at FOX 5 San Diego. She was awarded the Vada and Colonel Barney Oldfield National Security Reporting Fellowship by the Radio Television Digital News Foundation for her work covering Marines, sailors, active-duty service members and veterans.
A journalism graduate of California State University, Northridge, she served as president of the San Diego chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) when it was awarded in 2017 AAJA National “Chapter of the Year.” She is also a graduate of the 2019 “FBI Citizens Academy” and has a Master of Arts degree in Homeland Security with a concentration in counterterrorism at American Military University.
Cat Madlansacay, Wellness Founder

Cat Madlansacay (Source: Pilipino Ka Ba?/Facebook)

Madlansacay is the founder of Essence Planner, a company that designs wellness and productivity tools. She started the business in 2020 to help BIPOC people (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) manage their mental health and daily goals. She frequently speaks on podcasts and social media about entrepreneurship, mental wellness and reclaiming spaces for BIPOC wellness. She completed her B.A. in International Affairs at James Madison University.
Jason Lustina, Nonprofit Executive and Kababayan Network Founder

Jason Lustina (Source: Facebook)

Lustina is the founder of the Kababayan Network, a platform dedicated to connecting the Filipino American community through meaningful content, events and partnerships. What started with a need to connect with Southern California Filipinos during the COVID pandemic has turned into a nationwide platform with 700k followers. With co-partner John Erick Pabalan whom Lustina met online, he created special interest groups to cater to specific locations and passions within the community under the umbrella of the Kababayan Network, which has now been turned into a registered nonprofit. The group receives more than 100 submissions and hundreds of member requests daily. Kababayan Network recently celebrated its 6th anniversary.
Lustina works professionally as the Territory Business Development Director for the West Territory at the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society where he advises and strategizes on corporate partnerships, covering everything from Colorado to the West Coast, including Hawaii and Alaska. He has over 20 years’ experience in the nonprofit sector. Born in Carson City, California, Lustina attended UC Irvine and was very active in cultural heritage organizations.

Growing Up Filipino in San Francisco’s South of Market

Alex S. Fabros, Jr. — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 16:13:46 +0000

San Francisco’s South of Market (SOMA) at Sixth and Mission (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The Filipino story of San Francisco’s South of Market (SOMA) did not begin at Sixth and Mission, neither did it begin after the International Hotel disappeared from Kearny Street. One of its earliest centers was South Park, close enough to the waterfront that merchant seamen could move easily between the piers and the neighborhood. By the 1920s and 1930s, Filipino merchant mariners, agricultural workers, cooks, hotel employees and laborers were finding their way there.
Gran Oriente Filipino, founded by Filipino merchant mariners, began using 106 South Park Street in 1935 and became an anchor for men whose lives were often unsettled by work. A sailor might disappear aboard a ship for months, while a farmworker might leave for the asparagus harvest in the Delta or another crop farther south. Gran Oriente gave them a familiar place to return to. Men could receive mail, store belongings, hear about jobs, find a bed and exchange news from the Philippines.

Gran Oriente Filipino (Photo by Aileen Lainez)

Families gradually transformed that male labor settlement into a neighborhood. Filipino households appeared along Natoma, Tehama, Minna, Russ, Harriet, and the small streets and alleys running through South of Market. Rudy Delphino remembered his family moving from North Beach because other Filipino families they knew were already living there. One family found an apartment, another moved nearby, a cousin learned that a room was available, and children discovered one another on the sidewalk.
By the 1940s and 1950s, SOMA was becoming different from the bachelor-oriented Filipino world associated with Kearny Street. Married couples lived with children, grandparents, boarders and recently arrived relatives. Filipino parishioners became familiar faces at St. Patrick’s and St. Joseph’s. Neighbors exchanged rides, food, child care, job information and news. None of this appeared in a city directory, but it was how Filipino SOMA worked.
The closeness of the neighborhood also shaped family memory. Children knew which apartment belonged to an auntie who was not really an aunt; which household served the best food after church and which adult could be counted on when a parent was working late. Family relationships extended beyond blood. In a working-class immigrant district, neighbors often became part of the practical family network because survival depended on people being available for one another.
Post-WWII Transformation
World War II accelerated the transformation. Filipino men served in the U.S. Navy, Philippine Scouts, Commonwealth forces, guerrilla units, and the First and Second Filipino Infantry Regiments. After the war, veterans married, returned with wives, or sponsored spouses and children. The overwhelmingly male Filipino population of the prewar years slowly became a more permanent community of families.
The women who entered these households should not be reduced to the convenient label “war brides.” They raised children, maintained households, joined churches and community associations, and worked in hotels, restaurants, hospitals, offices, domestic service and garment factories. Their children grew up in an America different from the one the manong generation had first encountered. They attended San Francisco schools, played American sports, listened to American music, and learned to move between Filipino family life and the wider city.
Military service did not eliminate racial prejudice. Dr. Gregorio P. Chua recalled in a 1992 oral-history interview with Professor Dan P. Gonzales that after the war he left the Presidio officers’ club still wearing his Army uniform. His wife, who was part Filipino and part white, was with him. Chua remembered being attacked by white officers who saw the couple together. His recollection illustrates how military rank, a medical degree, and wartime service could still fail to erase racial boundaries.
Half a century later, another generation of veterans entered SOMA. Beginning in 1990, changes in federal law allowed thousands of elderly Filipino World War II veterans to immigrate and become American citizens. Some believed citizenship would finally correct the injustice created by the 1946 Rescission Acts. Instead, many found themselves continuing an old fight for benefits and recognition.
Older Veterans
Some veterans came without wives or adult children. They were not young immigrants beginning new lives but elderly men crossing the Pacific near the end of theirs. The Delta Hotel at Sixth and Mission became closely associated with them. Dr. Mario Borja, a Filipino physician who had immigrated during the 1950s, purchased the hotel in 1976, and by the 1990s elderly Filipino veterans and other low-income residents were living there.
After a 1997 fire displaced more than two hundred tenants, Borja worked with the Tenants and Owners Development Corporation (TODCO) in efforts that eventually produced replacement affordable housing and community space. Bayanihan House and the Bayanihan Community Center continued the Filipino presence at Sixth and Mission. The intersection became a place where housing, veterans advocacy, immigrant services, and neighborhood life came together.
Around these residents grew a network of organizations that made immigrant life more manageable. West Bay Pilipino Multi-Service Corporation, the Filipino-American Development Foundation, veterans organizations, churches, senior programs, and legal and employment services helped families deal with housing, schools, health care, citizenship, benefits, and work.
Their most useful services were often the least dramatic. Someone sat beside an elderly veteran and explained a government letter. Someone telephoned an agency for a newly arrived family, helped complete a form, or accompanied an immigrant to an appointment. Filipino doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, accountants, and social workers often became translators of American institutions as much as practitioners of their professions.
Most families still survived through work that received little public attention. Filipinos cleaned hotel rooms and office buildings, cooked restaurant meals, washed dishes, worked in hospitals, maintained buildings, drove vehicles, staffed government offices and sat at sewing machines. Garment manufacturing was particularly important to immigrant women.
Carlota Arcia came from the Philippines in 1978 and found work at San Francisco Sewing Company at 510 Third Street. By 1996 she had spent 16 years sewing pockets and belt loops. A garment passed through many hands—one worker sewing a seam, another attaching a pocket, another making a belt loop. The faster they worked, the more the factory produced.
Arcia preferred sewing to hotel housekeeping, but neither offered much security. By the 1990s, garment production was moving overseas to countries where wages were much lower. At 510 Third Street, the changing San Francisco economy could almost be seen floor by floor. Sewing machines continued operating while multimedia and technology companies occupied other parts of the same building.
Another Social World
Restaurants, groceries, remittance businesses, barber shops and small stores created another economy and another social world. The Mint Mall at 953–957 Mission Street, associated with the Nocon family, became an important Filipino commercial center. New Filipinas, later JT’s Restaurant, operated there along with other businesses and organizations.

South of Market Community Action Network (SOMCAN) rally in front of JT Restaurant at Mint Mall in San Francisco (Photo by SOMCAN)

A Filipino restaurant was never merely somewhere to eat. Somebody knew which hotel was hiring, while someone else had heard about an apartment. Veterans compared experiences with benefits offices, parents talked about schools, and customers argued about Philippine politics, boxing, basketball, and Manila. News of marriages, funerals, money problems, illnesses, and family disagreements moved from table to table.
The barber shop had a special place in this neighborhood economy. A haircut could take 20 minutes, but the conversation might cover a week’s worth of community news. Men talked about jobs, politics, military service, marriages, funerals and which families had moved to Daly City or returned from the Philippines. In an immigrant neighborhood, a barber did more than cut hair; he often knew who had arrived, who was leaving, who needed help, and who had found work.
Children knew a different SOMA. Bessie Carmichael School and the Filipino Education Center became increasingly important as immigration expanded. Newly arrived children had to learn more than English. They learned from American teachers, about cafeteria food, playground rules, buses, slang, racial categories, and the expectations of classmates whose families had been in the United States much longer.
Sometimes the child became the household translator, explaining a school notice or telephone call to a parent. Sports were easier. Filipino children played baseball, basketball, football, volleyball, softball, and track with Black, Latino, Chinese, white, Samoan, and other youngsters. Recreation centers and school teams became meeting places for children growing up in an increasingly diverse San Francisco.
Geographical Dispersal
By the 1980s and 1990s, Filipino students were spread through Balboa, Mission, Burton, Galileo, Washington, Lincoln, John O’Connell, and other San Francisco high schools. Balboa in particular developed a large Filipino student presence. Families were already moving beyond SOMA into the Excelsior, Daly City, and South San Francisco but school friendships kept young people tied to a broader Filipino San Francisco. The neighborhood was becoming less geographically concentrated even as Filipino youth networks became larger.
Victoria Manalo Draves had already demonstrated what could emerge from this environment. The daughter of a Filipino father and an English mother, she grew up south of Market and became an elite diver. At the 1948 London Olympics she won gold medals in both springboard and platform diving. Her success showed that Filipino family life and athletic ambition had deep roots in the neighborhood.

Vicki Manalo Draves (Source: A Journey of Faith)

Later generations found another connection through Filipino martial arts. Elrik “Franz” Jundis remembered watching Filipino martial arts at Cannon Kip Community House in 1976. Ben Largusa, Angel Cabales, and Rene Latosa were among the figures who helped make eskrima, arnis, and kali visible in Northern California. To young Filipino Americans, these were more than fighting systems; they were pieces of a heritage rarely taught in school.
SOMA also reached onto the San Francisco State campus. Filipino students formed the Philippine American Collegiate Endeavor (PACE) and participated in the 1968–1969 Third World Liberation Front strike that helped establish the College of Ethnic Studies. Daniel Phil Gonzales had been born at 31 Harriet Street in 1948 and later became involved in PACE, the strike, community organizing, music, curriculum development, and Asian American Studies.

San Francisco State University (Source: WIkimedia Commons)

Patrick Salaver was another important Filipino student leader. PACE students went into Central City, as SOMA was then commonly called, tutoring Filipino youngsters and encouraging them to think about college. Salaver later refused induction into the military during the Vietnam War, was sentenced to federal prison, and was paroled in 1972. The contrast between generations was striking: many older Filipino men had sought recognition through military service, while part of the next generation challenged American policy by refusing to fight.

Patrick Salaver (Photo courtesy of Tim Salaver)

Fil-Am Music Scene
Music offered another way of becoming Filipino American. In the early 1970s, Filipino musicians participated in a Bay Area sound shaped by Latin rock, funk, soul, Santana, and Malo. Dakila became the best-known Filipino American group from that scene, signing with Epic Records and releasing an album in 1972 that incorporated Filipino identity and Tagalog into Bay Area rock. Maharlika and Mundo were also part of that musical world.
By the late 1970s and 1980s, teenagers created something different: the mobile disc jockey (DJ) crew. Sound Explosion, Ultimate Creations, Unlimited Sounds, Images, Inc., Spintronix, Non-Stop Boogie, Disco Tech Limited, Universal Sounds, and Sounds of Success hauled turntables, mixers, amplifiers, speakers, lights, and records into school gyms, weddings, garages, birthdays, and community halls.
The crews competed with one another, but together they created a Filipino youth network extending across the Bay Area. What began as teenagers competing over sound systems and music helped create an environment from which Filipino American turntablists such as DJ Qbert, Mix Master Mike, and Shortkut later emerged.
There was a harder side to youth life. Filipino gangs existed in San Francisco, including Bahala Na Gang, Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao (LVM), and the Frisco Boys. They were real, but they were never representative of Filipino youth generally. Most Filipino teenagers belonged to no gang and found belonging through families, sports teams, churches, martial-arts schools, student groups, DJ crews, or car clubs.
By the 1990s, Rudy Corpuz Jr., associated with Howard Street and SOMA street life, became a visible example of turning street experience toward community work. United Playaz developed programs involving education, mentoring, employment, sports, and conflict mediation. People who understood why the street could attract a teenager were sometimes the people best able to persuade that teenager to leave it. Crime was part of SOMA, but crime was never SOMA.

South of Market was not simply where Filipinos went after Manilatown. It was where generations learned how toSouth of Market was not simply where Filipinos went after Manilatown. It was where generations learned how to stay. stay.

Displacement By Redevelopment
The greater threat to the neighborhood was often the changing value of the ground beneath it. Yerba Buena redevelopment displaced low-income residents beginning in the 1960s as San Francisco pursued convention facilities, hotels, cultural institutions, and commercial development. Later the dot-com boom made warehouses, factories, inexpensive restaurants, and industrial buildings suddenly desirable to technology companies and investors.
Filipinos fought for replacement housing, community space, and cultural visibility. Streets acquired names such as Rizal, Mabini, Bonifacio, Lapu-Lapu, and Tandang Sora. Kularts, Teatro ng Tanan, Bindlestiff Studio, Pistahan, and other cultural efforts gave Filipino history a public presence even as many families moved toward the Excelsior, Daly City, South San Francisco, and elsewhere.

“Ang Lipi ni Lapulapu” by Johanna Poethig, located at the San Lorenzo Ruiz Center on Lapulapu and Bonifacio Streets in San Francisco’s South of Market District (Photo by Raymond Virata)

Preservation therefore meant more than saving a famous building. A restaurant, bookstore, grocery, barbershop, theater, or meeting room could hold decades of neighborhood memory. Arkipelago Books, Filipino restaurants, community centers, and cultural spaces mattered because they kept a visible Filipino presence in an area where rising rents could otherwise erase it. Losing one storefront might seem minor; losing many could make an entire community disappear from the street.
People could leave SOMA without entirely leaving the community. They returned for restaurants, churches, festivals, veterans services, performances, organizations, and old friends. Filipino San Francisco was becoming more regional, but SOMA retained its symbolic importance.
That outward movement did not mean the community had failed. In many cases it reflected families gaining access to larger homes, suburban schools, or better-paying jobs. What changed was the geography of Filipino life. SOMA increasingly became a place people returned to rather than a place where every generation continued to live, linking older neighborhood institutions to a Filipino population now spread across San Francisco, Daly City, the Peninsula, and the East Bay.
For older residents, returning also meant seeing familiar streets transformed while still recognizing fragments of the community they had known. Memory became another way of holding the neighborhood together.
In 2016, San Francisco formally established the SOMA Pilipinas Filipino Cultural Heritage District. The designation did not create Filipino SOMA. It placed an official name on something merchant seamen, laborers, families, veterans, garment workers, teachers, students, musicians, artists, professionals, and community organizers had already spent generations creating.
South Park had provided an early anchor. Natoma, Tehama, Minna, Russ, Harriet, and the surrounding streets became family spaces. Sixth and Mission later became a center for veterans, housing, businesses, and community organizations. Women sat at sewing machines, parents watched children play ball, students carried neighborhood concerns onto the San Francisco State campus, musicians formed bands, teenagers filled garages with speakers, martial artists taught eskrima, and community workers helped another immigrant through another government form.
That is why South of Market belongs beside Kearny Street in Filipino American history. Kearny Street tells much of the story of a largely male migrant generation that built community around hotels, cafés, pool halls, barbershops, restaurants, and labor networks. SOMA tells what happened when Filipino America became a community of families and generations.
South of Market was not simply where Filipinos went after Manilatown. It was where generations learned how to stay.

Alex S. Fabros, Jr. is a retired Philippine American Military History professor.

More articles from Alex Fabros, Jr.

PinoyPals: Sharing Concerns Across the Ocean

Scarlet Tabuena — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 16:13:39 +0000

Featured here is FIA’s Tinikling Team for Hinsdale Central’s 2026 Cultural Fair; within this group are the 11 PinoyPals participants, including Founder/President Scarlet Tabuena (red dress, front).

From biweekly club meetings to seasonal tinikling practices, my experience as a Filipina American high schooler was largely confined to American translations of an increasingly distant culture.
While I was fortunate enough to learn about my heritage through my mother’s direct history and have an immensely supportive local community, I wondered if Filipino Americans isolated across the Midwest could foster the same cultural connections with their ancestral ties.
Utilizing my civic experiences from local youth advisory councils, I knew I wanted to connect youths across the two nations by gathering real testimonials rather than offering vague, distant support. I founded PinoyPals in January 2026 to bridge the gap between high-level international policy and Filipino youths’ community realities.
By digitally pairing high school students from Chicagoland with peers in Metro Manila, the initiative translates abstract global diplomacy into active, civic dialogue centered on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The 2026 Inaugural Program featured 22 total participants from Hinsdale Central High School’s Fil-Am population partnering one on one with Assumption College San Lorenzo’s Filipina students for a structured ten-week exchange.
Comparative Findings & Key Insights
For Week 1, grounded in SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities) and 16 (Strong Institutions), participants evaluated their preconceived notions and stereotypes about their partners’ lives. Many were hyper-aware of the stereotypes directed towards their own communities, and wary in identifying the prompt’s alternative, particularly because of recognizing their limited lens.

A publicly open school fundraiser fair at Assumption Women’s College San Lorenzo, Makati PH taken by PinoyPals Head of Collaborations and Inaugural cohort participant Andrea De La Peña.

American students acknowledged their perceptions were based on immigrant struggle stories and a filtered First World lens.
“My Grandparents on both sides moved here around the 1950s-1960s. My family moved here for the purpose of making a living, which they did because all my family members are doctors except for my Lolo on my mom’s side who was a nuclear engineer." (Pair 1, USA Pal)
Philippine students mainly commented on how their economic and social realities domestically contrasted with the “American Dream”.
“We mainly get stereotyped a lot for our hospitality and kindness, but honestly, we sort of do get taken [advantage] of because of it. If we can be kind to people outside of our own country, why can’t we with our own kin?”
“Opportunity and wealth are really huge political topics here, as with our failing government and lack of accessibility to proper sources of income, which is why outside cities there are underprivileged communities and slums, a stark contrast to our society.” (Pair 1, PH Pal)
The first common denominator between the two sides was simply a mutual lack of exposure to each other’s day-to-day environments.
"I myself haven’t been to the Philippines as I’ve lived in the same house in the suburban Chicago Area for my whole life.” (Pair 1, USA Pal)
“I haven’t been abroad that much either, because I mostly travel within the country only.” (Pair 1, PH Pal)
Jumping forward to the program’s late stages of Week 9, participants evaluated their community’s environmental health in the context of human actions, connecting environmental treatment to human conditions through the lens of SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities) and SDG 13 (Climate Action). Their tones shifted to being open to their pen pals, with a willingness to speak passionately about related issues.
American participants linked their immediate surroundings to broader issues of environmental values, particularly in ecological and physical health related concerns. Deeper anxieties for future generations and lifestyles were expressed when referring to ongoing national actions.
“Witnessing people losing their only sources of food and drinking water, which is INSANE to think of knowing how rich some people/institutions are makes me so worried for the future of US intervention in nature, mainly Trump’s plans for Arctic drilling, deforestation, and use of unsustainable energy sources.” (Pair 9, USA Pal)
Philippine participants similarly held deep disappointment in the consequences of human activity on the Philippine environment. Dense urban populations of stray animals were found to be in direct contrast to natural biodiversity, exuding disappointment in the present Philippine environmental status.
"The Philippines is home to over 52,000 species of animals and which we still strive to protect as I know that we are recognized as a country with a very rich ecosystem and which I can enjoy, usually not in the city since it’s so cramped in here due to massive buildings everywhere and the pollution people face every day." (Pair 9, PH Pal)
Unexpectedly, a common ground was found in the specific shared struggle of pollutant-based health consequences in localized environments.
“I know my Philippine born uncle and mother both have respiratory and temperature regulation issues, which are both hereditary and environmental in cause.” (Pair 9, USA Pal)
“I used to have lung asthma as a kid but don’t feel its effects anymore, but I have skin asthma instead.” (Pair 9, PH Pal)
Directly following the 10-week cohort, participants completed an anonymized program evaluation:
• 100% reported a deeper understanding of how UN SDGs apply to their local communities.
• 91% expressed higher confidence in discussing international policy and diaspora issues.
• 95% stated they plan to pursue civic leadership or policy-related initiatives in their upcoming years.
Concluding Vision
PinoyPals’ resounding successes should not be limited to those directly involved in our Inaugural Cohort. Through weekly digital exchanges, Filipino youths were emboldened to form long-lasting relationships and global empathy beyond national borders and familial histories.

I knew I wanted to connect youths across the two nations by gathering real testimonials rather than offering vague, distant support.

It is imperative that the current and future generations are given forums for their voices to be heard, as well as opportunities to foster deeper connections. Reconnecting with Filipino cultural heritage is more than looking to history; rather, it is about forging paths for the future.
Additional Resources
Visit us at: pinoypals.com
Read our full program report: PinoyPals Executive Report
Check out our Instagram: PinoyPals Instagram @pinoy.pals

Scarlet Tabuena is a senior at Hinsdale Central High School (Hinsdale IL) for the Class of 2027. Tabuena is also the Founder and President of PinoyPals International Pen Pals, a global youth organization recognized in the United Nations Digital Cooperation Portal focused on connecting Filipino and Fil-Am students through letter exchanges structured around identifying community realities.

Who Will Care for Arnold?

Rudy D. Liporada — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 16:13:06 +0000

(Photo by Rudy D. Liporada)

In today's political climate, let us simply call him Arnold.
Arnold's story came to me through years of family conversations and shared memories. Some identifying details have been changed to protect his privacy.
In his late 50s, he is diabetic and suffers from neuropathy. His legs often go numb. Driving has become painful, yet every morning he forces himself behind the wheel because patients are waiting.
Arnold is a caregiver.
For more than two decades, he has cared for aging Americans in the final chapters of their lives. Some can still walk and hold conversations. Others ask the same questions repeatedly, trapped in fading memories. Some spend their final days in bed, waiting for the inevitable.
Bathing patients is among the easier parts of the job. Other tasks require stronger stomachs and deeper reserves of compassion. Through the years, Arnold has learned the names and purposes of countless medications. He has spent so much time caring for the elderly that he knows the routines of aging almost by heart.
Now he finds himself beginning the same journey.
The difference is that the people he cared for could afford help.
Who will care for him?
For years, much of his work was paid under the table. Other jobs came through agencies that paid little. As a result, he has accumulated neither significant savings nor a pension capable of supporting him when age finally overtakes him.
The irony is painful. He spent decades caring for others yet fears there may be no one he can afford to care for him.
This was not the future he imagined.
In the early 2000s, Arnold jumped ship at a Gulf Coast port.
He had been working aboard a cruise ship as a housekeeper and believed America would offer opportunities unavailable to him back home. The decision was neither reckless nor impulsive. It had been carefully planned by family members who have arrived before him.
An older brother had already left the Philippines and found work as a caregiver. Their mother and sister were already in California.
The plan took months. Long before video calls and social media, the family stitched together Arnold's escape through crackling international calls made on prepaid phone cards. Every minute cost money. Every conversation carried instructions, encouragement and hope.
"I wasn't afraid," Arnold recalled. "My mind was completely made up."
An uncle from Florida picked him up in New Orleans. From there he traveled by train to California, where his mother and sister welcomed him.
His first job was washing dishes in a Filipino restaurant. Within a month, through contacts provided by his brother, he entered the caregiving industry.
He never left.
For more than 20 years, Arnold became part of an invisible workforce that helps sustain America's long-term care system. While families struggled to care for aging parents and grandparents, immigrants like him quietly filled the gap.
Every patient represented both livelihood and responsibility. The death of one client often meant not only grief but weeks of uncertainty before another placement became available.
Today, age and illness are catching up with him.

For more than 20 years, Arnold became part of an invisible workforce that helps sustain America's long-term care system.

Fortunately, life also brought him something he had not anticipated.
He married a nurse.
Together they built a life. When he is home, Arnold helps with household responsibilities. In return, his wife has become his emotional anchor and practical safety net.
"Pero kailangan kong magpatuloy he said. "Nahihiya naman ako sa asawa ko." (I have to keep going. I don't want to let my wife down.)
Through marriage, he has obtained health insurance, a driver's license, and a pathway toward legal residency. Yet the process remains uncertain. Completing it may require returning to the Philippines for immigration processing before being allowed to reenter the United States.
The prospect worries both of them.
Recent debates over immigration enforcement have only heightened their anxiety. News reports about deportations, challenges to immigration status, and efforts to revisit some citizenship cases have created a climate of uncertainty for many immigrant families.
Whether every fear proves justified or not, the effect is real. For Arnold and his wife, the possibility of leaving the United States and not being able to return is no longer an abstract concern.
Like many immigrants who have spent decades building a life in America, Arnold no longer has a clear place to return to. The grandmother who once anchored the family is gone. Other relatives have passed away over the years. He was unable to attend many of their funerals because leaving the United States could have jeopardized his ability to come back.
As the nation debates immigration, border walls, deportations, and legal status, Arnold's story reminds us that behind every political argument is a human being.
Home, in many ways, exists only in memory.
So Arnold continues. Despite diabetes. Despite the neuropathy. Despite the uncertainty.
Every day he gets into his car and drives to another patient who needs help getting through the day.
For more than 20 years he has cared for America's elderly. Now he worries about becoming a burden.
He asks no favors except for the chance to continue working. And he cannot help wondering:
Who will care of him when his turn comes?

Rudy D. Liporada was a feature writing instructor in Zambia, Africa before he moved to the US and became a freelance writer/novelist/columnist ("As the Bamboos Sway"). He graduated from the University of the Philippines, majoring in economics.

More articles from Rudy D. Liporada

Baguio’s Horror Festival Sparks Clash Over Art, Faith, City’s Identity

Rene Astudillo — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 16:12:37 +0000

What began as a Halloween-themed gathering has turned into an unlikely debate over art, religion, public space and the identity Baguio City wants to project.
The controversy centers on the Baguio Horror Festival, whose signature Halloween parade in late October happens along Session Road, followed by activities at People’s Park. The festival and its Zombie Walk trace their beginnings to 2011 and have attracted cosplayers, students, tourists, artists and spectators.

The Zombie Walk in 2016 (Source: SpookyconPH/Facebook)

The controversy erupted after a Christian group led by Gerard Ericson Pangilinan of Endtime Harvest Christian Ministries International asked the Baguio City Council to review the festival’s permits. The petitioners objected to themes involving death, horror, the macabre and occultism and questioned whether a public event built around such imagery is compatible with Baguio’s status as a “Character City” under Ordinance 39-2023.
The petition does not seek to criminalize private Halloween celebrations. It calls for a review of the festival’s permits and measures to ensure that public events conform to the city’s character-building policies. Some opponents, however, have gone further in discussions, calling for the event to be stopped altogether, while others have proposed modifying it.
Festival organizer Carl Paolo Corpuz has offered a different perspective. He says “horror” is being used as an artistic genre encompassing films, literature, photography, costumes and visual arts. He has rejected the suggestion that the festival promotes Satanism or blasphemy and has described the Halloween parade as family oriented.
Willing to Compromise
The organizers have nevertheless shown willingness to compromise. They have indicated that excessively graphic or bloody imagery could be toned down and that the phrase “turn Baguio into a horror capital,” which appeared in promotional material, be withdrawn altogether. Corpuz explained that the expression was marketing language rather than a formal proposal to redefine Baguio.
That willingness became significant during a September 14 preliminary dialogue facilitated by Councilor Yuri Weygan, and a City Council forum on September 21. Representatives of the festival, religious groups, the academe and other concerned citizens discussed possible ways forward.
The dialogue revealed that the opposing side itself is not monolithic. Some participants wanted the event banned, while others favored modifications that would address concerns about children and graphic imagery while allowing the celebration to continue. Alternative concepts mentioned included a festival of light, lantern parade, or character-and-creativity festival.
There is also a legitimate public-policy question here. Unlike a private Halloween party, the proposed parade occupies public space and involves government permitting and support. Critics therefore argue that the city has a legitimate interest in determining what kind of public activities are consistent with its policies and appropriate for children.
But there is an equally important question concerning artistic and cultural expression.
Popular Culture Genre

(Graphics courtesy of MCPT Media Production)

Horror is a recognized genre of popular culture. Zombies, ghosts, vampires, monsters and fictional demons appear in movies, books, theater, television, cosplay and visual art. Portraying such a character does not automatically mean embracing the beliefs or behavior represented by that character.
Baguio itself has a long association with ghost stories and allegedly haunted places. Halloween and cosplay have also become part of the city’s contemporary cultural landscape. The question, therefore, is not simply whether Baguio should have Halloween, but where the city draws the line between artistic expression and what it considers inappropriate public imagery.
Councilor Weygan has emphasized that the issue should not become a battle between the religious and creative sectors. Former councilor Isabelo “Poppo” Cosalan, who authored the Character City Ordinance, has likewise encouraged the parties to work toward conditions acceptable to those involved.
Fantasy Festival as Alternative
After weeks of debate involving religious groups, artists, organizers, educators and the Baguio City Council, the organizers announced during the council meeting that they are dropping the Horror Parade as a public event.
But fear not, Halloween fans. The monsters are apparently not being banished from Baguio altogether. They are simply being asked to change costumes.

But fear not, Halloween fans. The monsters are apparently not being banished from Baguio altogether. They are simply being asked to change costumes.

In place of the Horror Parade, organizers have proposed a “Fantasy Festival,” featuring characters and themes drawn from different literary and popular genres, including mythology, folklore, movies and films.
In other words, the zombies may have been sent home, but the dragons, gods, witches, superheroes, elves, ghosts and assorted creatures of the imagination may still have a reservation.

Rene Astudillo is a writer, book author and blogger and has recently retired from more than two decades of nonprofit community work in the Bay Area. He spends his time between California and the Philippines.

More articles from Rene Astudillo

2026 In Memoriam (Third Quarter)

Mona Lisa Yuchengco — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 00:34:38 +0000

APRIL
Mary Rivera, 82, the actor who played the mother of Jacob Batalon’s Ned in Spider-Man: No Way Home, after suffering a stroke, on April 15, in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Mary Rivera (Source: Comic/Instagram)

MAY
Mylah de Leon, 82, journalist and award-winning lifestyle columnist, former vice president of the Filipino American Press Club of California, on May 1, in Beverly Hills, California.

Mylah de Leon (Source: Dignity Memorial)

JUNE
Chris Lorenz Fabian, 15, student at San Jose National High School in Tacloban City, killed as he blocked the entry of shooters aged 14 and 15, shielding his teachers and classmates, on June 22, in Tacloban, Philippines.

Chris Lorenz Fabian (Source: Instagram)

Ayessa Nicole Dazo, 14, and Joyancee Badoria, 15, students at San Jose National High School in Tacloban City, killed by two teenagers, on June 22, in Tacloban, Philippines.

(l-R) Ayessa Nicole Dazo and Joyancee Badoria (SOurce: Facebook)

JULY
Jose B. Crisol, Jr., 59, Head of Investor Relations at GT Capital Holdings and senior vice president at the Ty family conglomerate that owns stakes in Metrobank, Toyota Motor Philippines, Federal Land and Metro Pacific Investments, on July 2, in Manila.

Jose B. Crisol, Jr. (Source: GT Capital Holdings)

Nolan Xavier Wells, 18, Black Filipino football wide receiver at Southwest Mississippi Community College, while with his friends on a July 4 outing at Horn Island, Mississippi Gulf Coast. His death drew national attention in discussions of race since Wells was the only Black person in the group at the time of his death.

Nolan Xavier Wells (Source: Locket Williams Mortuary)

Reli German, 86, one of the founders of the August Twenty-One Movement (ATOM) and a public relations strategist, on July 9, in Manila.

Reli German (Source: Facebook)

Meinrado Paredes, 79, Cebu judge and human rights lawyer, who returned the Golden Pillar of Law Award by the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) after learning that former President Duterte received the same award, on July 11, in Cebu.

Meinrado Paredes (Source: University of Cebu, College of Law)

Cesar Zalamea, 97, veteran banker and Philamlife’s first Filipino president, on July 13, in Manila.

Cesar Zalamea (Source: BizNewsAsia)

Dr. Kent Carpenter, 73, an internationally acclaimed marine biologist whose life’s works helped transform the Philippines into a globally recognized center of marine biodiversity, during a brutal home invasion, on July 14, in Negros Oriental.

Dr. Kent Carpenter (Source: IUCN)

Mimo Osmeña, age unknown, entrepreneur, leader of the Probinsya Muna Development Initiative (PROMDI) political party and son of the late Governor Lito Osmena, on July 15, in Cebu.

Mimo Osmeña (Source: Facebook)

Concepcion “Ching” Alano, 74, former assistant lifestyle editor of the Philippine Star, of lung cancer, on July 17, in Manila.

Concepcion “Ching” Alano (Source: Philstar)

Efren R. Abueg, 89, novelist, essayist, anthologist and educator, on July 20, in Manila.

Efren R. Abueg (Source: Instagram)

Cedric Eneluna, 23, Airman First Class, following a heavy-equipment incident at Vanderberg Space Force Base in California, on July 21.

Cedric Eneluna (Source: Santa Maria Times)

Jose Sison, 88, lawyer and TV host, on July 23, in Manila.

Jose Sison (Source: Facebook)

Pocholo Goitia, 43, writer, editor of The Flame, the UST official student publication, and the Official Gazette of the Philippines, and chief of Communications division of The Film Academy, due to acute coronary syndrome, on July 26, in Manila.

Pocholo GoiTia (Source: Facebook)

Mutch Carino, 69, community leader, concert and event producer, on July 31, in Los Angeles.

Mutch Carino (Source: Ruben Nepales/Facebook)

AUGUST
Roger Calvin, 79, veteran Filipino American actor, on August 1, in Manila.

Roger Calvin (Source: Sunstar)

Antonio “Toni” Galang, 75, icon and master couturier, on August 1, in Manila.

Antonio “Toni” Galang (Source: SCBHS69.com)

Romeo Jalosjos, 85, former Zamboanga del Norte representative and television producer, on August 2, in Manila.

Romeo Jalosjos (Source: Facebook)

Estrellita Noble, 84, psychiatrist on August 2, in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Estrellita Noble (Source: Dignity Memorial)

Jobert Sucaldito, 65, veteran entertainment journalist, on August 2, in Manila.

Jobert Sucaldito (Source: PEP PH/Facebook)

Corazon G. Iñigo, 96, National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) Dangal ng Haraya Awardee and Philippine dance pioneer, on August 5, in Manila.

Corazon G. Iñigo (Source: Philippine High School for the Arts)

Louella Barra Orillaza, age unknown, former chair of the UP Department of Psychology, on August 7, in Manila.

Louella Barra Orillaza (Source: UP Diliman)

Dr. Eduardo Roberto, 86, educator, resource speaker and respected marketing figure, on August 9, in Manila.

Dr. Eduardo ROberto (Source: Josiahgo.com)

Jeanette C. Patindol, 58, children’s writer, educator and self-described practical mystic, on August 13, in Manila.

Jeanette Pindol (Source: Honey Grace Catalan/Facebook)

Rosalina “Nene” Jalosjos, 79, former Zamboanga del Norte governor, on August 14, two weeks after the passing of her brother and political kingpin Romeo Jalosjos, on August 14, in Zamboanga.

Rosalina Jalosjos (Source: Manila Bulletin)

Eugenio Demigillo, Jr., 75, activist and ex-detainee, former UP Philosophy professor, and chair of the board of directors of Partner Rural Bank (Cotabato) Inc., on August 16, in Binan, Laguna. Philippines.

Eugenio Demigillo, Jr. (Source: Facebook)

Marra PL Lanot, 82, trilingual poet, essayist and freelance journalist, on August 16, in Manila,

Marra PL Lanot (Source: Rappler/Facebook)

Albert Mitchell Locsin, 55, advocate and stalwart of the Philippine business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, on August 18, in Manila.

Albert Mitchell Locsin (Source: NewsbytesPH)

Mohammad Mael Jalani, 9th grade student at Ateneo de Zamboanga, shot himself after shooting and killing another student, on August 18, in Zamboanga.

Mohammad Mael Jalani (Source: Facebook)

Patrick Dylan Wee, 10th grade student, killed by Mahammed Mael Jalani at the Ateneo de Zamboanga campus, on August 18, in Zamboanga.

Patrick Dylan Wee (Source: Facebook)

Vanessa Rangadhol, 30, singer and member of the young co-ed music group Sugarpop, after sustaining severe traumatic brain injury and internal hemorrhage from an accidental fall in the bathroom, on August 19, in Manila.

Vanessa Rangadhol (Source: Rappler)

Anthony Cruz Legarda, 63, San Francisco-based fashion designer and advocate of indigenous fabrics, due to a massive heart attack, on August 20, in Manila.

Anthony Cruz Legarda (Source: Sentro Filipino)

Tito Genova Valiente, 70, public anthropologist, film critic, writer, educator and cultural advocate, on August 22, in Manila.

Tito Genova Valiente (Source: National Commission for Culture and the Arts)

Dionisia A. “Dan” Rola, 105, professor of English and Comparative Literature, founding chancellor of the University of the Philippines in the Visayas (UPV) making her the first woman chancellor of the UP System, on August 26, of natural causes, in the Philippines.

Dionisia A. “Dan” Rola (Source: UP Visayas/Facebook)

James Y.S. Yap, 74, federal and naval career man and proud sponsor of The Filipino Veterans Recognition and Education Project (FilVetREP), on August 29, in Arlington. Virginia.

James Y.S. Yap (Source: FilVetRep/Facebook)

Wilfredo Cagatin, Sr., 78, jockey, on August 30, in Manila.

Wilfredo Cagatin, Sr. (Source: Martha Real Raw/Instagram)

SEPTEMBER
Monti Parungao, 58, director known for film and TV projects including Survivor Philippines, The Lost Recipe, due to colon cancer, on September 1, in Manila.

Monti Parungao (Source: GMA News)

Carmen Loreto-Cari, 90, former Baybay City mayor and ex-Leyte representative, on September 1, in Leyte.

Carmen Loreto-Cari (Source: Baybay, Leyte/Facebook)

Resil B. Mojares, 83, award-winning writer, historian and literary critic, and National Artist for Literature, on September 5, in Cebu.

Resil B. Mojares (Source: Facebook)

Luis Alcaraz Abad, 60, blind piano prodigy, due to heart attack and diabetes, on September 5, in Manila.

Luis Alcaraz Abad (Source: Ramon BUnag/Facebook)

Manuel Tagle Sr., 96, father of Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, on September 6, in Manila.

Manuel Tagle, Sr. (Source: RCAM Media)

Patricio B. Lazaro, PhD, 81, former professor at UP College of Arts and Sciences department of Speech and Drama, former dean of UP College Baguio, and former UP Vice President for Public Affairs, on September 7, in Manila.

Patricio B. Lazaro (Source: Morning Beacon/Facebook)

Lucia Sisic, 22, reigning Miss Austria who had a lifelong heart condition and underwent several heart surgeries, on September 8, in Austria.

Lucia Sisic (Source: ABS-CBN/Facebook)

Modesto Sa-onoy, 88, historian and fierce journalist, due to pneumonia, on September 10, in Negros Occidental.

Modesto Sa-onoy (Source: Facebook)

Danilo L. Evangelista, 79, assistant professor at UPLB Department of Agriculture and Applied Economics whose career spanned more than 40 years, on September 12, in Manila.

Danilo L. Evangelista (Source: UPLB Department of Agriculture and Applied Economics/Facebook)

Ricardo “Recah” Trinidad, 83, Inquirer columnist and sports journalist, after suffering a heart attack in June, on September 13, in Manila.

Ricardo “Recah” Trinidad (Source: Rappler)

Eugenia “Eggie” Duran Apostol, 100, Philippine Daily Inquirer founder who used her publications to challenge those in power and to champion press freedom, on September 13, in Manila.

Eugenia “Eggie” Duran Apostol (Source: Wikipedia)

Ma. Lailani B. Walo, 55, former faculty member of the UP Diliman Institute of Mathematics, on September 14, in Manila.

Ma. Lailani B. Walo (Source: UP Diliman)

Fe T. Becina-Macalino, 73, lawyer and Commercial Law professor at the University of the East, on September 14, in Manila.

Fe T. Becina-Macalino (Source: Central Books/Facebook)

Dakila Carlo “Dax” Cua, 48, Quirino Governor and former Congressman, of lung cancer, on September 15, in Manila.

Dakila Carlo “Dax” Cua (Source: Wikipedia)

Dolores Sibonga, 95, first Filipino to pass the Washington State Bar and first woman of color to serve on the Seattle City Council, on September 16, in Seattle, Washington.

Dolores Sibonga (Source: History Link)

Gumersindo M. Garcia III, M.D., 62, surgeon and consultant at De Los Santos Medical Center in the Department of Surgery, on September 16, in Manila.

Gumersindo M. Garcia III, M.D. (Source: De Los Santos Medical Center/Instagram)

Jonathan S. Orano, 52, director and writer, on September 17, in Manila.

Jonathan S. Orano (Source: Instagram)

Nath Alcantara, 24, De La Salle University golfer, after falling from a building in Bonifacio Global City (BGC), on September 18, in Manila.

Nath Alcantara (Source: Mount Malarayat Golf and Country Club/Facebook)

Dr. Michelle Bustos, 45, internal medicine doctor and member of the Carmelian community, on September 18, in Manila.

Dr. Michelle Bustos (Source: Facebook)

Lucia Suizo Subaldo, 66, College President of Saint Pedro Poveda College from 2018 to 2022, on September 19, in Manila.

Lucia Suizo Subaldo (Source: Facebook)

Oswaldo “Waldy” Carbonell, 83, veteran journalist, author and political commentator known for his confrontational takes on China and local politics, on September 20, in Manila.

Oswaldo “Waldy” Carbonell (Source: Facebook)

Ciriaco “Jun” Gato Jr., 66, doctor, Batanes representative, chairperson of the House Committee on Health, due to cardiac arrest, on September 21, in Manila.

Ciriaco “Jun” Gato Jr. (Source: Wikipedia)

Antonio M. Maghirang, 69, music critic, journalist and contributing editor known for his extensive coverage of Philippine indie music, rock culture and technology, on September 21, in Manila.

Antonio M. Maghirang (Source: Instagram)

Ricarido Delfin King, 77, trustee of The Sugbu Chinese Heritage Museum Foundation, Cebu businessman and philanthropist, on September 21, in Manila.

Ricarido Delfin King (Source: Facebook)

Frances Santos Roces, 45, former goalkeeper of the Philippine Women’s National Football Team from 2003 to 2007, who helped pave the way for the Filipinas to rise as an AFF champion, SEA Games gold medalist and two-time World Cup Team, on September 22, in Manila.

Frances Santos Roces (Source: Facebook)

Luis “Chito” Reyes Antonio, 79, architect, fashion and culinary artist, son of National Artist for Architecture Pablo S. Antonio, on September 23, in Manila.

Luis “Chito” Reyes Antonio (Source: Facebook)

Sam Costanilla, age unknown, veteran Cebu media personality, found dead inside his car, on September 25, Cebu City.

Sam Costanilla (Source: Facebook)

Ramon Dacayo, 64, marketing management faculty member at College of Commerce and Business Administration, University of Santo Tomas, on September 25, in Manila.

Ramon Dacayo (Source: College of Commerce and Business Administration, University of Santo Tomas/Facebook)

Sr. Marisa Lichauco, 97, Maryknoll sister and former principal, disability advocate, on September 25, in Manila.

Sr. Marisa Lichauco (Source: Maryknoll Media Archives)

Eric V. Jimenez, 57, journalist at The Angeles Sun, GMA News and Kapampangan Magazine, on September 27, in Manila.

Eric V. Jimenez (Source: Facebook)

Martin Oliver Solis Dipasupil, 56, veteran radio personality, recipient of the Best Music Radio Jock award, on September 27, in Manila.

Martin Oliver Solis Dipasupil (Source: ABS-CBN/X.com)

Rev. Msgr. Alfonso A. Bugaoan, Jr., 74, former DOCES Superintendent and School Director of Immaculate Conception Cathedral School, on September 27, in Manila.

Rev. Msgr. Alfonso A. Bugaoan, Jr. (Source: Instagram)

Dr. Melissa T. Sena, 53, Officer-in-Charge Assistant Secretary of Health and concurrent Director IV of the Health Facility Development Bureau of Department of Health, on September 28, in Manila.

Dr. Melissa T. Sena (Source: Philippine Hospital Infection Control Society)

Jose Ramon “Monchet” Olives, 62, former communications executive at ABS-CBN, writer and culture bearer, after falling from a condominium building, on September 29, in Manila.

Jose Ramon “Monchet” Olives (Source: Tesoros/Facebook)

OCTOBER
Cesar E. A. Virata, 95, former Prime Minister and Minister of Finance during the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Sr., on October 2, of natural causes, in Manila.

Cesar E.A. Virata (Source: Batasan Pambansa/Wikipedia)

Nurse Greta’s Successful Journey

Jocelyn Alvarez Allgood — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 00:34:33 +0000

Greta Pardue at the recent 40th gala celebration of the North Texas Asian American Cultural Association in Irving, Texas, August 2026 (Photo courtesy of Greta Pardue).

The words of Florence Nightingale, founder of modern nursing, “Live life when you have it. Life is a splendid gift — there is nothing small in it,” resonate deeply with Greta Boac Pardue. In her life as a Filipino registered nurse, educator and community leader in North Texas, there is nothing small about it.
Nightingale’s words inspired Pardue to become a nurse, following in the footsteps of her older sister, Gloria Boac Ilagan. Like Ilagan, Pardue’s journey at the University of Santo Tomas (UST) began with modest means.
With her father working as an engineer and her mother as a market vendor, Pardue grew up with humility, which she has carried through every stage of her life. From the streets of Baguio City, where she spent her happy childhood, to (UST) College of Nursing, where her leadership skills began to take shape, and to every hospital where she has worked in the Philippines and Texas, she has stayed the course.
Pardue has left a lasting mark on the nurses she has mentored, led, and inspired to “be the best they can be.”
“The manang (housemother) at the nursing dormitory would ask the graduating nurses for their old uniforms to give to the incoming nurses who didn’t have the means to buy more uniforms,” Pardue said. “My sister was graduating, and I got her old uniforms. And I only had one pair of stockings, which I hand-washed every night and dried by the electric fan.”
Pardue said that during her five years as a student at one of the most prestigious universities in Asia, she never owned a single textbook. Instead, she practically “lived in the library, where she would study every night ’til it closed.”
Growing Up Poor
As Pardue recounted her life, she described growing up poor, “making do with what little we have, studying harder, having faith in God and finding joy in small things.”
Finding joy in small things meant, for example, that when the family moved to a Manila suburb and their house had no plumbing, Pardue and her siblings would fetch water for drinking, cooking, and washing dishes from an artesian well around the corner.
And yet, life, as Pardue sees it, is a splendid gift. After graduating in 1973, she worked for a year at Notre Dame Hospital in Baguio City before moving to UST Pay Hospital in 1974, where she served as head nurse in the operating room.
With no plans to go abroad, Pardue accompanied friends to a recruiting agency in Makati. But the chief executive officer of Granville Morton Hospital in Dallas invited her for an interview and, much to her surprise, offered her a job on the spot. In that unexpected moment, new possibilities began to emerge. Working in the United States, once a distant dream, was now becoming a reality.
Journey Begins

Greta B. Pardue (front row, far left) and Alice D. Decker (second row, far right, standing) are pictured in 1975 upon their arrival in Dallas, Texas, at the Granville Morton Hospital with their nursing colleagues (Photo courtesy of Alice D. Decker).

In January 1975, Pardue’s journey began, and her dreams started to materialize. There were 20 nurses in that first group, and Alice Dometiza Decker was among those who traveled with Pardue.
Decker still clearly remembers the cold morning when they arrived at the newly constructed Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) International Airport.
“The first group arrived in January 1975 very early in the morning,” she said. “I believe it was 5 a.m. The DFW Airport was so brand new.”
From the airport, Decker said, hospital staff took them directly to the hospital. “Everything looked big, fresh and bright,” Decker said. “It was a big hospital, with new equipment, automated blood pressure machines, big and beautiful rooms.”
Unlike Decker’s, Pardue’s employment at Granville Morton would be cut short.
“One of my first patients was Martha Jo Pardue, who requested me to be her nurse,” Greta said. “Martha Jo had a son, Craig, who at that time was a Baylor University journalism student.”
On the Move
Craig and Greta fell in love, married six months after they met, and moved to Austin. While Craig worked as a committee clerk in the Texas Legislature, Greta found a job as a charge nurse in Seton Hospital’s cardiovascular unit.
Bigger opportunities came, and she moved to St. David’s Medical Center, where she served as head nurse in the treatment room, which would later become the emergency department.
“I was privileged to plan and build St. David’s first emergency department,” Greta said. “My team and I built and designed that department.”
But the desire to return to Dallas never left the couple. Craig spotted a job in the classified ads of the Austin American-Statesman, and that was all they needed. They left Austin and moved back to Dallas, rebuilding their lives all over again, this time with a toddler in their arms.
Craig became the director of government services at the Dallas County office, while Greta worked as the director of ambulatory services at Gaston Episcopal Hospital until the facility was acquired by Baylor University Medical Center, now Baylor Scott & White Health.
Decker and Greta’s paths would cross again. At Baylor, Greta was appointed manager of the Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Department. Her leadership responsibilities continued to expand when she was appointed nurse leader in launching the first intensivist program, caring for the sickest patients admitted directly from the emergency department to their unit.

Greta B. Pardue (left) and Alice D. Decker are shown at the FILCON board meeting in July (Photo by Jocelyn Alvarez Allgood).

“UST nurses were trained as leaders,” she said. “UST nurses have the presence.”
As the years passed and the Filipino population grew in North Texas, opportunities began to unfold. After 17 years at Baylor, Greta was invited by an assistant chief nursing officer at Medical City Dallas to become a nurse educator. The hospital developed a two-step plan to recruit employees and appointed Greta program coordinator.
The hospital partnered with two community colleges in the Metroplex, and Greta was considered a faculty member at both, teaching recruits to become future registered nurses. The hospital paid the students’ tuition and book expenses in exchange for their commitment to work at Medical City for two years. Many of the students who left after their contracts ended went on to become administrators at the hospitals where they worked, and Greta carries their success quietly and internally.
“Don’t underestimate yourself,” she said. “You never know the impact you have in other people’s lives.”
More Focused Purpose
That impact took on a more focused purpose when, in the early 2000s, she heard that a “Filipino nurse committed suicide because she was being investigated by the Texas Board of Nursing.” The news hit Greta hard. She reached out to the Philippine Nurses Association of America and went on to establish the Philippine Nursing Association of America – North Texas (PNANT) Chapter in 2001. She served as its first president while gathering members and shaping its mission for the future.
“Nurses need representation,” she said. “It was really sad that there was no organization that could have helped her.”
Today, PNANT stands strong and is considered one of the most active chapters in the community and the country.
“I think that’s the seed that was planted for me,” Greta said. “To basically be able to support other nurses not only in that sad situation but also celebrate them for their contributions in the community.”

As Pardue recounted her life, she described growing up poor, “making do with what little we have, studying harder, having faith in God and finding joy in small things.”

From Medical City Dallas, Greta became program coordinator at Medical City Lewisville, leading the hospital’s preparations for Magnet status. From there, she was hired by Texas Health Resources (THR) as one of its educators. She traveled to THR hospitals across North Texas to mentor new nurses and prepare them for full clinical readiness. She currently works at THR in Plano, her last stop as she prepares for retirement in 2027.
In her 53 years in the profession, Greta witnessed health care change from paper to electronic charting, from heavy textbooks to digital searches, and from guiding new graduates to celebrating the success of her own mentees.
“I have cherished the joy of sharing knowledge and seeing others grow and get to be in the position to love nursing,” Greta said. “Knowledge impacts healing practice.”
Dramatic Changes

Greta B. Pardue (center, sitting) and FILCON board members (from left) Galileo Jumaoas, Emelda Valcarcel, Alice Decker (standing, third from left), Sally Phillips, Madonna Bennett, Myrna Carreon and Tess Gabay are shown at the board meeting in July (Photo courtesy of Emelda Valcarcel).

Her life has also changed dramatically. In 2024, after 48 years of marriage, Craig passed away from angiosarcoma.
As she has extended her leadership into the Filipino community, her presence continues to strengthen the community and give Filipinos a voice amid the changing demographics of North Texas. Greta currently serves as president of the Filipino Leaders Coalition of North Texas (FILCON), an organization founded in 2018 by community leaders Gus and Ethel Mercado. FILCON proudly presents the annual celebration of Philippine Independence, preserves Philippine culture, and shares the nation’s heritage with the North Texas community.
At each annual festival, Greta leads with quiet strength, supported by the original officers, including Decker.
Decker, whose life has intersected with Greta’s in many ways, now serves as FILCON’s secretary. The parallels in their careers have kept them crossing paths for decades as two women committed to “service with purpose,” often arriving at the same place at the same time. Both have received the prestigious DFW Great 100 Nurses award.
“We are now at the stage of our lives where we are focused on retirement,” Decker said. “Volunteerism is now our passion. Service to others and giving back to the community is now our life's mission.”
As Greta prepares to leave her beloved profession, she reflects on the decades that have shaped her into the leader she is today.
“Education is important in life,” she said. “It lifts us from poverty.”

Jocelyn Alvarez Allgood is a freelance writer from Sanger, TX.

More articles from Jocelyn Alvarez Allgood

Riotbones’ Odyssey Into Gothic Horror Graphic Novels

Anthony Maddela — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 00:34:24 +0000

Riotbones’ past works

In The Odyssey, movie director Christopher Nolan gave Odysseus a personality makeover. A minority of moviegoers comprised of classics scholars could hardly recognize the reformed Odysseus who was less godlike, more remorseful, less criminal and, to their dismay, extremely popular. Nolan discovered the secret elixir of self-improvement: Act out of character from your usual self.
It took Odysseus 3,000 years and three hours to overhaul his troubling image. Modern persons can become their better selves in a relatively short time through choices that depart from their established routines. Some can tweak their behavior by expanding their reading preferences.
Strange Cases is a graphic novel in the growing adult gothic horror genre that will please a wide audience of readers whether they love graphic novels or avoid them like the black plague. This one will change minds and hearts of fans of gothic horror, legal thrillers, or Filipino folklore. Riotbones, 26, created this entryway into something riveting and strange.
Strange Cases was written and illustrated by Riotbones, a queer illustrator and human rights activist living in Brighton and Hove, England. Andrews McMeel Publishing will release their book in the United States on October 13, 2026, and a month later in the United Kingdom (UK).

Riotbones (Photo courtesy of Riotbones)

Riotbones left alone for England three years ago while mom Flery, dad Ramir and sister Jann stayed behind in the Philippines. A Global Talent Visa enables them to work in the UK. A separation of more than 10,000 kilometers gives Riotbones a vantage point to manipulate history and time while still retaining an intimate connection to the Philippines of their recent youth.

From left to right, my mom Flery, me, my sister Jann, and my dad Ramir (Photo courtesy of Riotbones)

The story happens in the fictional town of Lazaro in the Philippines in mid-19th century. Jude Aguilar is home on break from law studies in Lonvale, whose architecture is inspired by the University of Edinburgh. He haphazardly wanders into the role of defense lawyer for town locals who are accused of crimes that have a supernatural dimension.
One defendant causes fires through spontaneous combustion. A sailor is held in contempt instead of celebrated as the only crewmate to return on a doomed galleon. A goat herder’s daughter who’s accused of patricide is unwittingly the victim of a sinister conspiracy.
Light in the Darkness
Strange Cases is set in a time of kerosene and candles. Lighting is perfect for Riotbones to show mastery of ambience. Whisps of candle smoke float across the pages signaling last bursts before night displaces light. Darkness is the playground of uncertainty and menace. Characters can only sense which occurrences foreshadow a breakthrough in a mystery or hint of imminent doom.
Asked why the hero is a lawyer, Riotbones looks back to their childhood in the Philippines. “It’s funny because I was always a very argumentative kid growing up. That’s why I ended up becoming an activist. My mom started calling me ‘Attorney’ because I was arguing with her everything.” (We’ll say more about their preternatural activism later.)
The atmosphere of Lazaro is portrayed in dark matte colors with cryptids always lurking behind the Spanish colonial structures. Yet, this graphic novel isn’t an encyclopedia of monsters borne from the Philippine’s colonial past, such as Aswang, Kapre, and Manananggal. Riotbones draws but doesn’t name the ominous figures. This way they never distract from worldly villains in the guise of politicians, colonial aristocrats and multinational companies.
The monsters have a more civilizing effect on humanity than the heirs of the Enlightenment. ‘Throughout the whole story, monsters are shown but aren’t actually the thing that you're meant to be scared of,” Riotbones says. “The real horror is the people.”
Rampant exploitation of natural resources leads to tsunamis and a collapsing flood plain. “Floods are causing a lot of destruction and death in Strange Cases and the Philippines. Much of Manila was built on reclaimed land so it’s slowly sinking,” observes Riotbones with the eye of an activist and artist.
From Doodler to Auteur

More works by Riotbones

“I’ve been making comics for as long as I can remember. I started as soon as I could hold a pencil.” Riotbones recalls, “I would get these notebooks, and I would just fill them with comics even as early as five years old. Obviously, they weren’t very good, but they show that I’ve always had that urge to tell a story.”
University developed Riotbones’ untamed talent into coherent art. They have a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Communications from University of the Philippines, Diliman and a Masters in Critical and Cultural Theory from University of Leeds, located north of London.
“When I was studying fine arts, we could choose our electives, which would encompass painting, sculpting and stuff like that,” they explain. “But then we could also take classes at the university in art history and art theory. These disciplines aligned well with my activism.”
While college refined raw talent, Riotbones retained a knack for pinpointing scenes that best illustrate key moments. Verbal storytelling reinforced this intuition, raising the impact of illustrations. “A variety of art forms came natural to me. It’s why I always wanted to be a filmmaker, but it’s too expensive in comparison to fine arts,” they lament.
Words defer to images: “I always start immediately with the image, and the text comes later.”
Among several accolades, Riotbones finds most meaningful the recognition of their contributions to the Death in the Mouth Anthology because of its melding of art and activism. “It’s an anthology by people in the margins. It focuses on people of color and the LGBTQ community who have been sidelined by society. I illustrated one of the stories in the second installation of the anthology at the Australasian Shadow Awards which showcase the horror genre.”
Evocative Gothic Horror
Riotbones favors gothic horror for how it uses metaphor as a means for ideas to slowly permeate the reader’s subconscious. “You might take a house that's crumbling as a representation of a family that’s falling apart. Incorporating metaphor into art is a hard challenge from an aesthetic perspective. But the process is enhanced by the slowness of gothic horror. In gothic horror you don’t have jump scares. It’s more about dread than pure terror.”

Strange Cases was written and illustrated by Riotbones, a queer illustrator and human rights activist living in Brighton and Hove, England.

Riotbones proposes gothic horror as a lens for interpreting an anxiety over technologies that threaten to upend society. “I feel that gothic horror is quite in line with how we feel about A.I. right now. It’s not a monster that's going to jump out at us. It's something that's slowly creeping up on us. It’s more of a presence.”
As an activist, Riotbones supports the nongovernment organization, Anakbayan UK, which raises funds for victims of extrajudicial killings in the Philippines during the Rodrigo Duterte regime (2016 to 2022). (“In high school I became disillusioned with the system. That’s why I got involved with activism.”) Plans are underway for a fundraising collaboration with International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines on November 30, 2026. Andrews McMeel Publishing is donating books to the event.
While Riotbones sounds like the pseudonym of a rock star, their singing voice admittedly won’t rival the typical Filipino’s. Nonetheless, all Filipinos have a genetic predisposition toward karaoke mics. They have been successful at concealing their identity. So far. But suppose you walk into a Brighton and Hove bar on karaoke night and a Filipino queues up Black Parade (a 2006 standard by My Chemical Romance). Please resist the compulsion to photograph Riotbones and destroy their anonymity. Then maybe out of gratitude, they will join you in a duet of Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.

Anthony Maddela covers a variety of topics with the insights of a Seattle native and Los Angeles resident.

More articles from Anthony Maddela

After the School Shootings: What Teachers Must Now Carry Into the Classroom

Ivy Marie B. Abao — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 00:33:53 +0000

An empty school hallway in Cebu. For educators, keeping schools safe has increasingly become part of the responsibilities surrounding teaching and learning.

Before every class, I always ask myself the same question: How can I make today’s learning experience more meaningful for my students?
The June 22, 2026 shooting at San Jose National High School in Tacloban City, Leyte, changed that routine in ways I never expected.
Is someone in this room silently struggling?
You will not find that question in any syllabus. It has nothing to do with course outcomes, learning activities, or assessment rubrics. Yet I suspect many educators now carry it with them before every class.
After the June 22 Tacloban shooting, the national conversation quickly turned to school security, gun ownership, bullying, violent online content, juvenile justice, and the responsibilities of parents. These are necessary conversations. But as I followed the news, I found myself thinking about something else.
It changed something no policy can easily measure. It changed the quiet thoughts teachers carry before they even begin a class.
That question does not come from fear. It comes from the realization that student well-being is no longer a conversation confined to the guidance office. It has become part of the everyday reality of education. As educators, we increasingly encounter students who are quietly navigating personal struggles while trying to continue their education. That reality has changed what many of us carry into the classroom.
The response was immediate.
Schools began preparing for active-shooter drills, with the Philippine National Police joining these exercises. Local governments were also called upon to strengthen school safety, with the Department of the Interior and Local Government directing local governments to establish Safer School Zones and mobilize barangay watchmen around schools. These measures were intended to give students and school personnel clearer protocols for responding to emergencies.
For many Filipino educators, these are measures we never imagined would become part of our educational vocabulary.
Then came Zamboanga.
On August 18, less than two months after the Tacloban violence, another school shooting occurred at Ateneo de Zamboanga University. A Grade 9 student shot a Grade 10 schoolmate inside the school building before taking his own life. The investigation later found no established school-related or personal grievance that could sufficiently explain the shooting. Instead, investigators identified prior preparation and exposure to violent online material among the circumstances surrounding the incident, while gaps in firearm safekeeping and school security contributed to how the shooting unfolded.

An empty classroom in Cebu, where the work of educating students increasingly extends beyond lessons, activities, and assessments.

The Zamboanga shooting showed how quickly a school community can be forced to confront the same terrifying reality. What had prompted urgent safety measures in Tacloban had now happened again in another school community.
What caught my attention was not only the renewed focus on security, but the recognition that the effects of school violence extend beyond physical safety. Following the Zamboanga incident, school heads agreed to tighten security protocols while placing equal focus on the mental well-being of learners and staff. Psychological first aid and psychosocial support were also provided to affected learners, parents and employees.
That distinction matters.
Safety is not separate from education. It is a prerequisite for it.
Then came South Cotabato.
On September 18, a shooting at Banga National High School in South Cotabato left three people dead and six others wounded. Classes were suspended, while the Department of Education coordinated with local authorities and law enforcement and assured psychological first aid and psychosocial support for those affected.
Three school shootings in a matter of months make it harder to treat each incident as an isolated tragedy. For teachers, each new incident adds another layer to the quiet calculations that happen before class: Is my classroom safe? Does this student need help? What signs might I miss? And if something goes wrong, what am I expected to do?
But as I watched these changes unfold, I found myself asking a different question.
How much more can we expect schools to carry?
Long before these recent school shootings, Philippine education was already carrying enormous challenges: learning recovery, overcrowded classrooms, teacher shortages, limited facilities, and unequal access to educational resources.
Today, schools are expected to do far more than educate. They are expected to recognize signs of emotional distress, strengthen mental health support, prevent bullying, coordinate with law enforcement, conduct emergency drills, reassure anxious parents, and protect thousands of learners every day.
None of these expectations are unreasonable. In fact, they are necessary. But every new responsibility requires policies, funding, trained personnel, and real support from government and communities. It cannot simply depend on the hope that schools and teachers will somehow find a way.
The problem is that we sometimes talk about school safety as though it begins and ends at the school gate.
It does not.
The three incidents have shown how questions of school safety can quickly become questions about families, firearm access, student well-being, digital spaces, emergency preparedness, and community response. The Commission on Population and Development has likewise emphasized that school violence is not solely a law enforcement or school discipline concern. It is also a family, developmental, mental health and community issue that extends beyond the school environment.
That means responsibility cannot rest on schools alone.
As educators, we can guide, encourage, and support our students. But there are responsibilities that begin long before a child enters the classroom and continue long after the dismissal bell rings. Parents remain the first teachers, and no school can take their place.
Families need support in recognizing changes in their children’s behavior and helping adolescents navigate the challenges they face. Communities need systems that allow young people to seek help before problems escalate. Government needs to provide schools with the funding, personnel, training and policies required to respond to these increasingly complex demands.
Likewise, no single explanation, whether bullying, violent online content, mental health concerns, access to firearms, or juvenile justice, fully explains a tragedy of this magnitude. Focusing on only one cause risks overlooking the complex realities our young people face today.
What worries me most is that while we are asking schools to become safer, we must also make sure they remain places where students can still learn with hope and where teachers can still focus on creating meaningful learning experiences.

Questions of school safety can quickly become questions about families, firearm access, student well-being, digital spaces, emergency preparedness, and community response.

The Tacloban school shooting changed more than our conversation about campus security. The Zamboanga shooting made that reality harder to ignore. The South Cotabato shooting made it even harder to dismiss these incidents as isolated events.
We still think about meaningful learning experiences, but we also quietly wonder whether someone sitting in front of us may need help that no lesson plan, learning activity, or assessment can provide.
Safe schools are not created by security measures alone. They are built through shared responsibility.
Because the safest schools are not built with higher walls and stronger gates. They are built when society finally helps carry what it has long asked schools to bear.

Ivy Marie Abao, M.S., is an Assistant Professor of Communication at National University-Cebu. Her academic interests include crisis communication and the role of communication in development and society.

Positively Filipino’s Timeline: Filipino American History

Mona Lisa Yuchengco — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 04:24:44 +0000
Welcome to the 2026 edition of our Filipino American History timeline! All paragraphs marked in red are recent additions.

Pledge of PH Independence Act Turned Filipino U.S. Nationals Into Aliens

Raymond Douglas Chong — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 18:03:02 +0000

Reposted with permission from AsAmNews, August 11, 2026 (link below)

The Philippine insurrection, 1899 (Source: Library of Congress)

The American empire created Filipino migration to America. After Spain ceded the Philippines to the United States (U.S.) in 1898, Filipinos became U.S. nationals. They could migrate to the mainland more freely than many other Asians, but they were not granted the full rights of American citizenship.
Filipino workers faced a fierce racial backlash. The Manongs, the pioneering generation of mostly male Filipino laborers, were hired in farms, canneries, kitchens, hotels and service jobs, in the American West, but rejected as neighbors, husbands, citizens and equals.
The Tydings–McDuffie Act imposed exclusion through the language of independence. The 1934 federal law reclassified Filipinos as aliens for immigration purposes and limited immigration from the Philippines to only 50 people per year. The exclusionary structure began to loosen after World War II, but the deeper transformation did not arrive until 1965.
American Empire Opened the Passage
The Filipino American story does not begin with ordinary immigration.
It begins with empire.
In December 1898, Spain ceded the Philippines to the United States under the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Spanish-American War. The United States agreed to pay Spain $20 million for the islands.
Filipino revolutionaries, who had fought Spain and expected independence, were not treated as equal participants in the transaction. Instead of liberation, they received a new colonial ruler, the United States.
The Philippine-American War soon followed between the United States and the First Philippine Republic. Filipino soldiers and guerrillas fought the American Army, not to exchange one empire for another, but to establish an independent nation, from 1899 to 1902, until their defeat.
American colonial rule nevertheless continued for nearly half a century until 1946. The United States reshaped Philippine schools, government, commerce and military institutions. English-language instruction expanded, and generations of Filipinos grew up learning about American democracy while living under American authority.
That relationship created a profound contradiction.
Because the Philippines belonged to the United States, Filipinos were classified as U.S. nationals rather than foreign aliens. They could travel to the mainland without facing the same immigration barriers already imposed on Chinese and other Asian migrants.
But U.S. nationality did not mean citizenship.
Filipinos could enter the country, work within its economy and serve American interests. They could not automatically claim full political equality or naturalized citizenship.
They were inside the American empire, but outside the boundaries of American belonging.
Anti-Filipino Sentiment in the American West
Filipinos began arriving in growing numbers during the early decades of the 20th century.
They worked on Hawaiian sugar plantations, in Alaska salmon canneries and throughout the agricultural valleys of California and the Pacific Northwest. In cities, they found employment as cooks, bellhops, dishwashers, houseboys, elevator operators and hotel workers.
American employers valued them as mobile and inexpensive labor.
White workers and political organizations increasingly treated them as a racial threat.
Labor leaders accused Filipinos of depressing wages and taking jobs. Newspapers portrayed them as unassimilable outsiders. Politicians discovered that hostility toward Filipino migration could be converted into public support.
The backlash concerned labor, but it was never only about labor.
It also centered on masculinity, marriage and racial boundaries.
Filipino migration was overwhelmingly male. Many young men arrived without wives or families. Migration conditions and the relatively small number of Filipino women made marriage and household formation difficult.
Dance halls became important social spaces. Filipino men entered them wearing pressed shirts and carefully tailored suits. They danced with White, Mexican and other women. After long weeks in fields or canneries, the dance floor offered companionship, dignity and momentary freedom.
Their visibility produced racial panic.
Filipino men were portrayed as sexual rivals who threatened White womanhood. Legislators and courts attempted to fit Filipinos into racial classifications that could be used to prevent interracial marriage. California later expanded its marriage restrictions to include members of the so-called “Malay race,” a category intended to encompass Filipinos.
The question was no longer simply whether Filipinos could labor in America.
It was whether they could love, marry, establish homes and become part of America.
In January 1930, anti-Filipino hostility erupted into several days of violence in Watsonville, California. White mobs terrorized Filipino farmworkers and attacked their residences. Fermin Tobera, a laborer was shot and killed when a mob fired into a bunkhouse.
Watsonville became the most notorious example of anti-Filipino violence, but it was not an isolated event. It reflected a wider movement to control Filipino labor, mobility and intimacy.
America had brought Filipinos beneath its flag.
Now parts of the American West demanded that they be pushed back across the Pacific.
The Manongs Who Made Lives from Movement
The pioneering Filipino workers became known as the Manong generation, elder brothers whose lives connected the Philippines to the farms, canneries and working-class districts of the American West.
They had come young.
Some were teenagers. Others were barely into adulthood. Many were Ilocano, Visayan, Pangasinan or Tagalog speakers who had grown up under American colonial rule and heard promises of opportunity across the Pacific.
Their labor followed the seasons.
They cut asparagus, lettuce, celery, grapes and other crops in California. They cleaned salmon in Alaska, harvested sugar in Hawaii and moved between hotels, kitchens, railroad towns and port cities.
They slept in bunkhouses, boardinghouses, labor camps and inexpensive residential hotels. They sent money home. They carried letters and photographs of parents, siblings and sweethearts they might not see again for years or ever.
America wanted their labor.
It did not want the permanent lives that might grow from it.
Yet the Manongs created community wherever work deposited them. They built Little Manila districts, churches, lodges, newspapers, restaurants, pool halls and labor organizations. They turned rented rooms and agricultural camps into places of memory.
Many endured bachelorhood not as a chosen freedom, but as a condition imposed by racial law, unequal migration and exclusion.
Their sharp suits and dance-hall evenings were not signs of frivolity. They were declarations of humanity within a society that reduced them to laboring bodies.
Filipino Exclusion Through ‘Independence’
Congress faced a legal obstacle to excluding Filipinos.
Because they were U.S. nationals, they could not be restricted as easily as immigrants arriving from independent Asian countries. The United States had claimed the Philippines, governed its people and opened the migration route.
Exclusionists needed to change the Filipinos’ legal status.
Congress found its answer in the Tydings–McDuffie Act of 1934, officially known as the Philippine Independence Act.
The federal law established a process intended to lead to Philippine independence after a 10-year transitional commonwealth period. National independence was a legitimate and long-sought Filipino aspiration.
But Congress attached an immigration weapon to that aspiration.
For the purposes of American immigration law, Filipinos were reclassified as aliens. The Philippines was assigned an annual immigration quota of only 50 people.
That number did not represent a meaningful immigration channel.
It represented exclusion.
Roy Recio of the Tobera Project emphasized that the central 1934 immigration law affecting Filipinos was the Tydings–McDuffie Act.
“The only 1934 act pertaining to Filipinos and immigration was the Tydings–McDuffie Act, which restricted the number of Filipinos coming to America,” Recio said. “It had nothing to do with education and more to do with fear and discrimination.”
Recio’s distinction goes to the heart of the law.
Tydings–McDuffie Act did not measure Filipino education, ability or willingness to contribute. It responded to racial anxiety and political pressure to reduce Filipino migration and prevent Filipino communities from taking permanent root.
The United States had recruited Filipino labor when it needed workers. When Filipino presence provoked White opposition, Congress altered their status.
U.S. nationals became aliens.
People from territory claimed by America became foreigners at America’s door.
Independence was the language.
Exclusion was the result.
Manongs at the Gate
Empire’s tide bore young men west,
Harvest moons watched letters fade.
Fifty names could cross each year —
One strike shook the guarded gate.
© 2026 Raymond Douglas Chong
Exclusion did not End in 1934

Millard Tydings (Source: Library of Congress)

Tydings–McDuffie did more than stop most new Filipino immigration. It narrowed the future for Filipinos already living in the United States.
A man who returned to the Philippines could find himself unable to reenter the country where he had worked for years. Wives, children, siblings and prospective spouses remained across the ocean. Communities could not grow naturally when the annual quota for an entire country was 50.
The law intensified the loneliness of the Manong generation.
Some men grew old in labor camps and residential hotels, carrying photographs, letters and remittances as substitutes for the domestic lives they had been denied.
In 1935, Congress passed the Filipino Repatriation Act. It offered federally funded one-way transportation to Filipinos who agreed to leave the continental United States for the Philippines.
Officials presented the program as voluntary assistance. But under the new quota, a person who accepted passage might never be permitted to return.
Repatriation could become permanent exile.
Fewer than 2,200 Filipinos accepted the offer. The limited response revealed something exclusionists had failed to understand despite discrimination; many Filipinos had already made lives in the United States.
They had worked its fields, paid its rents, established friendships and built institutions. America might classify them as temporary labor, but their years and sacrifices have made the country part of their home.
The federal law wanted to make Filipino life temporary.
But the Manongs stayed.
They built belongings in churches, union halls, restaurants, fraternal lodges, pool rooms, newspapers and Little Manila neighborhoods. They endured exclusion by creating community where the law refused to recognize it.
World War II Service and a Narrow Opening
World War II again exposed the contradiction between Filipino service and Filipino exclusion.
Filipinos fought under American command in the Philippines and across the Pacific. They endured invasion, occupation, Bataan, Corregidor, imprisonment, guerrilla warfare and enormous civilian loss. Filipino Americans from the mainland also entered the U.S. armed forces.
Their service sharpened the moral case for citizenship.
How could Filipinos be treated as permanent aliens when they had fought and died beneath the American flag? How could a country demand their military loyalty while refusing their political belonging?

(Photo by WWolny/Wikimedia Commons)

In 1946, the United States formally recognized Philippine independence. That same year, the Luce–Celler Act permitted Filipinos and Indians to become naturalized U.S. citizens and granted each country an immigration quota of 100 people per year.
It was a meaningful opening, but still a narrow one.
A quota of 100 could not repair decades of separation. It could not return youth to aging Manongs or recreate families that exclusion had prevented.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 removed racial restrictions on naturalization but retained the national-origins quota system. Legal inclusion advanced in increments while the older architecture of unequal immigration endured.
From Exclusion Toward Inclusion
The deeper transformation arrived in 1965 through two struggles that unfolded in the same year.
One occurred at the fields in California.
On September 8, 1965, Filipino members of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee walked out of Delano-area grape vineyards. Led by Larry Itliong, Ben Gines and other veteran organizers, they demanded higher wages and better working conditions.
The strike did not begin as a footnote to someone else’s movement.
Filipino farmworkers initiated it.
The Manongs understood agricultural exploitation because they had lived through decades of seasonal migration, poverty wages, racial violence and exclusion from labor protections.
By 1965, they carried not only workplace demands but also the memory of being treated as disposable.
Their walkout helped ignite the Delano grape strike and the multiracial farmworker movement that followed. It eventually brought Filipino organizers into an alliance with Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta and the National Farm Workers Association.
The Manongs’ strike was about pay.
It was about dignity after decades of exclusion.
The second transformation came through immigration law.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 replaced the national-origins quota structure with a preference system emphasizing family relationships and occupational skills.
For Filipinos, its consequences were profound.

(Photo by KavBear/Wikimedia Commons)

Families separated by decades of restriction could begin to reunite. Nurses, physicians, engineers, students, military relatives and other immigrants entered through new pathways. Filipino American communities expanded beyond their earlier centers in Hawaii and the West Coast.
The law did not erase racism or repair every historic wrong. But it dismantled the immigration structure that had once reduced entry from the Philippines to 50 people per year.
The door finally began to yield.
Remember the Manongs
The Filipino American experience from 1898 to 1965 is not simply a story of immigration.
It is a story of the American empire — and of people who survived its contradictions.
The United States claimed the Philippines, recruited Filipino labor and demanded Filipino military service. Yet it resisted the possibility that Filipinos might become equal members of the nation.
That is why the Manongs must remain at the center of this history.
They were America’s colonial subjects, farmworkers, cannery hands, hotel employees, soldiers and labor organizers. They were young men who grew old in residential hotels and agricultural towns, carrying letters from homes across the Pacific.

They were inside the American empire, but outside the boundaries of American belonging.

They were treated as temporary workers but built permanent communities.
They were denied ordinary family lives but created extended families in union halls, churches, restaurants, pool rooms and Little Manila neighborhoods.
They made America with their hands before America made room for their families.
By 1965, Filipino farmworkers had helped launch a movement for dignity in the fields, and immigration reform had begun to reunite families divided by exclusion.
But the Manongs had already changed the country long before the law acknowledged them.
They endured the empire, the mob, the courtroom, the bunkhouse, the cannery, the harvest and the long wait outside the gate.
Before America fully recognized Filipino Americans, the Manongs had already proven that they belonged.

Reposted with permission from AsAmNews: https://asamnews.com/2026/08/11/filipino-immigration-labor-manongs-bachelor-society/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_source_platform=mailpoet&utm_campaign=sitetitle-newsletterposttitle-3

Kalye NYC Restaurant Brings the Spirit of ‘Forgotten Island’ to Life

Elaine Joy Edaya Degale — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 18:02:55 +0000

Chef Vance Consignado of Kalye NYC with Forgotten Island stars Liza Soberano and H.E.R. at Gold House’s Filipino Fiesta Family Dinner, presented in collaboration with OpenTable and DreamWorks Animation. (Photo by Elaine Joy Degale)

UIn the Philippines, there are several words for “street,” including kalsada and daan.” But “kalye” (pronounced kal-yeh) has another cultural association. It can be the place where a neighborhood gathers for a fiesta, a wedding, a wake, or simply an afternoon of karaoke. In our town of Santo Niño in Mindanao, the kalye comes alive during the Hinublag Festival, which celebrates merriment and community, especially during Disco sa Kalye, when the streets are transformed into venues for music and dancing.
Growing up, I remember the kalye as the place where rows of barbecue stands teem for the taong masa (the masses), where bottles of Red Horse beer glistened on plastic tables, the smoke of banana ketchup and Datu Puti soy sauce marinades dripped and sizzled over charcoal. Makeshift dining areas spilled onto the boulevard, children ran around, weaving through the chatter of Filipino evening tsismis (gossip). The distinct wail of karaoke machines made each barbecue stall a little pocket of jubilee. This remains one of my favorite scenes of childhood nostalgia, as if Christmas always came early.
Perhaps that is why the kalye feels particularly alive during the “-ber months,” the highly anticipated stretch from September to December when the approaching Christmas season begins to announce itself. In the Philippines, the warmth of the Christmas decorations begin appearing in plazas and shopping malls as early as September 1, as anticipation spills into our streets, music, food and gatherings. Parols, traditional Filipino Christmas lanterns often shaped like stars, illuminate the kalye with colorful lights beneath the evening sky.
Years later, that same spirit of the kalye would find an unexpected echo in New York City. In September 2026, Kalye NYC Restaurant turned into a fiesta with a Filipino-themed family dinner in collaboration with Gold House to fete the release of DreamWorks Animation’s Forgotten Island. The dinner was hosted by the film’s stars, H.E.R. and Liza Soberano, who voice the film’s best friends Jo and Raissa, respectively. The celebration brought the flavors and atmosphere of a Filipino fiesta into a distinctly New York setting, with street food, pancit, lechon paksiw, halo-halo, presented on tables with spreads of banana leaves.
Never Tear Us Apart
When Kalye opened on Broome Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, its founders, Rob Mallari-D’Auria and his husband, Henry Mallari-D’Auria, had a simple idea: create a quick-service restaurant centered on Filipino street food. “We named it ‘Kalye’ because Kalye – or street – is a place where people gather,” Rob explained.

Rob Mallari-D’Auria × H.E.R. (Gabriella Sarmiento Wilson) at Kalye NYC for the Forgotten Island Filipino Fiesta Family Dinner, celebrating Filipino culture, food and representation with Gold House, OpenTable and DreamWorks Animation. (Photo by Elaine Joy Degale)

Kalye hosted an invitation-only dinner celebrating the Hollywood release of Forgotten Island, bringing Filipino food, entertainment and Asian American representation to the heart of New York City. The event also had a larger media component because Gold House, a global nonprofit organization focused on Asian Pacific cultural representation, partnered with DreamWorks/Universal and OpenTable for the event. Gold House brought its own production team to document the restaurant’s significance in AAPI community, which included an interview with Kalye's head chef, Vance Consignado. The resulting short film is intended to document Gold House's support for an AAPI-owned establishment while also contributing to the promotional ecosystem surrounding Forgotten Island.
For Rob, the significance extends beyond one restaurant or one movie. He sees Filipino representation in American cinema as an opportunity to expand the market for Filipino creativity more broadly. “I think it is the best time to actually be out there and telling people our stories,” Rob argues.
On The Wings of Love
Rob's path to the restaurant industry was hardly conventional. Before Kalye, he spent approximately 13 years practicing law in the Philippines. His early career centered on litigation and criminal defense before he shifted to corporate and tax law. But the culinary scene had always been part of his life.
His parents are from Pampanga, a province known for its culinary traditions. His father operates his own business, while his mother owns a restaurant and is, in Rob's words, a “good cook.”
Rob's own culinary interests initially leaned toward baking. Relatives in the United States would send him balikbayan boxes filled with baking equipment and supplies. Whenever they visited the Philippines, he would ask them to bring more.
“I actually dreamt of becoming a lawyer and a baker in the Philippines,” he said.
Instead, love sent him to the United States. He fell in love with an American man. And because same-sex marriage is still not legal in the Philippines, moving to the United States became the practical choice for their future together.
They started Kalye with a simple concept: a quick-service restaurant modeled on the Filipino street-food stalls Rob had grown up around. But the Filipino customers who walked through the door had a different vision. They started asking for kare-kare, for sisig, and it became increasingly clear the Filipinos in the area were seeking a restaurant to sit down and build community, similar to the way Tito Rad’s is a home for Filipinos in Sunnyside, and how Kusina Pinoy Bistro is “a total vibe” for the young and hip Filipino Americans in Little Manila.

At Kalye NYC, Forgotten Island star Liza Soberano gathered with young Filipino attendees for a Filipino Fiesta Family Dinner celebrating the film. (Photo by Elaine Joy Degale)

“So we gave the people what the people wanted,” said Rob. “We became a restaurant.”
‘Tayo Na!’
There’s a shift in how Filipino identity is perceived in the United States. For generations, Filipino representation in America has often been associated with service, nursing, caretaking and all sorts of domestic labor. Shows like 90 Day Fiancé, alongside the broader culture of Western expatriates in the Philippines, have helped normalize a transactional image of the Filipino wife: one valued for her perceived submissiveness, domesticity and industriousness…all in the name of love, of course!
But we are living in a cultural moment in American society where that narrative is evolving.
Alex Eala in the U.S. Open taught America that Filipinos are also serious athletes. Lea Salonga recently getting a Hollywood Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, told the world that Filipinos are also talented singers. Jo Koy taught America that Filipinos are also funny.

The specialty cocktail menu at Kalye NYC’s Forgotten Island Filipino Fiesta Family Dinner drew on Filipino flavors and ingredients, from soursop and calamansi to pandan, coconut and Filipino rum. (Photo by Elaine Joy Degale)

And for a Black Filipina like me? I am witnessing a moment where Jordan Clarkson of the Knicks can help break a 53-year losing spell, where a NY Knicks championship unites New York City. I am witnessing a Black Filipina artist H.E.R. go viral for singing Maging Sino Ka Man (Whoever You May Be) just months before Dreamworks released Forgotten Island, the first mainstream American animation that is an homage to Filipino pre-colonial ancestry.
For a millennial Black-Filipino writer, it is such an amazing time to be alive.

The dinner was hosted by Forgotten Island stars, H.E.R. and Liza Soberano, who voice the film’s best friends Jo and Raissa, respectively.

Imagine this: for one evening, beneath banana leaves and fiesta banderitas (buntings) and sari-sari store decor bearing the words “Tita Gay Store,” artists gathered around shared plates of Filipino food while music filled the room with the sounds of a diverse community. A Lower East Side restaurant became an ode to Filipino heritage -- a place as exciting as Forgotten Island’s Kakaiba Market, a kalye on the streets of New York City, where the spirit of Philippine mythology lingered under the stars.

Elaine Joy Edaya Degale is a Black-Filipina writer and lecturer at community colleges within the City University of New York (CUNY), and has an Ed.M. and M.A. from Teachers College, Columbia University.
She graduated cum laude from Mount Holyoke College where she studied International Relations and Development, and continues to support literacy and food programming efforts in indigenous communities through her Community-Based organization, OperationMerienda.org.

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