A moonlit provincial neighbourhood at night where children play birus, a Filipino team game of hide and seek

Birus: The Filipino Hide-and-Seek Played by Moonlight

August 6, 2025

Series: Game of Titos and Titas – Part 2 Key Takeaways Birus is hide-and-seek escalated — played in teams, and finding someone isn’t enough You have to chase them, tag them, then sprint back to base and call it out before the catch counts It was a full-moon game, and the reason is more practical than mystical It has largely died out because it needs three things that are now hard to assemble: open space, a crowd of children, and an entire free evening Everyone has played hide and seek. Very few can say they’ve played birus. Birus takes the ordinary childhood game and adds teams, tagging, a sprint back to base, and a running time measured in hours rather than minutes. Winning takes

A long rope of braided rubber bands coiled on a wooden table, with loose coloured lastiko scattered around it

Lastiko: The Filipino Rubber Band Games We Played as Kids

July 30, 2025

Series: Game of Titos and Titas – Part 1 Key Takeaways Rubber bands — lastiko — were currency, trophy, and equipment all at once, and a long braided stash was a visible record of every game you’d won Three games ran the season: dampa, pitik, and card games with rubber bands as bets Mothers fought back with two weapons: the threat of rubber band soup, and vivid folklore about amputated hands Having no money to buy rubber bands is precisely why I had to get good at winning them Kids today rarely play outside. Most of the time their noses are pressed to a screen — tablet, smartphone, console. They rarely see the sun or shed a drop of sweat. Looking at the children

The Art of Shining Shoes

February 26, 2025

Limpya Bota is a lost art. It was once a ubiquitous part of life, before the advent of those do-it-yourself liquid shoe polish that you buy at the grocery store. You shake it, press it directly on the shoe, slather it all over the surface and you are done. Convenient, yes, but soulless. In Cebuano, Limpya means to clean up, and Bota means boots. It’s exactly the same in Spanish, although with a slightly different spelling. Shoe shiners are called limpiabotas both in Madrid and in Padada. At one point in my past, I was proud to be one of them. You see, it was the 70s. Money was tight, and Papang was still recovering from his accident. We had to pull our weight so

The Most Difficult Times of Our Lives

February 19, 2025

Sometimes, life just gives you one challenge after another – and it’s up to you to see how you can rise to it. Just after my graduation from elementary school, Papang got into an accident. The vehicle he was driving was rammed by a passenger bus. He survived – but he sustained serious injuries. We didn’t have any money, and Papang’s release from the hospital was delayed because we couldn’t pay his medical bill. It was only after he and Mama signed a promissory note that he was able to leave the hospital. Life was tough before, but this accident made it even worse. Papang was bedridden for more than six months. We could not afford a wheelchair, so he was on crutches for more

A Lesson in Perseverance: A Father’s Incentive of Delayed Gratification

February 19, 2025

The Drive to Excel: Scholarship and Perseverance Penury spurred me and my siblings to excel and persevere in our studies. For me, academic excellence was crucial for survival. “Apart from my desire to always excel in academics, it was imperative of me to maintain my scholarship. Otherwise, I would not be able to continue my schooling if we were to pay my tuition and other fees”. Papang’s Bicycle Incentive at Padada Central Elementary School Papang motivated his children with a thoughtful incentive, promising a bike to any child who topped their class at Padada Central Elementary School. For me, the bicycle represented tenacity, convenience, and the primary means of affordable mobility around Padada, which Papang and many others used daily for work. A Symbolic Reward:

The Land of Luck and Opportunity

February 12, 2025

Padada, my hometown, is named after an extinct mangrove species that once was abundant in the region. According to a study by Lucille G. Tanguihan*, “age old tradition” says that the Padada tree brings good luck – whether true or not, no one can truly say. My family is of migrant stock – like most of the inhabitants of Mindanao, we can trace our lineage to those who joined the “Great Exodus” of the 1900s. Mindanao is the land of opportunity, and economic benefit was the primary reason that people flocked to Mindanao, specifically to the province of Davao. (This may be a little hard to believe if all you’ve ever known is the hustle and bustle of Metro Manila life, but I believe this

The Generics Act – Finding a Middle Ground for the Good of the Public

February 5, 2025

We take it for granted now, but back in the 80s and earlier, the brand of medicine that your doctor prescribed you was the one you got. As a patient, you would get the brand that was doc-prescribed – no matter how expensive it was! In the Philippines, cheaper alternatives existed, but the public really didn’t know any better. Unless you were a doctor, you wouldn’t really know the generic name of the medicine. You had to rely on what brand the doctor was pushing. Even the packaging of the drugs only had the brand name, not the generic name. How would the public know that there were cheaper alternatives, that were as effective? All this changed with the Generics Act of 1988, or R.A.

A composite illustration featuring a 1990s television broadcast control room on the left transitioning into a modern, glowing digital data analytics graph on the right, symbolizing the evolution from traditional media to data-driven strategy.

Data, Drama, and Destiny: How ABS-CBN Reclaimed the Philippine Airwaves

August 7, 2024

The Media Landscape of the Early 90s The late 80s and early 90s were a simpler time for the industry—or so it seemed. Back then, there was no distinction between “social” and “mainstream” media; there was simply the media. At the heart of this landscape stood the giant of Philippine broadcasting history: ABS-CBN. Fresh from its post-martial law revival, the network was fighting to regain its footing. I was fortunate enough to be in the trenches during this high-stakes ABS-CBN resurgence. The Power of Data-Driven Strategy In 1990, I was recruited by the legendary Mr. Freddie Garcia—better known as FMG—to lead the research and business analysis team. In an era often driven by gut feel, I was a firm believer that data-driven decision making was

Opening the Floodgates: How Free Facebook Changed the Campaign

June 26, 2024

Part 2 of 3 It used to be that campaigning for a candidate meant relying on the “holy grail” of tri-media: print (broadsheets, tabloids, magazines), radio, and TV. Traditional media was my expertise — it’s my background. But the times were changing. As I described in Part 1, when we first tested a possible Duterte candidacy, I was also feeling the pulse of an emerging field: social media, and how it could be used not just to get your message out, but to amplify it. Social media wasn’t new, of course. But by 2016, one thing in particular had become the game-changer — free Facebook. Globe had first rolled out free Facebook access back in 2013, and Facebook expanded it through Free Basics in 2015;

Feeling the Pulse: Was the Nation Ready for a Duterte Presidency?

June 19, 2024

Part 1 of 3 I remember back in 2014, Lito Banayo showed me a presentation prepared by a member of Mr. Bong Go’s staff. The objective was to test public reaction to a possible Duterte candidacy in the 2016 elections. I remember thinking it was an interesting proposition. Finally, a Mindanaon candidate who could truly represent the interests of the region! After what Lito showed me, I drew up a budget and told him that the right kind of exposure would cost ₱40 million. But we found ways to trim it down to eight — and here’s how we did it. It’s a story from more than a decade ago, but the principle behind it is one I’d still hand any strategist working today: the

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