There was roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, red cabbage, and dishes I had never really eaten this way before. My wife had brought an ube cake and lumpiang shanghai, two familiar Filipino offerings among the food our hosts had prepared. There was wine, conversation, and a warmth that had little to do with the heating inside their home.

It was a family gathering, the kind I had seen in movies and read about but never quite experienced myself.

And for an evening, we were part of it.

I remember feeling happy, but there was also something difficult to explain. Perhaps it was nostalgia for a celebration I had never experienced before. Perhaps it was the realization that, thousands of kilometres away from the Philippines, we had found people who made us feel that we belonged.

To explain how much that evening meant to me, though, I need to return to an ordinary Sunday a year earlier.

An unexpected meeting after church

My wife and I were standing in line after a Sunday worship service, waiting to greet the pastor along with the rest of the congregation.

An older woman approached us, apparently thinking she had met us somewhere before. She thought we were Latin Americans.

We explained that we were Filipinos, and that this was actually our first time meeting her.

Her reaction changed almost immediately.

She and her husband had spent several years in the Philippines, working with a church mission in Negros Occidental. They began saying a few Tagalog words, which surprised us. When we told them that we were from Iloilo, the conversation became even more interesting. We eventually found ourselves talking a little in Hiligaynon.

Imagine that. We were in a church in Edmonton, meeting an older Canadian couple for the first time, and somehow the conversation had brought us back to the Visayas.

I have always found these encounters fascinating. You leave your country, learn to make yourself understood in another language, and become accustomed to explaining where you come from. Then, unexpectedly, you meet people who know something about the place you once called home.

Not simply the Philippines as a country on a map, but the everyday life of its people.

We learned that the couple had lived in Negros Occidental for four years. Their work had taken place before their church established its first congregation in the area. Rather than focusing directly on preaching, they had worked on helping local communities improve their livelihoods.

The husband had a background in agriculture. He had worked with local agricultural authorities on crop production, raising laying chickens, and backyard hog farming. These were practical efforts, concerned with the ordinary needs of families trying to make a living.

I found that connection particularly meaningful.

Agriculture was such a familiar part of life in the Visayas. Here was someone who had come from Canada, spent years helping people in Negros, and could speak about things that were very much part of the world I grew up knowing.

Our conversation could have ended there, as so many pleasant conversations after church do.

But it didn’t.

They invited us to their home for lunch.

I remember being struck by how naturally the invitation came. We had only just met them, yet they were willing to bring us into their home and share a meal with us.

People inviting strangers into their home. It was such a simple thing, and yet it left an impression on me.

When strangers become family

That first lunch was only the beginning.

Over the following months, we grew closer. We shared more meals, sometimes with other friends from church. They invited us to sit with them during Sunday services and eventually began picking us up so we could attend church together.

We also introduced them to Jollibee, which was a rather different way of sharing something Filipino with people who had already spent years in our country.

What I appreciated most was how ordinary our friendship gradually became.

There was no grand announcement that we were now close. We simply kept seeing one another, sharing conversations, and becoming more comfortable in each other’s company.

They showed us kindness without making us feel that we had to earn it.

That distinction matters to me.

When you are an immigrant, you meet many people who are courteous and welcoming. You appreciate those encounters, especially when you are still finding your place in a new country. But friendship takes something more. It grows through the ordinary things people choose to do for one another.

An invitation to lunch. A place beside them at church. A ride on a Sunday morning. Someone remembering you and wanting to know how you’re doing.

Over time, these gestures become familiar. You stop thinking of yourself as someone they have kindly invited and begin thinking of them as people you genuinely look forward to seeing.

They started referring to us as their children, which I found rather amusing because of the difference in our ages. We had even called them Lolo and Lola before, although that seemed to change as our relationship developed.

I suppose family relationships do not always fit neatly into the names we give them.

What mattered was that we felt cared for.

And when Thanksgiving approached this year, they invited us to celebrate with their family.

Their eldest daughter was visiting from another province. She had spent part of her childhood in the Philippines during her parents’ missionary years. Their son would also be joining them.

It was an opportunity not only to celebrate Thanksgiving but to meet the children whose lives had also been shaped, in different ways, by their parents’ years in the Philippines.

We were delighted to be included.

A holiday I knew, but had never quite experienced

Thanksgiving was not entirely unfamiliar to me.

Growing up in the Philippines, I knew it primarily through the Protestant church. In our own congregation, we had a tradition of giving an offering of one peso for every year of our lives, a small expression of gratitude for another year we had been given.

Some churches held Thanksgiving celebrations around the time Americans observed the holiday. More recently, the word had also become familiar through shopping promotions and sales.

But Thanksgiving was never quite the family holiday for us that it seemed to be in North America.

For many Filipinos, I think Christmas Eve comes closer to that experience. We gather around the table for Noche Buena, prepare food that sometimes takes days of planning, and celebrate with the people closest to us. Gratitude, family, and the act of sharing a meal are already part of that tradition.

So I had an idea of what Thanksgiving was supposed to look like, largely from what I had encountered through American culture.

The turkey, in particular, fascinated me.

I had never eaten roasted turkey before, and the prospect of finally trying one felt like a small occasion in itself.

But I was looking forward to something much more meaningful than the food.

We would be spending the evening with people who had become our family in Canada.

When the day arrived, the husband offered to pick us up again. We tried to decline, not wanting to trouble him, but they insisted.

It was chilly outside, although the weather was pleasant enough. There were fewer cars on the road than usual. As we made our way to their house, my wife and I were feeling a little nervous.

We were about to spend an evening with an English-speaking family, and despite having lived in Canada for some time, we still worried about how naturally we would manage the conversations.

It’s a curious thing. You can speak English, work in English, and go about your daily life in English, yet still feel a little anxious when you know you’ll be spending several hours in conversation.

Perhaps it was because we wanted to make a good impression. Or because being invited into someone’s family celebration felt different from visiting them for an ordinary afternoon.

Whatever the reason, we were both a little shy.

We needn’t have worried so much.

When we arrived, the husband took our coats and put them away. His wife and daughter greeted us, and their youngest son welcomed us with a smile.

They made us feel almost like guests of honour.

I had been inside their home many times before, usually during the afternoon. But that evening felt different. The warm lighting, the heating, the preparations for dinner, and the presence of their children gave the house a different atmosphere.

We were no longer simply visiting an older couple we had befriended at church.

We had been invited into a family occasion.

And for the first time since coming to Canada, I was about to experience Thanksgiving in a way that felt wonderfully personal.

A Thanksgiving dinner with a little bit of the Philippines

Before we sat down for dinner, we spent some time talking while our hosts finished preparing the food.

Their children had already helped with the turkey earlier in the day. Their mother, apparently satisfied that they had done their part, had told them that she would take care of the rest of the preparations herself.

I found that rather endearing.

There was something familiar about a mother taking charge of the kitchen, even with grown children around. I thought about how family gatherings in the Philippines often unfolded, with people helping prepare food, talking while waiting for dinner, and someone eventually deciding that enough people had been in the kitchen.

The husband offered us white wine, and we continued our conversations.

At some point, we were called to the dining table. We said grace before the meal and began eating.

There was the roasted turkey I had been looking forward to, along with goulash, red cabbage, and mashed potatoes and yams. It was my first time trying these dishes prepared in this particular way, and I found myself enjoying an experience that I had previously known mostly through television, photographs, and stories.

I was finally having a Canadian Thanksgiving dinner.

Of course, this wasn’t necessarily the Thanksgiving dinner that every Canadian family would recognize. Our hosts were Dutch Canadians, and their meal naturally reflected their own family traditions.

I liked that.

I had come expecting something that resembled an American Thanksgiving scene, complete with turkey and the familiar dishes associated with the holiday. Instead, I found myself enjoying a meal that belonged to this particular family, shaped by their history and the food they loved.

And among everything they had prepared were the ube cake and lumpiang shanghai that my wife had brought.

I suppose there was something fitting about that combination.

We had come from the Philippines, carrying food that reminded us of home. Our hosts had spent years living in our country, and they had invited us to share a holiday that had long been part of their lives.

It wasn’t a carefully planned cultural exchange. At least, I never thought of it that way.

We were simply friends having dinner together.

Perhaps that was why it felt so natural.

Remembering a country from childhood

One of the things I had been looking forward to was meeting their daughter.

She lived in another Canadian province and had come to Edmonton for Thanksgiving. Unlike her younger brother, she had actually spent part of her childhood in the Philippines while her parents were doing missionary work there.

I was curious about what she remembered.

Four years can be a considerable part of someone’s childhood, especially when those years are spent in a country very different from the one where the family eventually settles.

What surprised and pleased me was how fondly she spoke about her time in the Philippines.

She remembered everyday life, the people, and the things that had stayed with her long after her family returned to Canada.

She talked about how local people used to admire her skin colour, something she hadn’t particularly enjoyed as a child. I found that interesting, partly because it reminded me of how Filipinos could be fascinated by people who looked different from them.

What others regarded with admiration could feel uncomfortable to the person receiving all that attention.

I appreciated that she could look back on those experiences with affection without pretending that everything had been enjoyable at the time.

She also remembered the fresh fish.

Of all the things someone could remember about living in the Philippines, I found that detail especially delightful. Food has a way of remaining in our memories, even when many other things have become difficult to recall.

She also described the Banaue Rice Terraces, a place that my wife and I have yet to visit ourselves.

I found it quite amusing that someone who had spent only a few childhood years in the Philippines could tell us about a place in our own country that we had never seen.

Of course, being Filipino doesn’t mean that we have visited every beautiful place in the Philippines. I knew that.

Still, it was an interesting reminder that our experiences of a country are never quite the same, even when one of us considers it home.

There I was, listening to a Canadian woman remember a part of the Philippines from her childhood. Meanwhile, I was discovering Canada through experiences that had been ordinary to her family for years.

We had both lived in countries that the other could speak about with a certain familiarity.

I don’t think I had expected that kind of connection when we first met her parents at church.

But listening to her memories made me happy.

Sometimes, when people speak about the Philippines from the outside, I find myself wondering what version of our country they have come to know. There are so many ways to describe it, and not all of them resemble the country that ordinary Filipinos experience.

With her, I didn’t feel that uneasiness.

She wasn’t trying to explain the Philippines to us. She was simply remembering a place where she had once lived, where she had been a child, and where some of her earliest experiences had taken place.

I found something comforting in that.

The country we had left was also a country that someone else remembered with love.

The son who never went to the Philippines

Their son had a rather different connection to our country.

He was born after the family’s missionary work had ended, so unlike his older sister, he never had the opportunity to live in the Philippines.

His family recalled how, when he was younger, he would complain about being the one who never got to go.

I thought that was funny, although I could understand where he was coming from.

Imagine growing up hearing your parents and older sister talk about four years spent in another country. They had memories of people, places, and experiences that happened before you were born.

Naturally, you would want to know what you had missed.

Yet, as we talked, it became clear that the Philippines had still been part of his childhood in other ways.

He remembered his mother cooking chicken adobo almost every week when they were growing up. The family had also developed a love for rice, something we Filipinos could certainly appreciate.

What amused me even more was how much he knew about Filipino food.

Even his own family seemed surprised by some of the things he knew.

I hadn’t met him before that evening, and I was delighted by how naturally the conversation turned to these familiar subjects.

Here was someone who had never lived in the Philippines, yet who had grown up eating some of its food and hearing stories about it from his family.

It made me think about how the places we’ve lived can continue to influence our families long after we’ve left them.

For his parents and sister, the Philippines was somewhere they had actually been.

For him, it was a place he knew through family stories, through meals prepared at home, and through the experiences his parents had carried back with them.

I suppose that is one of the ways a place becomes part of a family.

It isn’t always about where someone was born or how long they lived somewhere. Sometimes it is about what people continue to remember, share, and practise in their everyday lives.

In their family, the Philippines had not simply disappeared after they returned to Canada.

It had remained, even in the ordinary matter of what they ate for dinner.

Stories from Negros Occidental

As the evening continued, we also found ourselves revisiting stories about the couple’s years in Negros Occidental.

We had heard some of them before, but I enjoyed listening again.

I think what interested me most was that their memories were not limited to the work they had gone there to accomplish. They remembered the people they met, the relationships they formed, and the ordinary circumstances of living in a Filipino community.

The wife often spoke about the local girls whom they had supported during their stay.

Apparently, these girls initially believed they had been hired to work as household helpers. Yet the wife didn’t want them doing work around the house. She continued paying them while refusing to treat them as domestic workers.

I found myself thinking about that arrangement.

I cannot pretend to know everything about the circumstances of those girls or what the support eventually meant for their lives. But I appreciated hearing that their relationship with the family had been about something other than simply hiring people to serve them.

The couple also remembered how children and other people in the community would gather in their air-conditioned room.

I could almost understand why.

Having grown up in the Philippines, I knew how appealing an air-conditioned room could be, particularly during the hotter months. I smiled at the thought of people gathering there, enjoying a little relief from the heat.

There were also stories about the wife’s fondness for driving around the area and about their Filipino language lessons, which had apparently included learning to dance the tinikling.

That detail made me laugh.

Tinikling was something I associated with school presentations and Filipino cultural performances. I had never really imagined a Canadian missionary couple learning it as part of their introduction to life in the Philippines.

Yet it was one more reminder that their time there had involved learning, adapting, and finding their way through a culture that was initially unfamiliar.

I also found myself thinking about the husband’s agricultural work.

He had been involved in helping communities develop practical ways of raising chickens, keeping hogs, and growing crops. These were not particularly glamorous things to talk about, but I appreciated them for that very reason.

For many families in the provinces, livelihoods depended on precisely these kinds of activities.

It was easy to imagine why such work might matter.

I didn’t know all the outcomes of their efforts, and I wouldn’t want to exaggerate what they had accomplished. But what struck me was the affection with which they continued to remember the people and places connected to those years.

They had spent four years in the Philippines, yet those years had remained part of their family conversations for decades afterward.

Now they were sharing those memories with two Filipinos they had met almost by accident at church in Edmonton.

Life can be rather surprising that way.

What I noticed about their family

Somewhere in the middle of the evening, I began noticing something else.

It wasn’t about the food or the stories from the Philippines.

It was the way they treated one another.

The parents and their children clearly loved and respected each other. It showed in the way they spoke, the way they shared memories, and the ease with which they spent time together.

Their daughter lived in another province, so they weren’t always physically together. The children had grown up and were leading their own lives.

Yet that distance didn’t seem to diminish the affection among them.

I found the experience rather sobering.

Of course, a single Thanksgiving dinner cannot tell me everything about a family, much less about an entire culture.

I knew I was seeing one family, on one evening, during a holiday that brought them together.

Still, what I saw challenged some of my assumptions.

Here was a Dutch-Canadian family whose children were adults, whose lives did not always take place under the same roof, and whose affection for one another was unmistakable.

They didn’t need to live together to remain close.

Nor did they need to express their love in exactly the ways that I had grown accustomed to seeing in Filipino families.

Their relationship was simply their own.

Perhaps I had become too comfortable with the idea that certain expressions of love, hospitality, and family closeness were uniquely Filipino.

That evening reminded me that goodness isn’t confined to the people who share our language, our traditions, or our upbringing.

And as I sat there with my wife, sharing a meal with this family, I became increasingly aware of how much we had been welcomed into their lives.

We weren’t relatives.

We weren’t Dutch.

We hadn’t grown up celebrating Thanksgiving the way they had.

Yet none of those differences seemed to matter that evening.

They had made room for us at their table, included us in their conversations, and treated us with an affection that we had gradually come to recognize as something much closer to family.

I had arrived looking forward to my first roasted turkey.

By then, the turkey had become only one small part of what I would remember about the evening.

After dinner, there was still time for family

The evening didn’t end when we finished eating.

After dinner, the husband made coffee, and we finally had the ube cake that my wife had prepared. We continued talking, moving between stories about the Philippines, their family, and whatever else came to mind.

There was no particular urgency to end the gathering.

I liked that.

Sometimes, when you’re visiting someone’s home, you become conscious of the time. You wonder whether you’ve stayed too long, whether your hosts are getting tired, or whether it’s already polite to excuse yourself.

I don’t remember feeling that kind of pressure that evening.

We were comfortable enough to remain at the table, enjoying our coffee and the conversations that followed. There was something reassuring about the absence of formality, especially considering how nervous my wife and I had been before arriving.

We had worried about keeping up with conversations in English. We had wondered how the evening would unfold, particularly since we were meeting their children for the first time.

Yet, by the time we had finished dinner, those worries had become much less important.

We had shared stories, laughed about familiar things, and discovered connections that neither side might have expected.

And the evening was not quite finished.

At some point, we read the Bible together and spent time with a devotional.

I found that particularly meaningful.

Thanksgiving had already given us an opportunity to appreciate the food, the company, and the generosity of our hosts. But spending time with Scripture brought another dimension to the evening.

It reminded me that gratitude, at least in the Christian tradition I grew up with, was never meant to be confined to a particular holiday.

We were supposed to practise it throughout our lives, even when our circumstances were difficult.

Of course, that’s much easier to say than to do.

I have had moments when gratitude came naturally, when there was so much to be happy about that giving thanks required little effort. But there have also been times when I struggled to find anything worth celebrating.

Living in another country has given me both kinds of experiences.

There is excitement in beginning a new life, but there is also uncertainty. There are opportunities to build something different for yourself, but those opportunities often come with the difficult work of adjusting, learning, and accepting that many things are no longer as familiar as they once were.

I don’t think we always talk enough about how tiring that can become.

Sometimes, what you miss isn’t necessarily a particular place or possession.

You miss being familiar to other people.

You miss the comfort of not having to explain yourself, of being understood without needing to introduce your background, your language, or the circumstances that brought you somewhere.

And perhaps that was part of why this Thanksgiving meant so much to me.

For one evening, I didn’t feel that I had to work particularly hard to belong.

We were simply there, sitting with people who were happy to have us.

There was something deeply comforting about that.

Missing one family while finding another

I remember feeling a certain nostalgia during the evening, which was strange because I had never experienced a proper Canadian Thanksgiving dinner before.

How could I feel nostalgic for something I had never known?

I suppose the feeling wasn’t really about Thanksgiving itself.

It was about the familiarity of being gathered around a table with people who loved one another. The conversations that continued long after everyone had finished eating. The way people could move between serious subjects and amusing memories without thinking too much about it.

There was something familiar about the affection in that room.

It reminded me of family gatherings back in the Philippines, even though the food was different and the people around me had grown up with traditions unlike my own.

I thought about how we Filipinos celebrate Christmas.

For many of us, Noche Buena is perhaps the closest equivalent to what Thanksgiving means to Canadian families. We gather, prepare more food than we probably need, and spend time with relatives we might not have seen for a while.

Sometimes the meal itself becomes secondary to the conversations, the teasing, and the simple pleasure of being together.

I don’t mean to suggest that the two celebrations are interchangeable. They come from different histories and have their own meanings.

But the importance we place on gathering with people we love is something I could recognize.

And as happy as I was to be sitting with this family, I also felt a little sad.

I thought about my own family and how I wished I could experience something similar with them.

Distance changes the way we participate in family life. You can call, send photographs, and remain connected through the convenience of technology. You can celebrate the same occasions, even when you’re living in different countries.

But it isn’t quite the same as sitting together.

You cannot always share a meal, help prepare the food, or spend an ordinary evening doing nothing particularly important.

Those little moments become things you miss.

I don’t think my happiness that evening made that sadness disappear. If anything, being welcomed into such a loving home reminded me of how much I valued the family relationships I had left behind.

And perhaps that’s one of the complicated things about building a life somewhere else.

You can be grateful for the people you’ve met without becoming any less attached to the people you miss.

You can begin to feel at home in Canada and still wish you were somewhere else, even if only for an evening.

Those feelings don’t have to contradict one another.

I was happy. I was grateful. I missed my family.

All of those things were true.

What made the evening special was that I didn’t have to choose between them.

The kindness of our hosts didn’t replace the family we had in the Philippines. Nor did it have to.

It simply gave us another place where we felt loved.

Hospitality is not something one culture owns

There was another thought I carried home from that Thanksgiving dinner.

Growing up, I often heard Filipinos describe ourselves as among the most hospitable people in the world.

It’s something we take pride in, and understandably so. Many of us grew up in households where visitors were offered food almost immediately, where unexpected guests could find themselves sitting at the dining table, and where people made room for others even when there wasn’t much to spare.

I’ve experienced that generosity myself.

But the older I get, and the more people I meet outside the Philippines, the more I question the need to claim hospitality as something particularly ours.

Why do we sometimes feel the need to compare our kindness with that of other cultures?

I don’t think kindness becomes more meaningful simply because we believe our people are better at practising it.

And I don’t think being Filipino automatically makes someone hospitable, any more than being Canadian automatically makes someone distant or reserved.

People are different.

Some are generous. Some are indifferent. Others can be unkind, regardless of where they come from.

Living in Canada has made that distinction more apparent to me.

I have read news about white supremacist movements and heard public conversations in which immigrants are blamed for problems that are far more complicated than the presence of newcomers.

There are times when such conversations make you conscious of being different, even when you are simply trying to live your life like everyone else.

I don’t want to make this reflection about those experiences. They deserve their own consideration.

But I cannot completely separate them from the gratitude I felt that evening.

Because here was a family whose background was different from ours, whose lives had taken them through experiences we had never known, and who nevertheless welcomed us with such sincerity.

They didn’t have to invite us.

They could have remained friendly acquaintances from church, people we greeted on Sundays before going our separate ways.

They could have kept Thanksgiving as a private celebration with their children.

Instead, they invited us into their home and made us part of their family gathering.

And that kindness was not limited to one evening.

It had begun with an unexpected conversation after church, continued through lunches and Sunday rides, and gradually developed into a friendship that my wife and I had come to treasure.

I think that’s what I want to remember when I hear people make sweeping statements about cultures and nationalities.

Human goodness is not exclusive to any country.

The ability to welcome a stranger, to care about another person’s well-being, or to treat someone like family cannot be measured simply by the language they speak or the traditions they practise.

What matters, ultimately, is how we treat the people who come into our lives.

And sometimes, the people who make you feel most welcome are those you never expected to become part of your family.

A different understanding of gratitude

My experience of Thanksgiving began in the Philippines, in a Protestant church where we gave an offering of one peso for every year of our lives.

I still find that tradition meaningful.

There was something simple about counting the years you had been given and offering something in gratitude for each one.

As a child, I probably understood it differently from how I understand it now.

Back then, Thanksgiving was another occasion in the church calendar, something we observed as part of our religious life.

As I grew older, I began to understand that gratitude was not always about having more things to celebrate.

Sometimes, it was about recognizing what had quietly sustained us through the years.

I thought about that during our Thanksgiving evening in Edmonton.

Our hosts had spent four years in the Philippines, long before my wife and I came to Canada. Their work had taken them to Negros Occidental, where they learned about Filipino life, built relationships with local people, and raised their daughter during part of her childhood.

Their son, born after they returned to Canada, had grown up hearing stories about those years and eating the Filipino dishes his mother continued to prepare.

Years later, my wife and I found ourselves standing in a church line in Edmonton, waiting to greet the pastor.

An older woman approached us, thinking we were people she had met before.

She was mistaken.

Yet that small misunderstanding became the beginning of something we could not have anticipated.

We discovered that we came from places connected by a shared history, and a conversation in Tagalog and Hiligaynon eventually led to a lunch invitation.

That first lunch led to more conversations, more gatherings, and a friendship that grew without much ceremony.

And now we were celebrating Thanksgiving with their family.

I find myself returning to that sequence of events, not because I believe every encounter needs to carry some extraordinary meaning, but because it reminds me how much of our lives is shaped by ordinary decisions.

Someone chooses to approach you.

Someone invites you for lunch.

Someone offers to bring you to church.

Someone remembers you when their family is gathering for a holiday.

None of those gestures seems particularly remarkable on its own.

Yet taken together, they can change how a person experiences an unfamiliar place.

I suppose that’s part of what faith means to me now, too.

Not only the beliefs we profess or the traditions we continue to practise, but the ways those beliefs find expression in how we care for other people.

I’ve seen enough of life to know that religious communities, like families, are not always perfect. Being part of a church doesn’t automatically make us kind, generous, or understanding.

I would hesitate to make that claim.

But when I think about the friendship my wife and I have developed with this couple, I am reminded of the kind of Christian fellowship I still hope to find and practise.

One where care does not end with a greeting after Sunday worship.

One where people make space for others in their ordinary lives.

And one where love can be expressed through something as simple as sharing a meal.

That evening, I was grateful not only for the food or for finally experiencing Thanksgiving the way I had imagined it.

I was grateful for the people who had made us feel that we belonged.

The kindness we carry home

Eventually, it was time for us to leave.

The husband offered to drive us home, just as he had picked us up earlier.

Once again, we tried to decline.

We didn’t want to inconvenience him, especially after everything the family had already done for us that evening.

But their daughter insisted that we should let her father bring us home.

So we accepted.

I smiled at that, thinking about how familiar the exchange had become. We would try to avoid troubling them, and they would insist on helping us anyway.

I don’t know whether we’ll ever become entirely comfortable accepting that kind of generosity.

Perhaps part of us will always worry about asking too much from people who have already given us so much.

But I am learning that sometimes, accepting kindness is also a way of allowing others to express their care.

Not every generous gesture needs to be repaid immediately.

And not every invitation comes with an expectation that you will somehow prove yourself worthy of it.

Sometimes, people simply want you to be there.

When I think back on our first Canadian Thanksgiving dinner, I remember the roasted turkey, the goulash, the red cabbage, and all the food we enjoyed.

I remember their daughter’s stories about growing up in the Philippines, their son’s familiarity with Filipino cooking, and the couple’s recollections of their years in Negros Occidental.

I remember the wine, the coffee, and the ube cake that my wife had prepared.

I remember reading the Bible together after dinner.

But more than any of those things, I remember how we felt.

We had entered their home a little nervous, conscious that we were joining a celebration with a family whose traditions weren’t entirely our own.

We left feeling welcomed, cared for, and included.

There was no need for us to pretend that we shared the same upbringing or cultural background. Our differences remained, but they did not prevent us from becoming close.

And perhaps that was the most meaningful thing about the experience.

They didn’t make us feel that we were different people being accommodated at their celebration.

They made us feel like family.

I don’t know whether they fully realize how much that means to my wife and me.

Maybe, to them, it was simply another Thanksgiving. Their children had come together, they had prepared a meal, and they had invited two friends from church to join them.

I hope they know that, for us, it became a memory we will carry for a long time.

As I continue making a life in Canada, I know there will be more difficult days, more adjustments to make, and more encounters that might leave me questioning where I belong.

I also know that I cannot expect everyone I meet to show the same kindness.

But I want to remember this evening when those days come.

I want to remember that kindness still exists, even when the news and the conversations around us can make it difficult to see.

That good people can be found in places we never expected.

And that sometimes, in a country where you are still learning how to belong, someone will open their door and make room for you at their table.

If I could tell our hosts one thing, it would simply be this.

Thank you for making us feel welcome.

Thank you for making us feel special, loved, and not different.

Thank you for reminding us that family can extend beyond the people who share our blood, our language, or the country where we were born.

And thank you for giving us another reason to be grateful for the life we are slowly building here.

My first Canadian Thanksgiving wasn’t really about the turkey, although I was certainly happy to have finally tried it.

It was about an ordinary evening spent with people who had become extraordinarily dear to us.

I went there expecting to experience a Canadian tradition.

I came home grateful that, in a country still becoming familiar to me, my wife and I had found another family.

I knew Filipino music, of course. I grew up with it. But the idea of Filipino groups adopting the polished performances, synchronized choreography, and elaborate concepts associated with Korean pop music didn’t appeal to me. I thought they were trying too hard to imitate something that was already successful elsewhere.

I wasn’t particularly interested in finding out whether I was right.

Which makes it a little funny that I am now writing a listening guide for people who might think exactly the way I once did.

Perhaps you have seen BINI dancing to Pantropiko or heard SB19’s GENTO somewhere on social media. Perhaps your children have introduced you to a group whose members you cannot tell apart. Or maybe you’ve come across a performance, recognized the performers as Filipinos, and wondered whether all the attention was deserved.

I understand the hesitation. I’ve been there.

But I also think there’s something worth hearing beyond the choreography, the styling, and the occasional arguments about which group deserves more recognition.

And you don’t have to become a fan to appreciate it.

Before P-Pop, There Was Already So Much Music

My earliest memories of Filipino music involved cassette tapes.

My uncles listened to Siakol, Grin Department, Parokya ni Edgar, and Eraserheads, among others. Their songs played often enough that I eventually learned most of the lyrics, sometimes without fully understanding what I was singing.

We had those blank cassette tapes where songs were recorded from the radio. Sometimes the DJ’s voice would make its way into the recording, usually toward the end of a song. It wasn’t exactly the best listening experience, but you learned to accept those interruptions. You could replay a song as many times as you wanted, provided the tape cooperated.

I suppose buying official albums wasn’t something we ordinarily did in our household. The radio, those recordings, and whatever music my uncles brought home were enough.

There was also Aegis, April Boy Regino, the April Boys, and Renz Verano. We listened to rock, sentimental ballads, and novelty songs. Some songs were playful, others were dramatic, and a few probably contained jokes I was too young to understand.

It was a fairly wide exposure to Original Pilipino Music, although I wouldn’t have described it that way at the time. It was simply the music I heard at home.

There was another consideration, though.

I grew up in a Christian household, where listening to secular music came with certain reservations. Music wasn’t always judged by whether it sounded good. We also considered what it said, what it encouraged, and whether it agreed with the values we were taught.

That made my relationship with popular music a little complicated.

I could enjoy a song and still wonder whether I should be listening to it. Some of the harder rock music and novelty songs with suggestive lyrics were particularly difficult to reconcile with what I learned in church. When Rivermaya eventually joined our household’s music rotation, our exploration didn’t necessarily extend to every other band or genre gaining popularity.

Years later, the wave of Filipino rock and alternative bands in the 2000s caught my attention. Cueshé, 6cyclemind, Sponge Cola, and several others became part of my listening habits.

Their music competed for space with international bands, Christian contemporary music, and the worship songs that remained an important part of my life.

Looking back, my musical preferences were never quite as narrow as I sometimes imagined. I appreciated good melodies, strong vocals, and songs that could express emotions I didn’t always know how to explain.

I just had certain boundaries about where I was willing to look for them.

I Wasn’t Exactly Waiting for P-Pop

My early relationship with Korean popular culture was similarly complicated.

I wasn’t completely unfamiliar with it. PSY’s Gangnam Style was almost impossible to miss. I knew of 2NE1, partly because Sandara Park was a familiar name to Filipinos. The Wonder Girls’ Nobody also found its way into my awareness.

I had friends and, later, brothers who genuinely enjoyed Korean music. Korean dramas became popular enough that some churches I knew in Iloilo even borrowed their themes for events.

Yet K-Pop itself wasn’t something I was particularly encouraged to appreciate. Within some of the Christian circles I encountered, it was treated with suspicion.

And I carried some of that suspicion with me.

It didn’t help that I was surrounded by increasingly enthusiastic fans of BTS, Super Junior, TWICE, BLACKPINK, and other Korean groups. Their popularity was undeniable. You could encounter their music, merchandise, and influence without deliberately seeking them out.

I wasn’t against their success. I just didn’t feel compelled to participate.

When Filipino groups began gaining recognition for adopting a similar performance-oriented approach, I initially dismissed them.

I knew SB19 was becoming popular, especially during the pandemic. But instead of taking the time to listen, I assumed they were copying a formula that had already worked in South Korea.

I had opinions about the music without knowing very much about it.

That’s a rather uncomfortable thing to admit now, especially because I’ve come to appreciate how much effort goes into songwriting, recording, choreography, and live performance.

I also wonder how often we Filipinos do this to our own artists.

We take pride when international audiences recognize Filipino talent, yet we sometimes seem reluctant to give that same talent a fair hearing at home. We celebrate Filipinos who succeed abroad, but question whether those working within our own entertainment industry are original enough.

I don’t think every criticism is unfair. Artists should be open to criticism, regardless of nationality. And not every P-Pop song will appeal to every listener.

Still, calling an entire genre a copy of something else is a convenient way to avoid listening closely.

I know because that was my excuse.

Then Came a Song Called Karera

My first meaningful encounter with modern P-Pop came through BINI.

I had already seen Pantropiko circulating on TikTok. Some of my friends even danced to it while we were on duty. The song was catchy enough, but I wasn’t immediately interested in following the group.

It was Karera that changed things.

I was preparing for the Philippine Physician Licensure Examination in 2024. It was a demanding period, and I was carrying years of expectations into those final months of preparation.

My wife had been sharing BINI videos with me. At first, I paid little attention. But the more I listened, the more I began noticing that there was something beyond the cheerful performances and catchy melodies.

Karera, in particular, felt different.

It spoke about the pressure to keep moving and the need to recognize that life doesn’t always have to proceed at the pace everyone else expects.

That was something I needed to hear.

Medical training has a way of making you conscious of time. There are examinations to pass, requirements to complete, and milestones that seem to arrive more easily for other people. Even when you know that everyone’s circumstances differ, comparison can become difficult to avoid.

And here was a pop song reminding me that I didn’t have to approach every moment as a competition.

I’ve written more about that experience in my earlier article, BINI: Eight Voices, One Defining Sound.

What matters here is that the song made me reconsider an entire genre I had been unwilling to explore.

I started listening to more BINI songs. Eventually, I began following the group’s activities and performances.

Then I discovered ALAMAT.

Their music introduced me to another dimension of P-Pop, one that made room for different Philippine languages, regional traditions, and cultural references alongside contemporary production.

As someone who grew up speaking Hiligaynon and other Philippine languages, I found that especially meaningful.

I had become interested in P-Pop because of a song that comforted me during a difficult period. I stayed interested because I realized how much more there was to discover.

So, What Exactly Is P-Pop?

I think one of the difficulties people have with P-Pop is understanding where it belongs in Filipino music.

For many of us who grew up listening to OPM, the term brings certain artists and sounds to mind. We remember the bands that dominated radio stations, the singers whose voices filled our homes, and the songs that became inseparable from particular periods of our lives.

In my case, OPM meant Eraserheads and Parokya ni Edgar just as much as it meant Aegis or April Boy Regino. I never thought much about their differences. They were Filipino artists making music that Filipinos enjoyed.

And that is probably the simplest way to understand the relationship between OPM and P-Pop.

P-Pop is part of OPM. It isn’t an entirely separate category of Filipino music, nor did Filipino pop suddenly begin when SB19 and BINI became popular.

Philippine popular music has gone through several changes. Manila Sound in the 1970s brought together Filipino songwriting, disco, funk, Western influences, and the familiar mixture of English and Filipino expressions. The decades that followed produced ballads, rock bands, dance groups, hip-hop artists, and performers whose popularity depended as much on television as it did on radio.¹

Even the kind of group performances we now associate with modern P-Pop isn’t entirely unfamiliar.

I remember the SexBomb Girls. I imagine many Filipinos from my generation remember them, too. Their songs, choreography, and television appearances became part of Philippine entertainment long before the current wave of idol groups.

What has changed is the approach.

Modern P-Pop is generally associated with groups trained to sing, dance, and perform as a coordinated unit. There is greater emphasis on choreography, visual concepts, music videos, and carefully developed group identities. The artists aren’t simply expected to sing their recordings well. Their performances become another part of how audiences experience the music.

MNL48 helped bring the Japanese idol-group model to Filipino audiences. SB19, which debuted in 2018 under a Korean entertainment company, became one of the most recognizable examples of the Korean-influenced training system taking root in the Philippines.²

BINI, ALAMAT, G22, KAIA, and the many groups that followed have developed different identities within that growing industry.

That doesn’t mean they all sound alike.

And I think that is where people who have never explored P-Pop sometimes get it wrong.

We tend to group these artists together because they perform with choreography and appear in elaborate music videos. But once you start listening, you’ll find groups approaching pop, R&B, hip-hop, electronic music, and Filipino musical traditions in different ways.

Some songs remind me of the cheerful pop music that dominated Philippine radio stations years ago. Others would be equally comfortable alongside contemporary international releases. And a few are difficult to categorize without losing something about what makes them interesting.

The distinction matters because you might dislike one group’s approach and genuinely enjoy another’s.

You don’t need to appreciate every P-Pop group to appreciate P-Pop.

But Isn’t It Just K-Pop Made in the Philippines?

This is probably the criticism I would have made myself.

And I think it deserves a better response than simply accusing people of being unsupportive of Filipino talent.

There is an obvious Korean influence on modern P-Pop. The training systems, synchronized choreography, coordinated promotions, and emphasis on visual presentation are familiar to anyone who has followed K-Pop.

Pretending otherwise doesn’t help the discussion.

But influence isn’t the same thing as imitation.

I sometimes wonder why we’re comfortable accepting foreign influences in other forms of Filipino music but become particularly sensitive about them when discussing P-Pop.

The rock bands I grew up listening to didn’t develop their musical identities without hearing foreign bands. Filipino balladeers have performed songs shaped by international pop traditions for decades. Manila Sound itself incorporated Western musical styles while developing something audiences came to recognize as distinctly Filipino.

We didn’t stop calling those songs OPM.

Why should contemporary Filipino pop be treated differently simply because some of its influences come from South Korea?

Of course, not everything deserves praise. Some songs are forgettable. Some concepts feel too familiar. There are performances where the execution doesn’t quite match the ambition.

I think artists should be judged on the quality of their work, not excused from criticism because they’re Filipino.

But there is a difference between saying that a song sounds derivative and deciding that an entire industry has nothing original to offer.

The more I listened, the more I noticed how different the groups could be.

BINI introduced me to music that was accessible without being completely predictable. ALAMAT made me pay closer attention to how Philippine languages and cultural references could become part of contemporary pop. SB19 gradually challenged the assumptions I had made about their abilities and musical direction.

And then there were groups like G22 and KAIA, whose performances made me appreciate how much talent existed beyond the two names dominating many conversations.

I began to understand that P-Pop wasn’t necessarily trying to replace the music we already knew.

It was another way of making Filipino music.

I don’t think P-Pop needs to sound completely unlike K-Pop to deserve recognition. That would be an unreasonable standard, especially in an industry where musical influences constantly cross borders.

What matters more to me is whether the artists are developing their own sound, whether the songs have something to say, and whether the music deserves another listen.

And sometimes, the simplest evidence is a song that you enjoy so much that you play it repeatedly without worrying about which country inspired its production.

Which brings me to the part of this article that I actually wanted to write.

The music.

If You Want Something Cheerful, Start With BINI

If someone asks me where to begin with modern P-Pop, BINI is probably one of the easiest groups to recommend.

Not necessarily because I think they’re better than everyone else, but because much of their music has an accessibility that makes them suitable for someone who hasn’t followed idol groups before.

Take Pantropiko, for example.

You don’t need to understand the structure of a pop group or recognize its members to enjoy the song. It has the kind of melody that stays with you, and I can understand why it became so popular through dance challenges.

Salamin, Salamin offers something similarly playful, with enough personality to distinguish it from the usual romantic pop song.

But I wouldn’t stop there.

One of my current favourites is Blush, a lighter, flirtatious track that shows how comfortably BINI can move within contemporary pop. It’s the sort of song I can put on repeat without needing a particular reason.

And if you’re someone who enjoys hearing voices come together, I would encourage you to explore their live performances as well.

I still remember hearing Lagi performed a cappella.

There is something different about listening to a group without the full production surrounding their voices. You begin to notice the individual qualities of each singer and how their voices work together. For me, that performance was another reminder that the members weren’t simply relying on choreography or catchy recordings.

Their ability to sing was part of what made the performance memorable.

When I first saw BINI at GFest in 2024, the experience was rather frustrating. The crowd became chaotic, people rushed toward the stage, and the marshals eventually closed off the area I had hoped to stand in. I ended up watching from much farther away than I expected.

Still, hearing their voices and getting even a glimpse of their performance was enough to leave an impression.

Seeing them again in Edmonton, from a much closer distance, gave me a better opportunity to appreciate what they could do.

Unang Kilig was one of the performances I particularly enjoyed.

I mention this because people sometimes judge idol groups almost entirely through edited music videos. Those videos are part of the performance, certainly, but they aren’t the whole picture.

Listen to the recordings first. Then try watching a live performance.

You might notice things you missed.

And if BINI’s cheerful pop isn’t quite your preference, there are other groups worth exploring.

VVINK, for instance, offers an interesting starting point with Pag-Ibig Fun and Baduy.

The latter, a collaboration with DJ Love and Pio Balbuena, incorporates the Filipino dance style budots into its pop sound. It is playful, energetic, and perhaps a little unusual if you’re expecting the polished sound associated with mainstream idol groups.³

That’s part of its appeal to me.

I like that Filipino pop doesn’t always have to sound refined in the same way. There should be room for something humorous, local, and slightly excessive.

After all, Filipino popular music has never been entirely serious.

I grew up listening to novelty songs. I see no reason why I should suddenly become too sophisticated to enjoy a little musical absurdity.

If You Want Music That Stays With You

Of course, not every song needs to be cheerful.

Some of the best Filipino songs I’ve heard are those that manage to express a familiar feeling without making it sound unnecessarily complicated.

I think this is where listeners who enjoy traditional OPM ballads might find an easier connection to P-Pop than they expect.

Start with Karera by BINI.

I’ve already explained why this song became important to me, but I want to recommend it for a reason that goes beyond my personal experience.

The song speaks to the pressure of constantly moving forward, particularly when the world seems determined to remind us that we are falling behind.

You don’t have to be preparing for a licensure examination to understand that feeling.

Maybe you’re trying to establish yourself in another country. Perhaps you’re changing careers, working toward something that has taken longer than expected, or comparing your circumstances with people who seem to be doing better.

I think Karera deserves a place in your playlist for those moments.

Then listen to hulog by KAIA.

What I appreciate about this release is that it allows the group to explore a more vulnerable sound. It shows a different side of performers who are also capable of delivering energetic and demanding choreography.

It is worth hearing on its own, away from the expectation that a pop group should always produce something immediately suited for dancing.

And then there’s Sinigang by ALAMAT.

The title alone is enough to make you curious, especially if you’re expecting a song about the familiar Filipino dish.

But ALAMAT plays with the word, drawing it from the phrase sinisigaw hanggang ngayon.

It’s a heartfelt R&B-influenced love song that makes room for longing and the things we continue carrying after a relationship changes. The group has explained how the song grew from an early demo into a collaboration involving several members.⁴

What interests me about the song is how comfortably it sits within the Filipino tradition of sentimental music while still sounding contemporary.

You can appreciate it without knowing the group’s members, understanding their visual concepts, or following the history of their releases.

Sometimes that’s what makes a good introduction.

A song should be allowed to speak for itself.

If You Want to Hear the Philippines Beyond Tagalog

This is where ALAMAT deserves special attention.

One of the things I appreciate about the group is its willingness to incorporate languages from different parts of the Philippines.

I grew up in Iloilo, where Hiligaynon was part of everyday life. I also grew up hearing and speaking other Philippine languages. For that reason, I know how easily conversations about Filipino culture can become centred on Manila and Tagalog, even when we understand that the country is much more diverse.

There is nothing wrong with singing in Tagalog. I appreciate the language, including songs that make use of its more literary expressions.

I don’t object to English, either.

English has been part of Filipino popular music for generations, and I don’t think using it makes a song less Filipino.

What interests me is the possibility of hearing all these languages within the same musical space.

That is why I have a particular affection for ALAMAT’s ILY ILY, featuring Lyca Gairanod.

The song draws from Ili-Ili, Tulog Anay, a traditional Hiligaynon lullaby associated with Iloilo.

But ALAMAT doesn’t simply reproduce the lullaby with modern instruments.

The group uses it to tell a story about families separated by work and economic necessity, particularly parents who must leave home to provide for their children. Different Philippine languages appear throughout the song, allowing the members to express different parts of that experience.⁵

It is a subject that probably needs little explanation for many Filipino families.

We’ve grown accustomed to people leaving the country for employment. We hear about parents working overseas, children growing up with relatives, and families learning to maintain relationships across considerable distances.

Sometimes those stories are treated as ordinary features of Filipino life.

Perhaps they have become ordinary.

That doesn’t make the separation any less difficult.

What I appreciate about ILY ILY is that the song allows this familiar experience to be heard through languages that aren’t always given the same attention in mainstream Filipino pop.

For someone like me, there is something meaningful about hearing Hiligaynon in a contemporary group recording.

It doesn’t mean that I need every P-Pop song to include regional languages. And I wouldn’t want artists to use them merely as decorations, as though mentioning something from the provinces automatically makes a song culturally meaningful.

But I appreciate the possibility.

I appreciate that a young listener from Iloilo, Bicol, Pampanga, the Ilocos region, or the Visayas might hear a familiar language in a song that reaches audiences beyond their community.

And that someone unfamiliar with those languages might become curious enough to learn a little more.

Another ALAMAT song worth hearing is LuzViMinda.

Its title brings together Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao, and the song is concerned with the group’s identity and where its members come from.

It is a different listening experience from ILY ILY, but the underlying interest in Filipino identity is familiar.

The important thing, I think, is that regional culture is not being treated as something that belongs only in traditional performances or school presentations.

It can exist in contemporary music, too.

And I would like to hear more of it.

Not because every song needs to carry a national or cultural message, but because the Philippines has so many languages, musical traditions, and stories that deserve opportunities to be heard.

If You Prefer Something Louder

Now, I realize that all this talk about comforting melodies and cultural connections might give the impression that P-Pop is primarily gentle, cheerful music.

It isn’t.

And for someone who grew up listening to Filipino rock bands, that is another reason I continued exploring.

SB19’s LAWLESS is one of my current favourites.

It brings together forceful rap passages, guitar-driven production, and a defiant attitude that feels quite different from the lighter pop songs someone might associate with modern idol groups. Released in July 2026, the track adds another direction to the group’s catalogue.⁶

I wouldn’t claim that listening to LAWLESS is the same experience as listening to Siakol or Grin Department. They’re working within different musical traditions.

But I do appreciate music that has some aggression and personality when the song calls for it.

I also think SB19 is a useful group to explore if you are curious about how Filipino idol performers can move between different musical approaches.

Listen to GENTO, then MAPA, and then LAWLESS.

The contrast is part of the point.

These aren’t three versions of the same song. They make different demands on the performers and offer different experiences for listeners.

I would also encourage you to look into G22.

They’re among the groups I listen to regularly, and I think they deserve more attention from people whose knowledge of P-Pop begins and ends with the most commercially recognizable names.

Groove On is worth adding to a listening session if you’re interested in the group’s performance-oriented side.

But don’t stop after a single song. Their recordings and live performances are worth exploring together.

Then there’s VXON, whose music has increasingly incorporated hip-hop, funk, and street-influenced pop.

One song I regularly return to is Dapat Lang Ako Lang, a lively track about wanting clarity and reassurance in a relationship. Its upbeat arrangement is part of what makes it enjoyable.⁷

I like that the subject doesn’t force the music into an overly sentimental direction.

One difficulty with recommending P-Pop is that the recorded music doesn’t always communicate everything the performers are capable of.

Some groups become more compelling when you watch how they handle choreography while singing. Others surprise you with their vocal arrangements, stage presence, or the way individual members contribute to a performance.

That doesn’t mean every listener needs to watch music videos or concert recordings.

I’m perfectly happy listening through earphones during an ordinary commute.

But when a song catches your attention, I think it is worth seeing how the artists perform it.

You may discover another reason to appreciate the music.

There Is More to P-Pop Than the Groups You Already Know

One thing I’ve noticed as I followed P-Pop more closely is how easily conversations about the genre become concentrated on a few groups.

I understand why.

BINI and SB19 have achieved the kind of recognition that introduces people to an entire industry. Their songs reach audiences who might never have considered listening to P-Pop, and their performances have helped make Filipino idol groups more visible.

I think that’s worth appreciating.

But I also think we miss something when we assume that the most recognizable artists represent everything a genre has to offer.

It reminds me a little of how I discovered Filipino rock music growing up. I didn’t begin with an understanding of the entire industry. I listened to whatever my uncles played, whatever was popular on the radio, and whatever songs happened to find their way onto those cassette tapes.

Then one song would lead to another.

Eventually, I became familiar with artists I might never have discovered if I had only listened to the biggest names.

That’s how I think P-Pop should be explored, too.

I regularly listen to groups like ALAMAT, BINI, G22, and KAIA, but I also follow VVINK, VXON, AJAA, pix!e, and Press Hit Play.

And there are other artists I genuinely hope more people will discover.

Not because I think they deserve automatic recognition simply for being Filipino, but because there is good music being made beyond the groups that dominate social media.

Sometimes all an artist needs is someone willing to press play.

A Few More Girl Groups Worth Hearing

If you enjoy BINI’s music but want to explore something different, I would encourage you to listen to YARA, YGIG, and CALISTA.

I find YARA particularly interesting because their music offers a connection between the Filipino pop I remember growing up and the sounds younger audiences enjoy today.

Their interpretation of the SexBomb Girls’ Bakit Papa? is a good example.

I remember the SexBomb Girls as part of Philippine popular culture in the early 2000s. You didn’t have to be an avid follower to know who they were or recognize some of their songs.

Those performances were cheerful, sometimes absurd, and unapologetically made for entertainment. And while we might not have called them P-Pop in the same sense we use the term today, they were certainly part of the history that contemporary Filipino idol groups inherited.

Hearing YARA reinterpret Bakit Papa? through a more contemporary R&B approach makes that connection particularly interesting.⁸

It’s familiar enough to remind older listeners of the original, but different enough to stand on its own.

I like that.

It reminds me that Filipino popular music doesn’t always need to reject what came before in order to create something new.

YGIG is another group worth exploring.

Their music has changed considerably since their debut, and songs like Chicka-chick-a, lyk that, and Perfect Blue show their willingness to experiment with different sounds.

I think Perfect Blue would make a comfortable introduction if you enjoy bright, accessible pop. Released in June 2026, it offers a summery dance-pop sound with a hint of longing beneath its cheerful arrangement.⁹

I would also encourage you to listen to CALISTA’s ‘Wag Na.

It’s another example of why I don’t want this guide to revolve entirely around the groups whose names are already familiar.

And then there’s pix!e, whose releases include Iced Coffee, Float, and Add To Heart.¹⁰

These groups don’t necessarily occupy the same musical space. That is precisely why I want to mention them together.

I don’t think a listener should approach P-Pop expecting every girl group to sound like BINI, just as it would be unreasonable to expect every Filipino rock band to sound like Eraserheads.

Artists need room to develop their identities.

Some will succeed in ways I appreciate. Others might explore sounds that aren’t particularly suited to my preferences.

But I would rather have a growing selection of artists making different kinds of music than an industry where everyone is expected to reproduce a single successful formula.

And there is something encouraging about discovering a group before its music becomes widely familiar.

Not because being an early listener makes you a better fan.

Sometimes you simply find a song you enjoy and wonder why you haven’t heard more people talking about it.

And Don’t Forget the Boy Groups

The same is true for the boy groups.

For someone who hasn’t listened to much P-Pop, SB19 might be the obvious starting point. But I would also recommend exploring Press Hit Play, 1st.One, and AJAA.

Press Hit Play has a catalogue that I think deserves more attention, particularly from listeners who enjoy melodic Filipino pop.

Try Hey Love! or Lampara.

I don’t think every P-Pop song needs to reinvent the familiar love song.

Filipino music has been singing about affection, longing, and romantic hesitation for generations. If an artist finds an enjoyable way to express those feelings, I don’t see why we should demand that the subject be entirely new.

Sometimes we become too concerned with whether contemporary pop sounds modern enough that we forget how much pleasure there is in hearing an ordinary emotion expressed through a good melody.

I would also encourage you to listen to 1st.One.

DITO is a worthwhile starting point, and you can explore their other releases afterward.

Then there’s AJAA.

Their music offers a youthful, playful approach that might appeal to listeners who enjoy lighter pop. Ako Na, released in 2025, is particularly approachable, with its upbeat treatment of someone hoping to have their romantic feelings returned.¹¹

And if you previously encountered New:ID, you may want to revisit their recordings.

The group has since reorganized as DAY ONE, following changes in management and membership. Their new debut under that name has been announced for October 18, 2026.¹²

For now, GHOST, released under the New:ID name, provides a starting point for their earlier sound.

I find stories like this worth following because they remind me that the artists we see performing have careers that are still developing.

Groups change. Members leave or join. Musical directions shift. Sometimes artists have to begin again.

From the outside, it’s easy to see only the finished music video and the performances that appear on our screens.

We don’t always think about the uncertainty behind them.

I’m not suggesting that every artist deserves success simply because they’ve worked hard. There are many talented people in the world, and hard work doesn’t guarantee that a particular song will find an audience.

But I think we can at least approach their work with a little more curiosity.

Listen to what they’ve made.

Then decide whether you like it.

That seems fair enough.

You Don’t Need to Understand the Entire P-Pop Industry

One reason I hesitated to explore K-Pop, and later P-Pop, was the impression that enjoying the music required knowing so much about the artists.

There were group members to recognize, terms to learn, performances to follow, and fan communities with their own traditions and expectations.

It felt like a lot.

And perhaps that impression wasn’t entirely fair, either.

I now know more about several P-Pop groups than I ever expected to. I’ve followed their releases, watched their performances, and become familiar with aspects of the industry I previously ignored.

But I don’t think any of that should be required of someone who simply wants to listen.

You don’t need to memorize the names of eight members before enjoying a BINI song.

You don’t have to know the history of SB19 to appreciate MAPA or LAWLESS.

You can enjoy ALAMAT’s Maharani without knowing every cultural reference in the music video, although learning more about those references might deepen your appreciation.

And you can listen to G22 or KAIA without joining a fan community.

I think that’s an important distinction.

The relationship between artists and their supporters can be meaningful, and I know that many fans invest considerable time and effort in helping their favourite groups succeed.

But the music should remain accessible to people who aren’t interested in participating in everything surrounding it.

I’m one of those people who has become less involved in fan communities over time.

Work became demanding, and my interests had to compete with the ordinary responsibilities of living abroad. I couldn’t follow every announcement, watch every performance, or keep track of every new release.

And that’s okay.

I still listen.

Sometimes I discover something months after everyone else has already been talking about it.

Sometimes I return to an older song instead of trying to keep up with whatever is new.

I don’t think music should become another obligation we struggle to fulfil.

There are already enough of those in everyday life.

A Listening Guide Shouldn’t Feel Like Homework

So, where should you actually start?

If you are completely unfamiliar with P-Pop, I would begin with music that resembles what you already enjoy.

From there, explore the artists’ other recordings.

You don’t have to finish an entire album. You don’t even have to finish a song if you genuinely dislike it.

But I would suggest giving unfamiliar music a little more time than we sometimes do.

I’ve noticed how easy it is to dismiss something after hearing only a few seconds, particularly when we’re scrolling through social media. We hear a short chorus, see a portion of the choreography, and assume we already understand what the artist is offering.

Sometimes we do.

Other times, we’re missing the better part of the song.

I would also encourage you to watch a few live performances, especially for groups whose music initially seems too dependent on production.

And perhaps that’s another way to approach P-Pop.

Don’t simply ask whether the songs sound like K-Pop.

Ask whether you enjoy the melodies. Whether the lyrics mean something to you. Whether the performers can sing. Whether the music makes you curious enough to listen again.

Those are questions we can ask of any artist.

Filipino or otherwise.

Do We Really Need to Call It Filipino Pride?

There is something else I want to discuss before ending this guide.

Living in Canada has given me opportunities to encounter Filipinos with different attitudes toward the music and entertainment coming from the Philippines.

Some remain enthusiastic about Filipino artists and are eager to share their work with others.

Others are much more dismissive.

I’ve heard the familiar criticism that Filipino entertainment is merely trying to imitate what other countries have already done.

Sometimes the criticism goes beyond individual songs or performances. It becomes a broader judgment about the ability of Filipino artists to create something worthwhile.

I find that discouraging.

Not because I believe every Filipino artist should be praised, but because I recognize something of my former self in that attitude.

I once dismissed SB19 without really taking the time to explore their music.

I assumed I understood what they were doing simply because I recognized their influences.

It took a song by BINI to make me reconsider.

And then ALAMAT gave me another reason to continue listening.

I still don’t love every P-Pop song. There are releases that don’t appeal to me and artists whose music I rarely revisit.

But I no longer assume that recognizing a foreign influence tells me everything I need to know about the work.

I think that’s a meaningful change.

At the same time, I’ve encountered Filipinos abroad who seem genuinely interested in remaining connected to the country through music, films, and other forms of entertainment.

Some are younger people looking for something that reflects their Filipino background. Others are more recent arrivals who simply want to share the music they’ve enjoyed back home.

I don’t think these experiences are necessarily contradictory.

We can be critical of our own entertainment industry and still appreciate what its artists are trying to accomplish.

We can recognize that Filipino music has borrowed from foreign influences and still find something distinctive in the result.

And we can enjoy P-Pop without turning every listening experience into a declaration of national pride.

I think that last part matters most to me.

There is a temptation, especially when we live abroad, to interpret every Filipino accomplishment as something we must celebrate.

A Filipino singer appears on an international television program, and we share the performance. A Filipino athlete wins a competition, and we proudly remind everyone where that athlete comes from.

I understand the impulse.

I’ve felt it myself.

Long before I became interested in P-Pop, I followed stories about Filipino singers finding recognition overseas. I remember the excitement surrounding Charice Pempengco, now Jake Zyrus, and the conversations about Filipino talent appearing on international stages.

There has always been something satisfying about seeing people from our country recognized elsewhere.

But I don’t want appreciation of Filipino art to depend entirely on whether the rest of the world approves of it.

Nor do I want to listen to a song simply because the performers share my nationality.

I’d like to think Filipino artists deserve the opportunity to be heard for the quality of their music.

If they make something beautiful, entertaining, comforting, or even delightfully ridiculous, then I want to appreciate it for those reasons.

The fact that the music comes from the Philippines can make the experience more personal.

But it shouldn’t have to carry the entire argument.

Maybe This Is Another Way of Staying Connected

I sometimes think about how much Filipino music has accompanied different periods of my life.

There were the cassette tapes from my childhood, filled with songs recorded from the radio and interrupted by voices of DJs whose names I no longer remember.

There were the bands I listened to during my younger years, when my musical preferences were influenced by family, church, friends, and whatever was popular at the time.

Then came the years of medical training, when music became one of the many things I turned to while trying to manage the demands of studying and preparing for examinations.

And eventually, Karera found its way into that experience.

I didn’t know then that a song I initially encountered through my wife’s interest in BINI would lead me to explore an entire generation of Filipino performers.

I certainly didn’t expect that I would continue listening to those artists after moving to Canada.

But here I am.

Somewhere along the way, the music I once dismissed became part of the ordinary soundtrack of my life.

I listened to it while commuting in Edmonton, much as I had done in the Philippines. I continued discovering artists whose music reminded me of familiar experiences, even as I adjusted to living somewhere else.

There were periods when I paid less attention.

I’ve written about that experience in When Life Got Louder Than the Music, when the demands of immigrating and adjusting to life in Canada made it difficult to remain as involved in P-Pop as I once was.

Then I saw BINI perform again, this time in a city that had become part of my new home.

I remember looking around and seeing an audience composed mostly of Filipinos, although there were people from other backgrounds, too.

I don’t want to romanticize that experience.

It was a concert. People were there to enjoy music, sing along, and watch performers they liked.

But I appreciated being there.

I appreciated seeing Filipino artists perform far from the country where I first discovered them.

And I appreciated that the music still meant something to me, even when so much else in my life had changed.

Perhaps that’s one of the quiet pleasures of living abroad.

You discover that certain things continue to accompany you without needing to remain exactly as they were.

Your relationship with your home country changes. Your routines change. Even the things you once considered familiar can begin to feel different.

But a song can still sound good through a pair of earphones.

You might recognize an expression you haven’t heard in a while, a language that reminds you of home, or a familiar emotion expressed in a new way.

Or perhaps none of those things will happen.

Perhaps you’ll simply hear a melody you enjoy.

I think that’s enough.

Just Press Play

I don’t know what P-Pop will look like ten years from now.

Some of the groups I’ve mentioned may become much more popular. Others might take different directions, change members, or eventually stop making music together.

The industry itself will probably continue changing.

There will be more influences from other countries, more experiments with language and musical styles, and more arguments about what counts as original Filipino music.

I expect some of those arguments will sound familiar.

But I hope we eventually become more comfortable allowing Filipino artists to make music without demanding that they constantly prove something about our national identity.

I hope we can criticize songs we dislike without dismissing the people who created them.

I hope artists have enough freedom to experiment, fail, improve, and occasionally surprise us.

And I hope listeners become a little more willing to explore music that doesn’t immediately resemble what they already enjoy.

Because I think about how easily I could have missed Karera.

I could have continued dismissing P-Pop as an imitation of K-Pop. I could have ignored my wife’s recommendations, scrolled past the performances, and remained perfectly content with the music I already knew.

There would have been nothing particularly wrong with that.

But I would have missed a song that meant something to me during a difficult period of my life.

I might never have explored ALAMAT, or discovered the pleasure of hearing Hiligaynon incorporated into contemporary Filipino pop.

I might never have listened more closely to G22, KAIA, and the other groups whose music now appears regularly in my playlists.

And I wouldn’t have had the experience of seeing BINI perform again, this time in Edmonton.

It’s strange how something as ordinary as listening to a song can gradually change the way you think about an entire genre.

Maybe you won’t have the same experience.

Maybe you’ll listen to a few of my recommendations and decide that P-Pop simply isn’t for you.

That’s all right.

You don’t owe these artists your admiration.

But perhaps you’ll find one song that catches your attention.

And maybe, after listening to that song a few times, you’ll become curious about the people who made it.

You might discover another group. Another melody. Another side of Filipino music that you hadn’t considered before.

That’s how it happened to me.

I started with the songs my uncles played on cassette tapes, moved through years of Filipino rock and other music, and eventually found myself listening to modern Filipino pop in a country thousands of kilometres away from where I grew up.

I still know many of those old songs.

I still enjoy them.

And now, there are a few more voices joining them.

You don’t have to call that Filipino pride.

Sometimes, it’s simply the pleasure of discovering good music.

And perhaps that’s where we should begin.

1. Billboard Philippines. (2023). “The History and Future of Filipino Pop, From Folk Love Songs to the P-Pop Wave.” Billboard Philippines. https://billboardphilippines.com/culture/scenes/the-history-and-future-of-filipino-pop-from-folk-love-songs-to-the-p-pop-wave/ ↩︎
2. Billboard Philippines. (2025). “How P-Pop Is Re-Shaping Filipino Music As We See It.” Billboard Philippines. https://billboardphilippines.com/culture/scenes/how-p-pop-is-re-shaping-filipino-music-as-we-see-it/ ↩︎
3. Billboard Philippines. (2026). “P-POP UNITE: The Convention — Every Performance.” Billboard Philippines. https://billboardphilippines.com/music/features/p-pop-unite-the-convention-performances-2026/ ↩︎
4. Billboard Philippines. (2025). “‘DESTINO’: An Exclusive Track-By-Track Guide With ALAMAT.” Billboard Philippines. https://billboardphilippines.com/music/features/alamat-destino-album-track-by-track-guide-2025/ ↩︎
5. Liwanag, P. (2022, August 22). “Alamat, Lyca Gairanod Come Together on New Tune.” Manila Bulletin. https://mb.com.ph/2022/8/22/alamat-lyca-gairanod-come-together-on-new-tune ↩︎
6. Billboard Philippines. (2026). “SB19 Debut Their Newest Single ‘LAWLESS’ On The Lollapalooza Stage.” Billboard Philippines. https://billboardphilippines.com/music/news/sb19-lawless-lollapalooza-2026/ ↩︎
7. Billboard Philippines. (2025). “VXON Drop New Single ‘Dapat Lang Ako Lang.’” Billboard Philippines. https://billboardphilippines.com/music/news/vxon-new-single-dapat-lang-ako-lang-2025/ ↩︎
8. ABS-CBN News. (2023, September 22). “YARA Brings Back SexBomb’s Hit Song ‘Bakit Papa?’ With Twist.” ABS-CBN Entertainment. https://www.abs-cbn.com/entertainment/09/22/23/yara-revives-sexbombs-bakit-papa-as-rnb-track ↩︎
9. Billboard Philippines. (2026). “YGIG Keep Summer Going With New Single ‘Perfect Blue.’” Billboard Philippines. https://billboardphilippines.com/music/news/ygig-perfect-blue-single-2026/ ↩︎
10. Billboard Philippines. (2026). “pix!e Readies New Single ‘Add To Heart’ for August 8 Release.” Billboard Philippines. https://billboardphilippines.com/music/news/pixie-add-to-heart-third-single-2026/ ↩︎
11. ABS-CBN Corporation. (2025, September 29). “AJAA Confesses Love in New Single ‘Ako Na.’” ABS-CBN Newsroom. https://corporate.abs-cbn.com/newsroom/news-releases/2025/9/29/ajaa-confesses-love-in-new-single-ako-na ↩︎
12. Manuel, A. (2026, October 13). “New To Redebut As DAY ONE With New Single ‘D.O.D.’” Billboard Philippines. https://billboardphilippines.com/music/news/new-id-redebut-day-one-dod-single-2026/ ↩︎

Mara’s key had a strip of red nail polish across the head.

“Just in case,” Mara had said when she gave it to her.

Lena remembered laughing.

“In case of what?”

“I don’t know. Fire. Flood. I fall in the shower and can’t get up.”

“You’re thirty-eight.”

“People fall at thirty-eight.”

“You live in a bungalow.”

“That actually makes it more embarrassing.”

That was how Mara spoke. She could turn almost anything into a joke before it had time to become serious.

Lena had liked that about her.

She still did, perhaps.

The key stayed.

For most of those four years, Lena never used it.

She carried it through grocery stores and dentist appointments. Through winters when the metal became cold enough inside her coat pocket that she could feel it against her thigh. Through summer afternoons when the avenue near Mara’s house smelled of dust, hot pavement, cigarettes, and whatever was cooking inside the little restaurants that had somehow survived another year.

The neighbourhood had once been busier.

Mara said that all the time.

She had lived there long enough to remember the bakery that used to sit beside the pharmacy. The fabric shop that became a discount furniture store, then an empty unit with paper over the windows. The old diner that had burned down years ago and was now surrounded by fencing because somebody had finally decided to build something where it stood.

There was always construction.

There were orange signs in places where Lena could not remember there being anything wrong with the road.

One lane would disappear for six weeks. A sidewalk would close. A bus stop would move half a block and then move back again.

Some mornings there were three people sleeping beneath the awning of the closed bank.

Some evenings there were five.

Mara knew some of them by name.

Not well. Just enough to say hello.

She kept granola bars in her glove compartment and insisted this did not make her a good person.

“It makes me somebody who buys granola bars,” she once told Lena.

That was Mara too.

She disliked being praised.

At first Lena had interpreted that as modesty.

Later, she wondered if Mara simply preferred deciding for herself what things meant.

The call came on a Thursday afternoon.

Lena was standing in the cereal aisle of a grocery store eight blocks from Mara’s house, trying to decide whether twelve dollars was now a reasonable price for a box of cereal or whether she had simply become tired of being angry about groceries.

Her phone rang.

The number was unfamiliar.

She nearly ignored it.

“Hello?”

“Is this Lena?”

“Yes.”

“My name is Warren. I live next door to Mara.”

Lena knew who he was. Grey beard. Baseball cap in all weather. A small white dog that hated garbage trucks.

“Yes. Is everything okay?”

“I don’t know.”

Those four words changed the way Lena was standing.

“What happened?”

“There’s water coming out from under her back door.”

Lena put the cereal back.

“What?”

“Not much. But enough that I noticed. I knocked. No answer.”

“Mara’s at work.”

“I thought maybe you had a key.”

Lena looked down at her hand as if the key might already be there.

“How did you get my number?”

“She gave it to me last year when she went away. Said you were the emergency person.”

The emergency person.

Lena did not know why the phrase bothered her.

Maybe because she had never heard it before.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m close.”

She abandoned the basket near the cereal aisle.

Outside, traffic had backed up along the avenue because another intersection was under construction. A city bus sat half inside the crosswalk while cars tried to squeeze around it. Across the street, two men argued beside a shopping cart filled with bags and blankets. Neither seemed particularly angry. They were simply loud.

Lena walked.

It was faster.

By the time she reached Mara’s street, Warren was waiting outside his house with the white dog twisting around his ankles.

“There,” he said.

Water had collected along the bottom step behind Mara’s house.

Not enough to call it a flood.

Enough to make Lena nervous.

She knocked.

Then knocked harder.

“Mara?”

Nothing.

She called.

The ringing stopped after several seconds.

Voicemail.

Lena tried again.

Same thing.

“You want me to call somebody?” Warren asked.

“No. I have the key.”

She reached into her bag.

The red stripe was still there, although most of the nail polish had chipped away.

For some reason, she hesitated.

Four years.

She had carried the thing for four years, and now that she was standing in front of the lock, using it felt almost indecent.

Mara had given her permission.

That was the entire point.

Still.

Lena inserted the key.

The lock turned easily.

“Stay here,” she told Warren.

He raised both hands.

“I wasn’t planning to come in.”

Inside, the house smelled faintly of coffee.

“Mara?”

Nothing.

Lena closed the door behind her.

The kitchen was at the back of the house. She followed the sound before she saw the water.

A thin stream ran across the floor from beneath the sink.

“Oh, shit.”

She stepped around it and opened the cabinet.

The pipe beneath the basin had separated at one of the joints.

Lena did not know anything about plumbing beyond the fact that water was generally supposed to remain inside pipes.

She found the shutoff valve and turned it.

Nothing happened.

She turned it the other way.

The water slowed.

“Okay.”

She crouched there for another few seconds, watching the stream become a trickle and then almost nothing.

Her jeans were wet at the knee.

She called Mara again.

Voicemail.

She sent a message.

Water leak under your sink. Warren called me. I used the key and shut the valve. Call me when you see this.

She stared at the screen.

Then added:

Everything seems okay.

Lena stood.

That should have been the end of it.

She should have left.

She would later think about this exact moment more than any other part of the afternoon.

Not opening the door.

Not turning off the water.

Not even what happened afterward.

This.

The small space between having a reason to be inside someone’s house and no longer having one.

Lena took one step toward the back door.

Then she saw the spatula.

It was lying in Mara’s dish rack beside two forks and a coffee mug.

Grey handle.

White silicone blade.

A small chip at the corner where Lena had once caught it in the drawer.

She stopped walking.

For several seconds, she simply looked at it.

There were probably thousands exactly like it.

Millions, perhaps.

Rubber spatulas were not fingerprints.

They did not belong uniquely to one person.

She knew that.

Still, Lena crossed the kitchen.

She picked it up.

The chip was there.

Her thumb found it immediately.

A shallow crescent missing from one corner.

She turned the spatula over.

There was dried pink icing along the base of the blade.

Lena felt something move inside her chest.

Not shock.

That would have been easier.

It was recognition.

Three months earlier, Lena had made a birthday cake.

Not for Mara.

For herself.

She had never been someone who cared much about birthdays, but thirty-nine had unsettled her in a way she found difficult to explain. Forty at least had some authority to it. Thirty-nine simply sounded like a number somebody had forgotten to round up.

So she bought cake mix.

She made icing.

She put too much food colouring into it and ended up with a shade of pink that looked almost fluorescent.

Mara came over that evening with a bottle of sparkling water and a card.

They ate two pieces each.

The next morning, Lena could not find the spatula.

She checked the sink.

The dishwasher.

Every drawer.

She even checked the garbage.

It irritated her more than it should have.

She mentioned it to Mara a week later.

“My icing spatula disappeared.”

Mara laughed.

“Did it run away?”

“I’m serious.”

“How does a spatula disappear?”

“That is what I’m asking.”

“Maybe you threw it out.”

“I didn’t.”

“Maybe it’s behind a drawer.”

“I checked.”

Mara had shrugged.

Then she said something Lena had replayed more than once since.

“You do this sometimes.”

“Do what?”

“Get stuck on little things.”

At the time, Lena had laughed too.

She had even apologized.

That was the strange part.

She had apologized for caring about her own missing spatula.

Now it was in her hand.

No.

Not in Mara’s hand.

In hers.

Lena stood alone in Mara’s kitchen, holding something that belonged in her own.

The water beneath the sink had stopped completely.

Outside, somewhere beyond the closed window, a truck reversed.

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

Lena looked toward the hallway.

Then back at the spatula.

She could leave.

She understood that clearly.

Take the spatula.

Go home.

Wait for Mara to call.

There was still a version of the afternoon in which everything after this remained reasonable.

Lena set the spatula on the counter.

Then she opened the first drawer.

There were measuring spoons.

Two wine openers.

A roll of tape.

A loose battery.

Nothing that belonged to Lena.

She closed it.

Opened the second.

Tea towels.

Oven mitts.

A pair of scissors with orange handles.

She stared at the scissors.

No.

Not hers.

She knew because hers had black handles.

She shut the drawer.

Her pulse had started to quicken anyway.

This is stupid, she thought.

She was looking for proof of something she had already proved.

The spatula was there.

Mara had taken it.

Or borrowed it and forgotten.

Or carried it home accidentally after the birthday dinner.

There were several explanations that did not require opening drawers in another person’s house.

Lena knew this.

She opened the cupboard above the stove.

Mugs.

Baking powder.

A chipped bowl.

Nothing.

The next cupboard held plates.

The next had spices.

The next—

Lena stopped.

A blue ceramic ramekin sat on the second shelf.

She knew it immediately.

She had bought four of them from a discount store years ago because she liked the colour and because they were cheap enough that buying four seemed more sensible than buying two.

Now there were three in her kitchen.

She had wondered about the fourth.

Not searched for it.

Not like the spatula.

It was the kind of thing you noticed once, then again months later.

Didn’t I have four?

Then you moved on.

Lena reached into the cupboard and lifted it down.

There was a crack beneath the glaze near the base.

She remembered that too.

Mara had used it once for olives.

At Lena’s apartment.

Maybe two years earlier.

She put the ramekin on the counter beside the spatula.

For a moment she stood there with both hands flat against the counter.

Her breathing sounded too loud in the kitchen.

No.

This was not proof of what her body was beginning to tell her.

People borrowed things.

Friends borrowed things.

That was normal.

Mara had lent Lena a winter coat once when Lena’s zipper broke.

Lena still had a paperback of Mara’s somewhere, unless she had donated it.

There were probably objects moving back and forth between them all the time.

That was friendship.

Except Lena could not remember being given the ramekin.

She could not remember Mara asking for it.

And she remembered the spatula because she had asked.

Mara had looked at her.

She had laughed.

She had said, You do this sometimes.

Lena opened another cupboard.

Then another.

Nothing.

She felt relieved.

Then ashamed of the relief.

She turned toward the living room.

The doorway was only six steps away.

Mara’s house was not large.

Lena had been in every room except the bedroom more times than she could count. They had eaten takeout on the sofa. Wrapped gifts on the floor. Watched bad television and complained about people who made obvious mistakes on home renovation shows.

Once, during a snowstorm, Lena had slept there.

Mara had given her the bedroom.

“I can take the couch.”

“It’s my house.”

“Exactly.”

“Then I get to decide.”

Lena had slept in the bed.

Mara had slept on the couch.

At the time, Lena thought that was kindness.

Now she hated that she was reconsidering even that.

The living room looked ordinary.

A blanket folded over one arm of the sofa.

Mail on the coffee table.

A mug on the windowsill.

Lena scanned the room.

Nothing.

She laughed once, quietly.

“What are you doing?”

The sound of her own voice startled her.

She should go.

She really should go.

Then she saw the lamp.

It was beside the sofa, on a small table near the wall.

Cream-coloured ceramic base.

Pleated shade.

Lena walked toward it slowly.

She had owned the same lamp.

Or maybe she still owned its twin.

She had bought two when she first moved into her apartment because the living room had no ceiling light.

One had disappeared during a move.

At least, that was what she thought.

She had complained about it to Mara.

Not recently.

Years ago.

“Maybe one of the movers took it,” Lena had said.

“Why would a mover steal one lamp?”

“I don’t know.”

“People steal weird things.”

That conversation returned with awful precision.

She touched the base.

There was a brown mark along the back.

A dried line from when Lena had spilled coffee and wiped it badly.

Her stomach dropped.

She stepped away.

The house suddenly felt different.

Not unfamiliar.

Worse.

Too familiar.

Pieces of her life were arranged inside someone else’s.

Small things.

Cheap things.

Things she had not valued enough to keep track of carefully.

That was perhaps why Mara had chosen them.

The thought came so quickly that Lena almost recoiled from it.

Chosen.

That was an accusation.

She had no right to it yet.

A spatula.

A ramekin.

A lamp.

Three things over four years.

That could still be explained.

Somehow.

Lena walked back toward the kitchen.

Her phone buzzed.

She froze.

Mara.

Calling.

Lena stared at the screen until the third ring.

Then answered.

“Hi.”

“What happened?”

Mara sounded breathless.

“Warren called me. Water was coming out the back.”

“Oh my God.”

“I shut it off.”

“Thank you. Shit. I’m leaving work now.”

“It’s not bad.”

“Did it get into the basement?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Can you check?”

Lena looked toward the basement door.

Her mouth went dry.

“Sure.”

“Thank you. Seriously. I owe you.”

Lena said nothing.

“Lena?”

“I’m here.”

“You okay?”

“Yes.”

A pause.

Then Mara laughed lightly.

“Did you drown?”

“No.”

“Good. I can’t afford a lawyer.”

Usually Lena would have laughed.

Mara waited just long enough for her to notice that she had not.

“What?” Mara asked.

“Nothing.”

“You sound strange.”

Lena looked at the spatula on the counter.

Then at the ramekin beside it.

“Do I?”

“Yes.”

“I’m just checking the basement.”

“Okay. Call me if it’s bad.”

“Mara.”

“What?”

Lena nearly asked.

Is this mine?

Why did you take it?

How many things?

Instead she said, “How long until you get here?”

“Twenty minutes. Maybe thirty with traffic.”

“Okay.”

“You sure everything’s fine?”

Lena closed her eyes.

“Yes.”

After the call ended, she stood completely still.

Then she opened the basement door.

She told herself she was checking for water.

That was true.

At first.

The basement smelled damp, but not freshly flooded. Concrete floor. Furnace. Washer and dryer.

No water.

“Good,” Lena whispered.

She should have gone upstairs.

Instead, she noticed the shelves.

Plastic storage bins lined one wall.

Christmas decorations.

Old books.

Cleaning supplies.

A toolbox.

Nothing strange.

Then, on the floor beside the washer, she saw a tote bag.

Canvas.

Green handles.

Lena knew that bag.

She had received it free at a bookshop opening years before.

She had thought she lost it on a bus.

Her name was written inside.

She knew because she had written it there after losing two other reusable bags.

Lena picked it up.

The bag was empty.

Inside, in black marker:

LENA V.

For several seconds, the basement made no sound except the furnace.

This was different.

Not because the bag was valuable.

It was probably worth three dollars.

But Mara knew whose it was.

There was no possibility that she had mistaken it for her own.

Lena sat down on the bottom stair.

She remembered losing the bag.

She remembered mentioning it.

She remembered Mara saying, “Check the bus lost and found.”

Then Lena remembered something else.

Something she had not thought about in years.

A scarf.

Red wool.

Not expensive.

A Christmas gift from an aunt.

Lena had accused herself of leaving it in a restaurant.

Mara had been with her that night.

A phone charger.

A glass container with a blue lid.

A silver pen she liked because it wrote unusually smoothly.

A pair of gardening gloves.

Nothing important.

Nothing expensive.

Things that disappeared without enough weight to become a problem.

Small irritations.

Then forgotten.

Lena stood.

There were six storage bins.

She opened the first one.

Christmas lights.

The second contained old clothes.

The third would not open because another box sat on top of it.

She moved the box aside.

Her hands were shaking now.

Inside were kitchen things.

An old kettle.

Plastic containers.

A rolling pin.

Three mismatched mugs.

Lena lifted one.

White with thin blue lines.

Her mug.

She knew before turning it over.

There was a tiny chip on the bottom edge.

She had bought it at a museum gift shop.

She had searched for that one too.

Not because it mattered.

Because she liked it.

Lena put it down carefully.

Beside it lay the red scarf.

Folded.

Clean.

She sat back on her heels.

Something in her wanted Mara to arrive immediately.

Another part wanted another hour.

There was no excitement in the discovery.

No satisfaction.

Only a slow, ugly confirmation.

Mara had taken things.

Not once.

Not accidentally.

For years.

Lena opened the fourth bin.

Nothing she recognized.

The fifth.

Books.

The sixth.

Empty jars.

She stood.

That was all.

One tote.

One mug.

One scarf.

Upstairs, the spatula, ramekin, lamp.

Six objects.

Six ridiculous objects.

Lena almost laughed.

This was what she had found inside the home of the woman she called first when something went wrong.

A cheap inventory of being lied to.

The basement door opened.

Lena spun around.

Mara stood at the top of the stairs.

For one second neither woman spoke.

Mara looked at Lena.

Then at the open storage bin.

Then back at Lena.

Her expression changed only slightly.

Not shock.

Not confusion.

Recognition.

That hurt more.

“What are you doing?” Mara asked.

Lena stood slowly.

“You’re home.”

“Yes.”

“I thought you said twenty minutes.”

“I left faster.”

Mara’s voice was flat now.

“Why are you opening my things?”

Lena stared at her.

The question was so clean that for a moment Lena almost accepted it.

Then she pointed at the bin.

“That’s my scarf.”

Mara looked.

Silence.

“And my mug.”

Mara said nothing.

“The green bag has my name in it.”

“Lena.”

“The spatula is upstairs.”

Mara’s face tightened.

“What spatula?”

Lena let out a sound that was almost a laugh.

“No.”

“What?”

“No. Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“That. Right there.”

Mara folded her arms.

“You’re in my basement opening boxes.”

“And you have my things.”

“You came into my house without me here.”

“Because there was water coming out of it.”

“That doesn’t mean you can search my basement.”

“I was checking for water.”

“In storage bins?”

“No.”

The honesty surprised both of them.

Lena swallowed.

“No. Not by then.”

Mara looked away.

For a moment, Lena saw something like fear.

Then it disappeared.

“You need to leave.”

Lena stared at her.

“Is that all you’re going to say?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know. Maybe explain why my things are in your house.”

“They’re things, Lena.”

There it was again.

Small.

Reduced.

Made unreasonable by size.

Lena walked toward the stairs.

Mara stepped back to let her pass.

Upstairs, the kitchen looked exactly as it had before.

The spatula remained beside the ramekin.

Mara saw them.

Her eyes paused there.

Only for a second.

Lena noticed.

“How many?” Lena asked.

Mara put her bag on a chair.

“How many what?”

“You know what.”

“I don’t.”

“How many things have you taken from me?”

Mara rubbed both hands over her face.

“I can’t do this right now.”

“Why?”

“Because I just left work because my kitchen was flooding and now you’re accusing me of stealing.”

“I’m not accusing you.”

Mara looked at her.

Lena pointed toward the counter.

“I’m asking you to explain what I’m looking at.”

Mara sighed.

That sigh did something to Lena.

It was the same sigh Mara used when customer service took too long.

When a restaurant forgot part of the order.

When somebody in front of them at the grocery store could not find their card.

Impatience.

As if Lena had become another inconvenience.

“I borrowed some stuff,” Mara said.

“Without asking.”

“I didn’t think you cared.”

“You told me the spatula probably fell behind a drawer.”

“I didn’t remember taking it.”

“You used it.”

“So?”

“So there was icing on it.”

“Oh my God.”

Mara laughed once.

It was not a kind laugh.

“Listen to yourself.”

Lena felt something inside her settle.

Not calm exactly.

More like a door closing.

“Okay,” she said.

Mara looked surprised.

“Okay what?”

“You’re right.”

“That’s not what I—”

“They’re just things.”

Lena picked up the spatula.

Then the ramekin.

She walked into the living room and unplugged the lamp.

Mara followed.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking my things.”

“You can’t just take a lamp out of my house.”

Lena turned.

The absurdity of it was almost too perfect.

“This is my lamp.”

“You gave that to me.”

Lena stared at her.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. Years ago.”

“No.”

“You don’t remember everything.”

“I remember enough.”

Mara’s face changed.

Something sharper entered it.

“You always do this.”

Lena tightened her grip on the lamp.

“Do what?”

“You decide there’s only one version of something.”

Lena almost answered.

Then stopped.

Because that line had worked before.

Different words.

Same shape.

You get stuck on little things.

You don’t remember everything.

You’re making this bigger than it is.

Lena suddenly understood that the objects were not the strange part.

The strange part was how often Mara had taught her to distrust the discomfort.

Lena put the lamp down.

Not because she believed Mara.

Because she no longer wanted to carry it.

“Keep that one.”

Mara blinked.

“What?”

“The lamp.”

“Lena, come on.”

“No. Keep it.”

“I don’t want your lamp.”

Lena looked at her.

“Apparently you did.”

Mara’s mouth opened.

Closed.

For the first time since arriving, she seemed to have nothing ready.

Lena returned to the kitchen.

She put the ramekin inside her bag.

The spatula followed.

Then she took the red-striped key from her ring.

Mara watched her.

“What are you doing?”

“You told me to leave.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I know.”

Lena worked the key free from the ring.

It resisted because the metal loop had bent slightly.

For a few seconds, neither woman spoke.

The whole argument shrank down to the tiny scraping sound of metal against metal.

Then the key came loose.

Lena placed it on the counter.

Beside the sink.

Mara looked at it.

“You don’t have to do that.”

Lena almost laughed again.

“You’re asking me to keep your key?”

“I’m saying you’re upset.”

“Yes.”

“And maybe don’t make some big decision while you’re upset.”

Lena looked around the kitchen.

At the counter.

At the damp floor.

At the cupboards she had opened.

At Mara.

“You’re right about one thing.”

Mara waited.

“I crossed a boundary today.”

Mara folded her arms again.

“You did.”

“I should have left after I shut off the water.”

“Yes.”

“I shouldn’t have opened your drawers.”

“No.”

“I shouldn’t have gone through the boxes downstairs.”

Mara’s shoulders softened slightly, as if the conversation had finally returned to a language she understood.

Lena continued.

“And you should never have made me think I was ridiculous for noticing what you took.”

Mara’s face hardened again.

“Lena—”

“That part matters.”

“They’re objects.”

“No.”

“They are.”

“No. They’re not.”

Lena surprised herself with how quiet her voice had become.

“They’re the proof.”

“Proof of what?”

“That every time I felt something was off, you found a way to make me embarrassed for feeling it.”

Mara looked toward the window.

Outside, a jackhammer started somewhere down the block.

The sound came through the glass in short bursts.

“You’re being dramatic.”

Lena nodded.

There it was.

Perfect.

Almost comforting.

Because this time she recognized it.

“Maybe.”

Mara turned back.

“You are.”

“Maybe I am.”

Lena picked up her bag.

“But I’m still leaving.”

“Over a spatula.”

Lena paused at the back door.

“No.”

She looked at Mara.

“That would be easier.”

Then she left.

Warren was still outside.

His dog barked once when Lena stepped onto the path.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

Lena looked back at Mara’s house.

The water had stopped seeping beneath the door.

“Yes,” she said.

Then, after a moment:

“The leak is.”

Warren seemed to understand that this was as much as she wanted to say.

He nodded.

“Good.”

Lena walked toward the avenue.

Traffic had barely moved.

Orange fencing ran along the sidewalk for almost an entire block. A pharmacy sign flickered even though it was still daylight. Two storefronts had plywood over the windows. Someone had left a mattress beside a bus shelter.

The city seemed to be taking itself apart and rebuilding itself badly.

Lena kept walking.

Her phone buzzed before she reached the intersection.

Mara.

She did not answer.

A message appeared.

Can we please talk when you calm down?

Lena read it once.

Then again.

For years, those words would have worked.

Not because they were cruel.

That was the problem.

They sounded sensible.

Calm down.

Talk later.

Don’t overreact.

Give it time.

There was always another version of what happened available if Lena waited long enough.

She put the phone back in her pocket.

At home, she washed the spatula.

The pink icing came away slowly.

She scrubbed around the chipped corner with her thumb until there was nothing left.

Then she placed it in the drawer.

The ramekin went into the cupboard beside the other three.

Four again.

She stood there looking at them.

The set was complete.

It did not make her feel better.

That evening Mara called twice.

Lena let both calls ring.

A third message came.

I’m sorry you felt like I dismissed you.

Lena stared at it.

She started typing.

Deleted it.

Typed again.

Deleted that too.

Finally she wrote:

I need space.

The reply came almost immediately.

Of course.

Then:

Whenever you’re ready.

Lena placed the phone face down.

For the first time that day, she cried.

Not much.

That surprised her.

She had expected more.

Instead, tears came quietly while she stood in the kitchen making toast.

She cried because Mara had taken things.

She cried because Mara had lied.

Mostly, though, she cried because there had been good years too.

That was harder to fit into anger.

Mara had driven her to urgent care once at two in the morning.

She had sat beside Lena through a breakup without offering advice until Lena asked for it.

She knew Lena hated raisins and loved the burnt edges of lasagna.

She sent pictures of badly designed signs.

She remembered dates Lena forgot herself.

People could be kind and still cross lines.

Lena had spent years believing those facts cancelled each other out.

That evening, for the first time, she understood they could simply exist together.

The next morning she reached for her keys before leaving for work.

Her hand stopped.

The ring felt lighter.

She looked down.

Her apartment key.

Mailbox key.

Brass tag.

A pale scratch where Mara’s key had rubbed against the others for years.

Lena turned the ring over in her palm.

The mark remained.

She closed her hand around it.

Then she left.

Across town, on a kitchen counter beside a repaired pipe, a house key with a chipped red stripe waited beneath the morning light.

That sentence still feels strange to write.

Not because I have somehow mastered winter after surviving one. I absolutely have not. I am still learning what works, what I can skip, what deserves more money and what can wait until I find it on sale.

But there is one advantage to preparing for your second Edmonton winter.

You already know what the first one did to you.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase something through one of these links, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. I only link to products or product types that I have personally used, researched, or genuinely think may be useful for this guide.

My first Edmonton winter technically began in spring

I arrived in Canada in March 2025.

They told me it was the first day of spring.

I remember hearing that and thinking that perhaps I had timed my arrival quite well. Winter was ending. Spring was starting. I could slowly adjust to Canadian weather.

Then I stepped outside.

It was around 9°C.

Nine.

Not minus nine.

Nine degrees above zero.

And I was already shaking.

I came from the Philippines, where 9°C is the sort of temperature you associate more with refrigeration than with walking outside.

For years, I had imagined cold weather with some affection. I liked the idea of wearing jackets. I wanted snow. I wanted to experience actual seasons.

Standing outside that first day, part of me was reliving all those moments when I had wished for this kind of weather.

The other part was asking what I had done.

Then the next day, it snowed.

So much for spring.

A client later gave me one of those lines you apparently hear in one form or another across Alberta:

“Here in Edmonton, if you don’t like the weather, just wait for five minutes.”

A churchmate had another:

“There are only two seasons in Alberta: winter and construction.”

After one winter here, I understand why people keep telling these jokes.

Before moving to Canada, winter mostly meant snow to me.

That is probably true for many newcomers from tropical countries. You see snow-covered houses in photographs. You watch Christmas movies. You see people wearing coats and children playing outside.

You think about snow.

You do not necessarily think about standing at a bus stop in minus 20 weather because you missed the bus you had been trying so hard to catch.

You do not think about slush.

Or ice.

Or static electricity.

Or the strange feeling of the inside of your nose freezing.

That last one really surprised me.

During one of the colder days, I remember breathing outside and feeling something change inside my nostrils. I had spent years wanting to experience Canadian cold, so there was still a tiny part of me thinking, Ah, so this is it.

That enthusiasm did not last long.

There is a point when “I wanted to experience Canadian winter” becomes “Okay, I have experienced enough Canadian winter for today.”

Edmonton’s extreme-weather planning gives some context to what serious cold actually means. The City can activate its winter extreme-weather response when forecasts call for temperatures of −20°C including wind chill for at least three consecutive days, usually alongside an Environment Canada alert. Open City recreation facilities and libraries remain available as places where people can warm up during winter.¹

That is when winter stops being something you dress for because you want to feel comfortable.

You dress for it because you need to stay safe.

My first proper winter jacket came from Goodwill

I did not arrive completely jacketless.

Someone had given me a jacket.

It just was not enough.

So one of our early purchases was a trip to Goodwill, where we found a Quechua winter jacket for around $40.

It still had its tags.

That felt like winning something.

Later, we found a Tommy Hilfiger winter jacket at Marshalls for around $75 on sale. You can buy a similar one here.

Those purchases shaped one of my strongest opinions about preparing for winter:

You do not have to buy everything new.

And you definitely do not have to buy everything at full price.

Moving countries is expensive enough.

You are paying deposits. Buying household things. Sorting out transportation. Replacing things you could not bring with you. Sometimes you are starting an entire wardrobe again because the clothing you owned in your previous country simply was not designed for where you now live.

There is no prize for paying full price for your parka.

Look at Goodwill.

Look at other thrift stores.

Check Winners and Marshalls.

Watch clearance sections.

Look at Facebook Marketplace if you are comfortable buying there.

Accept a good hand-me-down if someone offers one.

My $40 Goodwill jacket did not care that it came from Goodwill when the temperature dropped.

Neither did I.

I stopped thinking about one thick jacket and started thinking in layers

A neighbour suggested thermal underwear.

I went to Walmart and bought two sets.

That turned out to be good advice.

Before my first winter, I thought the basic equation was simple:

Cold weather equals thick jacket.

After one Edmonton winter, I think more about layers.

A base layer.

A shirt.

A sweater or hoodie when necessary.

Then the winter coat.

If it gets warmer, I can remove something.

That last part became more important than I expected because nobody had properly explained another strange feature of Canadian winter to me.

You can be freezing outside and sweating ten minutes later.

You step onto a heated bus.

You enter a store.

You arrive at work.

Suddenly the huge jacket that had been protecting you outside feels like too much.

I was genuinely surprised by how often I could sweat during winter.

Current basic thermal pieces at Walmart Canada show why layering does not necessarily have to destroy a newcomer budget. As of September 2026, some basic thermal tops or bottoms are around $10 to $20 each, although materials and prices vary widely.²

You can spend much more on merino wool and outdoor brands.

I did not.

My basic Walmart sets worked for what I needed.

And that is another thing I learned during my first winter.

The question is not always, “What is the best winter clothing?”

It is, “What do I need for my life?”

Someone who walks three minutes from an underground parkade to an office has different needs from someone waiting outside for a bus.

I was the bus person.

That changed everything.

The cheapest thing I underestimated was a toque

If you asked me which inexpensive winter item surprised me most, I would have an immediate answer.

A toque.

I cannot overemphasize how helpful a toque is.

Someone gave me an Edmonton Oilers one. Later, because I was still building what I considered my proper Canadian winter wardrobe, we bought another one from Simons.

As of September 2026, straightforward options at Simons can be found around $19 to $49. Of course, the same page contains designer tuques costing many times that amount, if your ears demand luxury.³

Mine do not.

I just want them warm.

A churchmate also knitted wool scarves for my wife and me, and those became regular parts of our winter clothing.

I bought a balaclava too.

I barely used it.

That is one reason I hesitate when I see those giant lists claiming there are dozens of things you absolutely must own to survive a Canadian winter.

Must you?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Your needs depend on where you live, how you travel, where you work and how much time you spend outside.

For me, the balaclava was optional.

The toque was not.

My first gloves were basically decorative

My first pair of winter gloves was cheap.

This is usually the point where I would like to tell you that I found another bargain.

I did not.

They were useless.

They looked like gloves. They covered my hands. Technically, they fulfilled the visual requirements of gloves.

Then Edmonton became properly cold.

Eventually I bought heated gloves.

Those worked much better, although they introduced another problem.

They were bulky.

Using my phone while wearing them was irritating.

That matters when your winter routine involves checking bus arrivals, looking at maps, answering messages or ordering an Uber while standing outside.

Someone later suggested that a good pair of leather gloves might work better for me.

Maybe.

I still have not budgeted for the pair I want, so I cannot tell you from personal experience that they are better.

I think that distinction matters.

There are things in this article I actually bought and used.

There are things people recommended to me.

And later in this guide, there are things I researched because they may matter to you even though I did not personally need them.

Those are not the same thing.

Then I slipped in my Hokas

For part of winter, I kept trying to wear my regular shoes whenever I thought I could get away with it.

I had winter boots.

In fact, I was fortunate enough not to have to buy my first pairs myself.

A Filipino couple I came to know bought me new WindRiver winter boots. The husband also gave me a pair of Columbia boots that he had never used.

I was grateful.

I was also stubborn.

Winter boots felt heavy.

Compared with the Hokas I had been wearing since I left the Philippines, they felt cumbersome. If the weather looked manageable and the sidewalk looked clear enough, I sometimes chose comfort.

Then I slipped at work.

There are lessons you learn from other people.

There are lessons you learn from reading.

And there are lessons where your body briefly becomes horizontal.

That was mine.

The problem was not simply snow.

It was ice.

Snow melts. Temperatures change. Water freezes again. What appears to be an ordinary sidewalk can become something else entirely.

After that, I bought removable ice cleats.

As of September 2026, Canadian Tire listings show just how much traction devices can vary. Basic removable grips can start around $13 to $20, while heavier designs can run around $30, $40, $55 or well beyond that.⁴

You do not automatically need the expensive ones.

I just know that after falling once, twenty dollars begins to sound quite reasonable.

Winter also taught me that boots are not only about warmth.

I now think about three things:

Warmth.

Traction.

Water resistance.

The third one surprised me.

Before Canada, snow in my imagination was fluffy, white and somehow dry.

Snow on the ground is not always that.

There is slush.

There is melting snow.

There is salt.

There is the dirty mixture that appears around entrances and sidewalks after people have been walking through it all day.

Winter is wet.

I did not expect that.

My winter was shaped by the bus

This may be the biggest difference between my first winter and the winter of someone who goes from a heated house to a heated car to a heated office.

I did not drive.

I depended heavily on Edmonton Transit, with Uber filling some of the gaps.

That changes how you prepare.

Your winter clothing cannot only keep you comfortable during the five-minute walk you expect.

It should give you some protection when the plan goes wrong.

And eventually, the plan will go wrong.

Your bus is late.

You miss it.

Your connection leaves.

The sidewalk slows you down.

You underestimate how long walking through snow will take.

I developed a routine where I would check my bus time and try not to leave home too early because I did not want to stand outside longer than necessary.

There was one problem.

I also walked more slowly in winter.

So I was performing this little calculation every day.

Leave too early and freeze at the stop.

Leave too late and watch your bus disappear.

I did the second one more than once.

ETS itself tells passengers to dress for the weather because buses are moving through the same winter road conditions as everyone else. Its cold-weather response begins at −20°C including wind chill. At that threshold buses stop kneeling to reduce the chance of the mechanism freezing, and most express services can be directed to pick up riders at all stops along their routes.⁵

After my first winter, I would give a transit-dependent newcomer one simple piece of advice:

Dress for the bus you might miss.

Not only the bus you expect to catch.

There is cold, and then there is cold that can hurt you

Frozen nostrils are funny when you tell the story later.

Extreme cold itself is not.

Frostnip can affect exposed skin, particularly places such as the face, ears and fingertips. Frostbite goes further and involves freezing of the skin and underlying tissues.⁶

The Alberta government advises people to dress in warm, windproof layers during extreme cold and notes that frostbite can develop quickly when conditions become severe.⁷

That is another reason I became such a believer in the humble toque.

Cover your ears.

Protect your fingers.

Protect your toes.

Pay attention to exposed skin.

And learn to read the weather forecast beyond one number.

Coming from the Philippines, I also had to become accustomed to Canadians saying “minus twenty” rather than “negative twenty.”

Then I had to learn about “feels like.”

The temperature says one thing.

The wind chill says another.

Eventually you realize why people are paying attention to both.

Winter followed me indoors

I expected winter to make me cold.

I did not expect it to make me dry.

My lips became dry.

My skin became dry.

My nose became dry and clogged.

And static electricity seemed to develop a personal interest in me.

I would touch something.

Shock.

Touch something else.

Shock.

After enough of these tiny electrical betrayals, I started to resent door handles.

Lip balm became normal.

Moisturizer became normal, which says something because I was not someone who regularly moisturized before.

We also bought a Vicks humidifier, mainly because it helped when my nose felt clogged.

Would I place a humidifier beside a winter coat on a newcomer essentials list?

No.

This is exactly the type of purchase I would wait on.

Live in your home first.

See how dry it becomes.

See how you respond.

Then decide.

I did not buy a space heater because we did not need one.

Our apartment was warm.

Heating was also included in our rent, which made a real difference to our winter budget.

That is one of the perks of apartment living.

We did not have to buy a shovel for home.

We did not have to maintain a furnace.

We did not have to worry about salting our own front sidewalk.

I do enough shovelling and salting at work anyway.

And yes, I am putting a boot tray on the list

This may not sound like a Canadian survival item.

Buy a boot tray.

At least consider one.

You arrive home wearing boots covered in snow, water, salt and everything Edmonton has mixed into the sidewalk that day.

Then it melts.

A boot tray gives the mess somewhere to go besides your floor.

This became strangely important to me because one of my personal winter irritations is the dirty wet floor outside our apartment door.

Current Walmart Canada listings show basic boot trays for roughly $8 to $20, so this is not one of the purchases that needs to consume your winter budget.⁸

A decent mat helps too.

And then there are dryer sheets.

I am including them because I eventually got tired of being shocked by my own existence.

Winter preparation is full of small things like this.

Everyone talks about the parka.

Nobody warns you about the doorknob.

If you drive, your list becomes different

Everything so far came from my own first winter.

This section did not.

I did not own a car during that winter, so consider this part researched rather than personally tested.

I watched coworkers deal with their cars on winter mornings, though.

There were days when I genuinely pitied them.

And then I went back to complaining about my bus.

Different problems.

The Government of Alberta recommends checking your tires, battery, belts, hoses, antifreeze, brakes, heater, defroster and windshield wipers before winter. It also recommends considering winter tires because they are designed to retain better traction in cold, snowy and icy conditions.⁹

Winter tires are an expense I would keep separate from the roughly $500 clothing-and-household budget I discuss later.

Vehicle.

Tire size.

Brand.

Whether you buy another set of wheels.

Installation.

Storage.

All of these change the cost.

Alberta also recommends carrying a winter emergency kit containing items such as a first-aid kit, blanket, extra clothing and footwear, flashlight, emergency food, ice scraper and snow brush, shovel and booster cables.⁹

You may already own half of those things.

There is no requirement to turn winter preparation into one giant shopping spree.

Look around your home first.

Edmonton does not stop because it snowed

This was another adjustment for me.

In Edmonton, snowfall can simply become part of the day.

People go to work.

Buses run.

Stores stay open.

Deliveries continue.

Life adjusts.

That does not mean everything immediately returns to bare pavement.

Edmonton clears streets according to priority. Major roads and important routes are dealt with before many residential streets. Current City standards call for Priority 1 essential roads to return to bare pavement within one day after snowfall ends, while local residential roads can retain snowpack and are handled on a much longer cycle when residential blading is initiated.¹¹

The City can also declare parking bans with as little as eight hours’ notice when snow clearing requires them.¹²

These are the kinds of things I wish newcomer guides explained more often.

Winter is not only a temperature.

It changes how long your commute takes.

It changes where you park.

It changes how you walk.

It changes how you plan ordinary errands.

Preparing for it means learning the city, not just buying a jacket.

So how much should a newcomer budget?

When I first thought about this article, my answer was around $500 for one adult starting with very little.

After looking at September 2026 prices, I still think that is a reasonable target.

Not $500 for every possible winter item.

Not $500 for premium brands.

Not $500 including winter tires.

I mean enough to build a sensible basic winter wardrobe with some room for smaller household purchases.

Around $250 to $350: the bargain-hunting setup

This works best if you already own sweaters and other layers and are willing to thrift, shop clearance or accept hand-me-downs.

My own experience shows how much that can change the numbers.

My first proper jacket was about $40.

The Tommy Hilfiger jacket we later found was around $75.

My boots were gifts.

Someone gave me my first toque.

A churchmate knitted our scarves.

That meant I could put money elsewhere.

If I had to work within a very tight budget, I would put the largest share into the coat and footwear.

I would rather have a thrifted coat and suitable boots than an expensive branded jacket paired with shoes that send me sliding across the pavement.

Again.

The Hoka incident remains educational.

Around $450 to $600: the setup I would choose

This is my practical range.

It gives you room for a decent coat, winter boots, thermals, toque, gloves, scarf or neck covering, traction aids and some household items.

Maybe a humidifier later if you discover you need one.

You are not buying premium everything.

You are simply giving yourself enough room that every decision does not have to be based on finding the absolute cheapest version.

For someone arriving from a tropical country with almost no cold-weather clothing, I would aim somewhere around here if the budget allows it.

Around $750 to $1,000 or more: easy to reach, not automatically necessary

You can spend this without much effort.

A new parka.

Premium boots.

Merino base layers.

Several gloves.

Heated equipment.

More accessories.

Suddenly your winter wardrobe has become a financial event.

If those things fit your needs and budget, fine.

I just would not tell a newcomer they are required.

My $40 Goodwill Quechua jacket still exists in this story for a reason.

Perhaps that was unfair.

When DreamWorks first announced that it was making an animated movie inspired by Filipino folklore, I had the same mix of excitement and suspicion I tend to have whenever a big foreign production announces that it is going to do something Filipino. I was curious, of course, but there was also that small protective voice asking what kind of Filipino story we were going to get.

How Filipino would it actually be?

Would there be karaoke? Lechon? Someone pointing using their lips?

Would the movie keep stopping to explain things that Filipinos already understand?

Worse, would our culture become the joke?

I had apparently been thinking about these questions for much longer than I realized. The original headline announcing that DreamWorks was developing something around Filipino folklore is still somewhere in my phone gallery. I saved it when the project was first announced.

I suppose that says something about how badly I wanted the movie to be good.

So on September 26, my wife and I went to Scotiabank Theatre at West Edmonton Mall to finally watch it.

In 4DX.

This was probably a mistake.

It was fun, yes. During some of the bigger sequences, our seats seemed determined to become supporting characters. We were being shaken, pushed and thrown around while creatures were flying across the screen, and there were several moments when I wondered whether I was still watching the movie or somehow participating in it.

If I watch Forgotten Island again, I will probably choose a normal theatre.

Still, the ridiculousness of 4DX somehow suited the movie. Forgotten Island itself rarely sits still.

Neither did we.

Before the movie started, I looked around the auditorium. From where I was sitting, I guessed that perhaps 80 percent of the audience looked Filipino or Asian. It was not a full screening, which I noticed immediately but did not think too much about yet.

What I remember more was the atmosphere once the movie began.

People were laughing.

Not the quiet, polite kind where you hear three people chuckle somewhere behind you. There were moments when much of the room seemed to react together. Certain jokes clearly landed harder with people who recognized what they were seeing.

I expected that part.

What I did not expect was to become homesick within the first stretch of the movie.

It was not because of some dramatic scene about the Philippines.

There were no sweeping shots telling me how beautiful the country was supposed to be.

The movie simply showed Filipino life.

A busy neighbourhood. Houses. People. Food. Family. Noise. Things happening everywhere.

The kind of place that might look chaotic when viewed from the outside but makes complete sense when you grew up inside it.

There was lechon.

There was a picture of Jesus.

There was a salo-salo.

There was karaoke.

Someone pointed using their mouth.

There were even images of the Barrelman that made me laugh partly because it felt exactly like the kind of random thing you could somehow encounter in a Filipino house without ever receiving a satisfactory explanation for why it was there.

Some of these details were obvious. Others probably passed quickly enough that people unfamiliar with Filipino culture would not think much about them.

I noticed them.

And what surprised me was how little the movie seemed interested in congratulating itself for putting them there.

The Filipino neighbourhood was exaggerated, of course. This is animation. Yet it did not feel sensationalized. It did not seem as though the filmmakers were pointing at Filipino life and saying, look how quirky these people are.

The place simply existed.

That difference mattered to me.

For the first few minutes, I was mostly delighted.

Then the feeling changed.

I became homesick.

I have spent a fair amount of time convincing myself that I am not.

I live in Canada now. I have a life here. Work is here. Our plans are here. There are things about Edmonton that have become ordinary parts of my own life.

I know why we came.

I know what we are trying to build.

Perhaps it has been easier to tell myself that missing the Philippines is something I have mostly learned to manage.

Apparently not.

Because all it took was a DreamWorks cartoon showing an ordinary Filipino neighbourhood for that argument to collapse.

Dang.

I miss the Philippines.

And it was precisely the ordinariness that got me.

The crowdedness.

The noise.

People constantly being around other people.

Food appearing because people happen to be together.

A religious image sitting somewhere in the house without anyone needing to explain why.

Small gestures that make no sense if somebody describes them to you but make complete sense if you grew up seeing them.

That was what felt familiar.

I went into Forgotten Island expecting the movie to tell me something about Filipino mythology.

Within minutes, it had reminded me what Filipino life felt like.

Those are not the same thing.

And because it managed to do that without making the culture feel like an exhibit, I became much more willing to follow it wherever it wanted to go.

That turned out to be Nakali.

And Nakali was where the monsters of my childhood were waiting.

The Monsters I Grew Up Fearing

I grew up hearing about tiyanak, duwende, aswang and manananggal.

Not through some formal education in Philippine mythology.

They were simply part of growing up.

Someone would warn you about duwende.

Someone would mention a tiyanak.

Someone would tell you about an aswang that supposedly appeared somewhere, usually involving a story that had passed through enough relatives, neighbours and friends that nobody could possibly verify it anymore.

As a child, you do not ask for references.

You just become scared.

For me, the tiyanak and duwende were probably among the worst.

The tiyanak was especially disturbing. The idea of something appearing to be a baby while very much not being an ordinary baby was enough.

Then there was the manananggal.

A woman separates the upper half of her body from the lower half, grows wings and flies around at night.

Who came up with that?

And why did Filipino adults collectively decide this was information children needed to have?

Forgotten Island could have simply animated these creatures, inserted them into the plot and allowed Filipino nostalgia to do the rest.

I am glad it did not.

The movie borrows heavily from Filipino mythology, but it does not behave as if those myths are museum pieces that must never be touched. DreamWorks describes Nakali as a world filled with creatures Jo and Raissa grew up hearing about from their Filipino families, and the film takes considerable freedom with what those creatures become inside its own story.

That worked for me.

The creatures feel inspired by the stories rather than trapped inside them.

The tiyanak may be my favourite example.

I laughed so hard when it cut its own umbilical cord.

That is a sentence I never expected to write in a movie review.

Even with context, it remains ridiculous.

The tiyanak I imagined growing up was something frightening. Forgotten Island keeps enough of the disturbing concept to make it recognizable, then lets the creature become funny, strange and unexpectedly likeable.

And Manny Jacinto voices it.

I did not immediately recognize him, which made finding out later even funnier.

There is something wonderfully odd about taking a creature that frightened generations of Filipino children and turning it into one of the characters I wanted to spend more time with.

The manananggal worked differently.

I told my wife while we were watching that I think the manananggal has become less scary over time.

Perhaps familiarity did it.

We have seen versions of the creature in television, films, comedy, Halloween costumes and everything else Filipino media could throw at it. Eventually something that used to terrify you becomes so familiar that some of the fear disappears.

Forgotten Island somehow managed to make her frightening again.

Not exactly like the manananggal I had imagined growing up. The film changes the concept and builds its own story around her.

But the menace came back.

Then they gave the character to Lea Salonga.

Of course they did.

There is something almost too perfect about a Filipino legend playing a Filipino legend.

Salonga voices the feared Manananggal, while the wider cast includes H.E.R. as Jo, Liza Soberano as Raissa, Manny Jacinto, Dolly de Leon, Jo Koy, Dave Franco, Jenny Slate and Ronny Chieng.

Salonga has presence even when all you have is her voice. The character feels bigger because of it.

I would watch a spin-off.

Actually, I would watch several.

Nakali feels like a world that could hold far more stories. Philippine folklore certainly has enough material. Kapre. Tikbalang. Duwende. Different kinds of aswang. Different versions of the same creatures depending on where in the country you hear the story.

The movie reminded me that folklore survives partly because people keep changing it.

Stories are told differently depending on who is doing the telling. Regions develop their own versions. Families add details. Children misremember things and perhaps eventually tell those misremembered versions to somebody else.

Forgotten Island participates in that process.

It plays.

That makes the creatures feel alive.

It also helps that the actors do not sound as if they are carrying some heavy responsibility to represent Filipino culture correctly every second.

H.E.R. was phenomenal as Jo.

There was something in the personality of her voice that made the character immediately believable to me. Jo is fun, spontaneous and perhaps a little too comfortable believing that things will somehow remain okay.

That may be one reason I connected with her most.

Liza Soberano also surprised me.

I knew her from her work in the Philippines, so I expected some part of my previous image of her to follow me into the movie.

It did not.

I heard Raissa.

The voice acting felt detached from the roles I had associated with Soberano before, which is perhaps the best compliment I can give her here. I hope this leads to more interesting projects for her.

Dolly de Leon made me smile simply by being there. I loved the accent and the quips.

And Manny Jacinto as the tiyanak remains something I did not know I needed.

The cast helped make Forgotten Island feel strangely comfortable with its Filipinoness.

I did not spend the movie thinking, here comes another Filipino reference.

At some point I stopped checking.

I was simply watching.

When Representation Stops Feeling Like Representation

That may be the thing Forgotten Island does best.

At some point, I stopped thinking about representation.

Before watching it, representation was one of my main reasons for buying a ticket.

I wanted to see how a major Hollywood animation studio would handle Filipino culture. I wanted to support a project involving so many Filipinos and people of Filipino descent. I wanted the movie to succeed partly because I knew that projects like this do not appear very often.

Then the movie started and I stopped thinking about any of that.

The culture was already inside the story.

It did not need to keep announcing itself.

The names were there. The food was there. The homes were there. The gestures were there. The myths were there. The karaoke was definitely there.

Yet Jo and Raissa were allowed to have a problem that was not simply about being Filipino.

That was important.

Their friendship matters more than their ethnicity.

The possibility of forgetting each other matters more than whether the audience understands every Filipino joke.

Their memories matter more than whether somebody knows what lechon is.

That does not make the cultural identity weaker.

I think it makes it stronger.

There are stories about minority cultures that sometimes seem to spend so much effort explaining the culture that the characters barely get to exist outside it.

Forgotten Island did not feel that way to me.

It almost felt like a Filipino movie trying to be classic and general.

I mean that as praise.

It says, more or less: this is where these characters come from, these are the stories they know, this is what their world looks like.

Now let us tell you about two friends who are terrified of losing each other.

You do not need to be Filipino to understand that.

You only need to have loved someone.

You only need to have experienced a friendship changing.

You only need to have looked at someone who used to be part of your ordinary daily life and realized that you now know less about each other than you once did.

And this is where Forgotten Island became much more personal than I expected.

The central fantasy problem is that returning home may cost Jo and Raissa the memories of their friendship. That premise is built directly into DreamWorks’ own description of the film.

It sounds like a magical problem.

Then I sat with it.

People forget each other all the time.

Not always completely.

Not dramatically.

Usually much more slowly.

You move away.

Someone gets busy.

You stop speaking every day.

Then every week.

Then every month.

You still care about each other. You still remember old jokes. You still know this person mattered.

But the friendship slowly becomes something you remember instead of something you actively live inside.

That was painful to think about.

Especially because moving to Canada has made that process real for me.

There are friendships I left in the Philippines that still matter deeply.

Some remain close.

Others changed.

Of course they did.

I changed too.

Nobody stops living because you move away.

Your friends continue having lives without you, just as you begin constructing a life without them.

Someone gets married.

Someone changes jobs.

Someone has a child.

Someone joins another group of friends.

You see pieces of it online.

Sometimes you know what is happening.

Sometimes you suddenly realize you do not.

Then perhaps you meet again and discover that the friendship is still there, but both of you have accumulated stories in which the other person was absent.

There was no argument.

No betrayal.

No proper ending.

Life simply continued.

I do not think we talk enough about that part of immigration.

We talk about missing family.

We talk about Filipino food.

We talk about careers, money, weather, adjusting, homesickness and missed celebrations.

Friendship changes more quietly.

Perhaps that is why it sneaks up on you.

Forgotten Island uses literal memory loss as fantasy.

For me, sitting in Edmonton, it did not feel particularly fantastical.

Memory is already strange.

You can forget important details about a person and still remember exactly how it felt to be around them.

You can hear one song and suddenly recover an entire period of your life.

You can smell something and remember a room you have not entered for years.

You can watch an animated neighbourhood and suddenly feel homesick for a country you had been insisting you did not miss very much.

Memory does not behave properly.

The movie understands that.

My wife said something after the film that has stayed with me.

She felt Forgotten Island was not really only for children. The lesson changes depending on where you are in life when you see it.

A child may watch an adventure about two best friends.

A teenager might recognize the fear of eventually going separate ways from somebody important.

Someone older might think about friendships altered by careers, relationships, marriage and distance.

An immigrant might sit there thinking about people on the other side of the world.

Same movie.

Different wound.

That may be why I became emotional during the friendship scenes.

And yes, I did.

I had already been weakened by the Filipino neighbourhood.

By the time the movie started seriously asking what memories of another person are worth, I was finished.

A Movie That Rarely Lets You Breathe

I loved Forgotten Island.

That does not mean every part of it worked perfectly.

Most of my problems with it come from the same place.

It is trying to do so much, so quickly.

The film moves at a speed that can become exhausting.

Something happens, then another thing happens, then someone makes a joke, another creature appears, the plot moves again, there is an emotional beat, another action sequence begins, and in our particular case the 4DX chair then attempts to remove us from the building.

Sometimes I wanted the movie to stop.

Not because I was bored.

Because I wanted more time with what was already there.

Some characters and ideas felt as though they were introduced with the promise of something larger, only for the movie to move on.

Merman was probably the clearest example for me. There seemed to be more there, more personality and more history that I wanted the story to explore.

The ending gave me a similar feeling.

Kulang.

That Hiligaynon and Filipino feeling of something being a little short of what you hoped for.

Not bad.

Not broken.

Just not quite enough.

I liked the ending. I think it ends where it needs to end.

I also wanted another ten minutes.

Perhaps that is greed.

Maybe I simply did not want to leave Nakali yet.

The pacing also makes some emotional moments pass more quickly than I wanted. Jo and Raissa’s friendship could have used a few more quiet spaces. The ideas about memory could have used silence around them.

Even the monsters could have benefited.

Sometimes something becomes scarier when the movie stops moving long enough to let you look at it.

Still, the frantic energy is strangely difficult for me to criticize because I also enjoyed it.

Forgotten Island feels crowded.

Noisy.

Busy.

There are multiple things happening at once.

And I know I am probably projecting here, but that also felt familiar.

A Filipino gathering can involve one conversation happening beside another conversation while somebody is eating, another person is singing, somebody is calling you from somewhere, and someone else is insisting you take food home.

So perhaps the movie’s inability to sit still is a flaw.

Perhaps it is also why it feels alive.

Both can be true.

I wondered too whether the movie could have done slightly more to help viewers completely unfamiliar with Filipino culture enter some of its jokes and references.

This is a difficult balance because the last thing I wanted was a film that explained everything.

Please do not stop the story to explain pointing with your lips.

Just let the mouth point.

Some things are better when they exist without a presentation attached.

Still, there were moments when I wondered whether someone without any connection to the Philippines would know why something felt familiar or funny.

My own experience makes that difficult to judge.

I came into the theatre already carrying the context.

Yet judging by the laughter around us, the broader comedy seemed to work.

And that matters because I do not want to recommend Forgotten Island only to Filipinos.

I would recommend it to anyone.

Watch it because it is funny.

Watch it because the animation is wild.

Watch it because there is a tiyanak doing things the tiyanak of my childhood never did.

Watch it because Lea Salonga gets to be frightening.

Watch it because Jo and Raissa have a friendship worth caring about.

If you learn something about Filipino culture along the way, good.

I would rather that happen naturally than through a lecture.

That is also why I think Filipino parents in Canada should bring their children.

A Filipino child growing up here may recognize something that I never had the opportunity to see quite this way when I was growing up in Iloilo.

Not Filipino culture being shown as a special topic.

Just Filipino culture existing inside a major DreamWorks movie.

The child can recognize the food, gestures, names or stories and then continue enjoying the adventure.

Maybe that is the representation I care about most.

Not being told that our culture is important.

Being shown that it can simply belong.

Then I Looked at the Empty Seats

This brings me back to the auditorium.

It was not full.

That bothered me when we arrived.

It bothered me much more after I knew how good the movie was.

I need to be careful here because one 4DX screening in West Edmonton Mall cannot tell us how a movie is doing.

Now, though, we have the first weekend numbers.

Forgotten Island opened with about US$12.8 million domestically from 3,548 theatres. Its first reported worldwide total was about US$20.65 million, with US$7.85 million coming from international markets. Variety described the domestic result as softer than expected and reported an estimated production cost of US$80 million, while also pointing out that the film had not yet opened in several major international markets.

So no, I am not ready to write its obituary.

It had been in North American theatres for one weekend when I wrote this.

There are still markets to open. There are later weekends. There will eventually be whatever life the movie finds outside cinemas.

Still, the opening makes me nervous.

The Philippines offers a happier detail. The movie opened there with about US$1.53 million according to Box Office Mojo’s first reported figures.

Of course that made me happy.

But I wish more people everywhere were seeing it.

Not because anybody owes Forgotten Island a ticket.

I do not like that argument.

Filipinos should not have to buy tickets because Filipino artists worked on a movie.

Representation is not a debt.

A Filipino story can still be bad.

A movie can be culturally important and boring.

You should not have to lower your standards because people who look like you finally appeared on screen.

The frustrating thing about Forgotten Island is that I do not think you need to lower anything.

It is good.

That is why I want people to see it.

I do not want anyone to “support” Forgotten Island as though they are donating to a cause.

Support makes it sound like charity.

Buy a ticket because there is a good movie playing.

A flawed movie, yes.

One that sometimes moves too quickly.

One that leaves a few characters underexplored.

One whose ending made me want just a little more.

But also a movie that made me and my wife laugh throughout the night.

A movie that made Philippine monsters feel fresh.

A movie that allowed Filipino life to exist without treating it as the punchline.

A movie about memory that managed to make an immigrant sitting in Edmonton remember things he had been trying not to admit he missed.

That movie earned my affection.

And yes, part of my anxiety about the box office is selfish.

I want more.

I want to return to Nakali.

I want more of Lea Salonga’s Manananggal.

I want another tiyanak.

I want another Filipino myth that Hollywood audiences may have never heard before.

I want filmmakers to be able to look at cultures sometimes dismissed as too specific, too unfamiliar or too risky and realize that specificity does not prevent a story from being universal.

Forgotten Island proves that point for me.

The Filipino neighbourhood does not make Jo and Raissa’s friendship inaccessible.

The salo-salo does not prevent somebody from another culture from understanding what it means to gather around food.

The tiyanak does not need to become a generic Western fantasy creature before another audience can enjoy it.

We do not need to remove the things that make us specific before another person can recognize something human in us.

That is probably what I found most satisfying about the movie.

Its main story is not actually about being Filipino.

It is about friendship.

Memory.

Growing apart.

Holding onto the people who matter.

The Filipinoness gives the story a home.

It does not imprison it there.

What I Took Home With Me

When my wife and I walked out of Scotiabank Theatre, I already knew I loved Forgotten Island.

I told her it was great.

What I did not immediately understand was why it had hit me quite as hard as it did.

I went in expecting folklore.

I came out thinking about memory.

I went in wondering whether DreamWorks could make something feel genuinely Filipino.

I came out thinking about friends I no longer see as often.

I went in hoping our culture would not become a joke.

I came out realizing that a cartoon had made me admit how much I missed home.

The mythology was fun.

The animation worked.

The jokes worked.

The Filipino details made me proud.

But the thing that followed me home was quieter.

Places keep existing when you leave them.

People do too.

You build a new life somewhere and the old life does not freeze while waiting for you to return.

That is obvious when written down.

It feels different when you live it.

There is a version of immigration that sounds almost clean when we tell it afterward.

We left.

We adjusted.

We built a life.

We found work.

We learned a new city.

We moved forward.

All of those things can be true.

But moving forward does not mean nothing was left behind.

Sometimes what you left comes back through a phone call.

Sometimes through a photograph.

Sometimes through food.

Sometimes through a friend you have not spoken to for months suddenly sending you something stupid that immediately puts you back into an old conversation.

And apparently, sometimes through an animated Filipino neighbourhood inside a DreamWorks movie.

That first part of Forgotten Island was still what I kept thinking about afterward.

The neighbourhood.

The food.

The people.

The picture of Jesus.

The mouth pointing.

The salo-salo.

The karaoke.

Things I once considered too ordinary to be worth missing.

Maybe that is what memory does.

It waits until the ordinary becomes unavailable.

Then suddenly you understand what it was worth.

I also thought about my friends.

People who used to be close enough that seeing them required almost no planning.

People whose presence was so ordinary that I never thought there might come a time when meeting them would require a plane ticket, vacation leave and conversations about schedules.

Nobody announces the last normal afternoon.

Nobody tells you, remember this dinner because one day you will miss it.

You just live.

Then eventually you look back.

Forgotten Island made me look back.

That was probably the last thing I expected from a movie containing a talking tiyanak.

And maybe she was right.

Perhaps the lesson you take from this movie depends entirely on when it finds you.

If I had watched it years ago in the Philippines, perhaps I would have mostly enjoyed the monsters.

I might have laughed at the jokes and appreciated seeing Filipino culture in a DreamWorks film.

But I watched it now.

I watched it after leaving.

That changed everything.

The title itself began to feel different.

Forgotten Island.

Something lost.

Something left somewhere.

Something you might still remember if you try hard enough.

For those two hours in Edmonton, the Philippines did not feel forgotten to me.

It felt oddly close.

Not perfectly represented.

Not completely captured.

No movie could do that.

But close enough.

Enough to make me laugh.

Enough to make me proud.

Enough to make me miss people.

Enough to remind me that homesickness can sit quietly for months and then appear because an animated character pointed using their lips.

Forgotten Island made me feel proud, nostalgic, and hungry for friends and good memories.

Maybe that is why those empty seats bothered me.

I hope more people find the movie while it is still in theatres.

Not to save Filipino representation.

Not out of obligation.

Just because I think there is something here worth seeing.

Something funny.

Something strange.

Something specific.

Something unexpectedly human.

The movie is called Forgotten Island.

But sitting there thousands of kilometres from home, it remembered us.

References

DreamWorks Animation. (2026). Forgotten Island: Official movie page. Cast, crew and official synopsis. DreamWorks — Forgotten Island

Box Office Mojo. (2026). Forgotten Island — worldwide box-office rollout. Figures accessed September 28, 2026. Box Office Mojo — Forgotten Island

Rubin, R. (2026, September 28). Global box-office reporting on Forgotten Island and other weekend releases. Variety. Variety box-office report

Reuters. (2026, September 22). “Filipino folklore takes center stage in DreamWorks’ Forgotten Island film.” Reuters feature on Forgotten Island

That sounds ridiculous, I know.

But I do.

I check the plate number first. Then the driver’s name. Then I prepare one or two topics in my head, just in case the ride becomes one of those rides where silence feels heavier than usual.

Weather is always safe.

Construction is safe too, because this is Edmonton and there is always a road being fixed somewhere.

The Oilers are usually safe, unless the loss is too fresh and everybody is still grieving in their own way.

If everything fails, I say, “How’s it going?”

That sentence lives in my mouth now.

Old me would probably laugh.

New me says it with almost no shame.

Almost.

This is one of the small things I noticed after moving to Canada. You begin to collect phrases. You collect habits. You collect tiny survival scripts for moments nobody warned you about.

Nobody tells you that immigrant life can include rehearsing casual conversation in the back of your mind.

Nobody tells you that your English, the one that sounds so clean inside your head, will sometimes betray you once it reaches your tongue.

In my brain, I am fluent.

Very fluent.

Maybe too fluent.

Then I speak, and suddenly my Filipino-ness walks out first.

Just an hour ago, I caught myself mid-sentence and heard my own accent. Nobody laughed. Nobody even reacted. Still, I felt it. That small internal slap. That quick reminder that confidence does not always survive sound.

I used to think I was an English wiz.

Canada corrected me.

Kindly, most days.

But still.

At home, I do not need to think about this as much.

My wife and I speak Hiligaynon most of the time. The words come out without needing to dress properly. No rehearsal. No self-monitoring. No sudden panic over vowels.

Just language.

Just us.

Maybe that is one thing I did not expect to learn here.

Home is not always a place.

Sometimes it is the language where your mouth can rest.

Most mornings, my day starts at 7:30.

My alarm used to be Radar. I changed it to Storytime because Radar felt like war. Storytime feels softer. I do not know if that says something about my current emotional state, but let us not diagnose everything.

The alarm rings.

I wake up.

Then I see my wife sleeping beside me, tired from her night shift.

I try not to move too much.

I try not to turn on the bright light.

Some people describe immigration through airports, documents, job applications, and snow. They are not wrong. Those things matter.

But on many mornings, immigration looks like this:

One person wakes up for work while the other finally gets to sleep.

No speech.

No dramatic moment.

Just two people trying to build a life in a place that still feels new on some days and strangely familiar on others.

I put on the Hoka shoes my wife bought for me before I left the Philippines.

They were the first shoes I wore when I stepped on Canadian soil.

Most days, they are just shoes.

I wear them because I need to go somewhere.

But sometimes I look down and remember that they carried me from one life into another. That sounds too poetic, maybe. But I mean it in the most practical way.

They were there.

Airport floor.
Canadian air.
First steps.
First confusion.
First cold.

My wallet and IDs go into my pocket.

That has become another small ritual.

Here, cards matter. Proof matters. Names on plastic matter. Sometimes I feel like I carry my new life in my pocket and hope I brought the right version of myself for the day.

Then I go to work.

Or I stay home and work from there.

Either way, the day begins.

Work That Feels Close to Medicine, But Not Quite

My work now is close to healthcare.

Close enough to feel familiar.

Not close enough to feel the same.

That is a strange place to stand.

There are days when I repair appliances. There are days when I print forms. There are days when I do laundry for my clients, cook food for them, order Uber, answer calls, attend meetings, or go to the hospital simply to accompany someone.

Simply.

That word does a lot of work there.

Because going to the hospital used to mean something else for me.

Back home, I entered hospitals as someone training to diagnose, treat, examine, present cases, write orders, and explain things to patients and families. Even when I was tired, even when I was unsure, even when I felt like I knew nothing, I still entered with a certain role.

Now, I enter beside someone.

I wait.

I listen.

I help explain if I can.

I carry information.

I advocate when needed.

I do not stand there as the physician.

Not here.

Not yet.

I try not to turn that into a tragedy because it is not always one. There is dignity in this work too. A lot of it, actually. Sometimes more than people realize.

There is dignity in making sure someone’s food is ready.

There is dignity in checking if the laundry is done.

There is dignity in knowing which form needs to be printed before someone even asks.

There is dignity in accompanying a person who might otherwise face the hospital alone.

Still, I would be lying if I said the shift never bothers me.

Some days, the old version of me taps my shoulder.

You used to do something else.

I know.

I remember.

My clinical eye did not disappear when I moved to Canada. It still shows up, sometimes without permission.

I still read about my clients’ conditions.

I still think about safety.

I still write progress notes with the seriousness of someone who believes documentation can protect people.

I still try to organize the team in a way that feels more healthcare-conscious, because I cannot help it. Maybe that is useful. Maybe that is pride. Maybe it is both, and I am just trying to make peace with that.

There are also days when I work from home.

People say that like it is always a gift.

It can be.

No commute. No rushing out into the cold. No slipping on ice while trying to pretend I am confident in winter.

But working from home also brings me back to the pandemic.

I remember clerkship through screens.

I remember studying while the world felt closed.

I remember the strange pressure of becoming a doctor during a time when even doctors looked tired in ways I had never seen before.

So when I sit in front of my laptop here in Edmonton, working from our apartment, I sometimes feel two timelines touching.

The present one, where I answer messages and help manage operations.

And the old one, where I was studying, worrying, trying to survive medical training through unstable days.

Maybe this is another mundane immigrant thing.

A room is not just a room.

A laptop is not just a laptop.

A workday is not just a workday.

Everything carries echoes.

And still, I do the work.

Because rent exists.

Because bills exist.

Because dreams do not excuse you from laundry.

Because becoming a doctor again in Canada is not a straight road, and while I am walking it, I still need to live.

That part is not poetic.

That part is just true.

Tim Hortons as a Soft Landing Place

Before work, if I have time, I go to Tim Hortons.

My order is usually a large Triple Triple.

I know. Very healthy. Very doctor-like.

Please do not report me to my future licensing body.

I do not know if the people at Tim’s recognize me already, but I hope they do. There is something comforting about becoming familiar in a place, even in a small, almost embarrassing way.

Maybe they do not know my name.

Maybe they just know the order.

That is fine.

Sometimes being known by your coffee is enough for the morning.

When I am going to work, I take it to go.

When I am with my wife, we stay.

That difference matters to me.

A coffee shop changes depending on who sits beside you.

Alone, it is a stop.

With her, it becomes a pause.

A small bench in the middle of a life that keeps asking us to move.

We sit there, sometimes tired, sometimes quiet, sometimes talking about groceries or work or what we will eat later. Nothing grand. No dramatic conversation. Just two people sharing coffee in a country where both of us are still learning how to pace ourselves.

I also notice the workers at Tim’s.

Many of them look like me.

Brown skin. Different accents. Names from places I can only guess. People who move fast behind the counter while half-awake customers wait for caffeine like it is a human right.

That quiet diversity does something to me.

Not in a cheesy way.

Nobody stands there saying, “Welcome to multicultural Canada.”

Nobody needs to.

You just see it.

A Filipino-looking worker handing coffee to a white construction worker.

A South Asian worker calling an order for a Black customer.

A newcomer trying to understand what someone meant by “double double” while everyone else pretends that term was born with them.

It is ordinary.

That is why it matters.

I think that is what I keep noticing here.

Belonging does not always arrive with ceremony.

Sometimes it is just someone handing you a paper cup and saying, “Have a good one.”

And you say, “You too,” even if the first few times you said it, you felt like you were acting in a Canadian training video.

Now it comes out more naturally.

That scares me a little.

It also comforts me.

West Edmonton Mall, or My Very Large Sari-Sari Store

Then there is West Edmonton Mall.

WEM.

The place is too big to be treated casually, which is exactly why I now treat it casually.

This is probably disrespectful to geography.

But in my head, WEM has somehow become our sari-sari store.

Not literally, of course.

No sari-sari store has an indoor amusement park, a waterpark, a skating rink, and a parking area that looks like it was designed by someone who did not believe in walking.

But emotionally?

Sometimes, yes.

My wife asks me to buy something, and my brain goes, “Okay, I’ll go to WEM.”

As if I am just stepping outside to buy vinegar, soy sauce, and a sachet of shampoo.

Then I arrive and remember that this “quick errand” may involve several entrances, long walks, two wrong turns, and the quiet possibility of forgetting where I parked, except I do not drive yet, so at least that problem has not found me.

There is comfort in WEM because it feels close to the malls back home.

Not the same.

But close enough.

Filipinos understand malls differently, I think. We do not only shop there. We cool down there. We walk there. We meet friends there. We waste time there with intention. We look at things we do not plan to buy and somehow call that leisure.

So when I walk around WEM, something in me relaxes.

The scale is Canadian.

The instinct is Filipino.

My usual route is simple.

Dollarama.

T&T.

Maybe Indigo.

Maybe London Drugs.

If there is time, Hallmark.

T&T is dangerous in a very specific way.

You enter thinking you will buy one or two things, then suddenly you see Chippy or Oishi and your inner child starts making financial decisions.

The first time I saw those snacks there, I paused.

Not because chips are rare.

But because recognition can ambush you.

You are in Edmonton.

You are wearing winter clothes.

You are thinking in dollars.

Then there it is.

Chippy.

A small bright object from home, sitting on a shelf like it did not cross an ocean to find you.

During my first months here, I kept comparing prices in my head.

This much for this?

Back home, this would be cheaper.

Then I would convert.

Then I would stop converting because the math hurt.

Now I do it less.

Not because things became cheap.

I just got tired.

That is another sign that you are settling, I think.

You stop converting every price into the life you left.

Not fully.

But enough to function.

After church, I enjoy doing groceries with my wife.

That has become one of our small married-life rituals here.

We walk.

We choose things.

We talk about what we need.

Sometimes we buy practical food.

Sometimes we buy food because being practical all the time is bad for the soul.

I like seeing her walk with me anywhere in the city.

That sounds simple, but it means a lot.

Back home, we had our own rhythms. Here, we are building new ones from scratch. A grocery trip becomes a date. A mall walk becomes exercise. A Tim’s coffee becomes a small celebration that we are both awake at the same time.

Immigration turns ordinary errands into proof.

Proof that you are adjusting.

Proof that you are tired but still moving.

Proof that you can buy Chippy in Canada and still miss the sari-sari store.

Both can be true.

That is the confusing part.

That is also the beautiful part.

The Season When Music Filled Everything

There was a season not too long ago when music quietly filled almost every space in my day. I did not notice it happening at first. It simply became part of the rhythm of things, like breathing between conversations or the soft noise of a city outside the window.

The music was P-Pop.

If someone had told me a year earlier that I would be listening to Filipino pop music almost constantly, I probably would have smiled politely and moved on with my day. My life had always revolved around other things. Medicine. Church. Writing when I could. The long, demanding process of becoming a doctor had trained my mind to focus on textbooks, case presentations, and exam reviewers more than anything else.

But then one afternoon my wife sent me a song.

“Pantropiko.”

The song had already gone viral by that point. People were dancing to it online, clips were circulating everywhere, and it was becoming difficult to ignore. My wife sent it casually, the way couples often send things to each other when they stumble upon something fun.

I remember where I was when I first listened to it. I was inside the small apartment we had rented, surrounded by my notes while studying for the Physician Licensure Examination. My desk was cluttered with reviewers, mnemonics, and half-finished outlines of diseases and drug dosages. In the middle of that academic chaos, I clicked play.

Something about the song stayed with me.

Soon after, I began listening to more songs by BINI. What started as curiosity slowly became a habit. Their performances were energetic, their songs were bright, and the group carried a kind of joy that was difficult not to notice. Before long I found myself watching their performances on YouTube and replaying their songs on Spotify during breaks from studying.

Then ALAMAT entered my orbit.

I think the first bridge between the two groups for me was the music video for “Maharani,” where BINI’s Jhoanna appeared. That connection made me curious enough to explore ALAMAT’s music, and once I did, I was immediately drawn to their sound. Their songs carried a strong Filipino flavor, blending different local languages and cultural elements in ways that felt both rooted and modern. There was something about their identity as a group that felt intentional.

Then I heard “ILY ILY.”

That song stayed with me in a deeper way. Perhaps it was the warmth of the melody, or the quiet sincerity in the lyrics. I cannot explain it completely, but it quickly became one of the songs I returned to again and again.

From that point on, music became part of my routine.

A typical day during that time was simple. I would go to work, commute home, and listen to music along the way. At night I would talk to my wife, eat dinner, scroll through fan conversations online, and then listen to more music before going to sleep.

Sometimes I would replay three or four albums in a single day.

Most of the time I listened through Spotify, though I occasionally switched to Apple Music because the sound quality felt richer to my ears. When I wanted to watch the choreography or performances, I would open YouTube and replay the music videos.

The songs followed me everywhere.

They played during short breaks at work. They accompanied long bus rides. They filled quiet walks downtown when I stepped out to buy small groceries before heading back home.

There were a few songs I always returned to.

“Wag Muna Tayong Umuwi.”
“ILY ILY.”
“KAYA.”
“Boomerang.”
“Don’t Play.”

Sometimes they started my day. Sometimes they closed it.

After long hours speaking with patients, when my throat felt dry and my body carried the exhaustion of the commute home, those songs gave me a few moments of quiet relief. The world slowed down for a while.

Looking back now, I realize that music gave me two things during that season of my life.

Comfort.

And community.

I had not expected either of them.

The Community That Came With the Songs

One of the things I did not expect when I first began listening to P-Pop was how quickly it would lead me to people.

At first it was simply music playing through my earphones while I worked, commuted, or rested. But eventually curiosity led me to the spaces where fans gathered. Social media conversations, fan posts, reaction threads, and shared excitement about new releases slowly became part of my daily routine.

It felt strangely familiar.

For years, most of my social circles had been built around two things: medicine and church. My closest friends were usually fellow healthcare workers, classmates, or people I served with in ministry. Those were communities shaped by shared responsibilities and similar life paths.

Fandom was different.

Here were people from different professions, different places, and different stages of life, all drawn together by something simple: music they loved.

Through BINI, I began encountering the BLOOMS fandom. Through ALAMAT, I found the Magiliw community. Later, through KAIA, I came across the ZAIAs. Each group had its own culture and inside jokes, but what stood out to me most was how welcoming many of them were.

Many of the people I interacted with were artists, writers, students, and fellow professionals who simply found joy in supporting Filipino music. Some were healthcare workers like me. Others were people whose work I admired long before we ever exchanged messages online.

For someone whose wife was living continents away at the time, and whose closest friends were scattered across busy careers, these conversations filled an unexpected space in my life.

They reminded me that community can appear in places we never planned to look.

Eventually, the music did something else for me.

It made me write again in a different way.

On October 14, 2024, I published my first P-Pop blog post. I titled it From Doomer to BLOOMer: My Unexpected Journey into the World of P-Pop. At the time, I thought of it as a simple reflection on how unexpectedly I had fallen into this new musical world.

I did not expect much from it.

But the response came quickly.

Fans began sharing the post across social media. Larger fan accounts reposted it. Conversations started forming around it. Some readers messaged me to say that they felt the same way—that they had also discovered something hopeful through these artists and their music.

For someone who had always wanted to be a writer who could reach readers meaningfully, that moment felt quietly affirming.

I remember feeling proud, not only because people were reading the piece, but because the subject itself mattered to me. Writing about medicine had always been part of my identity, but writing about music allowed a different side of my mind to work.

Medicine trained me to analyze, diagnose, and explain.

Writing about music allowed me to reflect, interpret, and feel.

The two passions existed side by side in my life, though they played very different roles. If I had to stop writing about music someday, I knew I would survive. But medicine had become something deeper than a profession. Even if my abilities failed me one day, I felt certain that I would never truly stop thinking like a doctor.

Still, during that season, writing about P-Pop became a source of genuine excitement.

To my surprise, some of the artists themselves eventually encountered my later posts. Knowing that the people behind the songs had taken time to read my words felt surreal. I never imagined that something written late at night on my small blog would reach the artists whose music had been accompanying my daily routine.

It made the entire experience feel more real.

Looking back now, I realize that the fandom season of my life was about more than simply enjoying music.

It was about connection.

It was about discovering that Filipino artists were creating something vibrant and evolving. It was about seeing communities of fans rally behind them with genuine enthusiasm. And for a while, it gave me a sense that I was participating, in my own small way, in a cultural moment that felt hopeful.

Music had opened a door.

Behind that door were people.

And for a time, that was enough.

When the Songs Followed Me to Canada

When I arrived in Canada in March 2025, the music came with me.

Immigration is often described as a fresh start. People talk about it in hopeful terms: new opportunities, new landscapes, a better future waiting just beyond the horizon. But anyone who has gone through it knows that the beginning rarely feels like that.

The first months are mostly adjustment.

New streets. New weather. New routines that do not yet feel like routines. In Edmonton, even the ordinary act of walking through a neighborhood felt unfamiliar at first. The people I saw every day were strangers. The rhythm of the city was different from anything I had known before.

But music helped soften the transition.

In those early weeks, P-Pop continued to fill my days the same way it had before. When I brought my wife to work in the morning, I would often walk or take the bus home with my earphones on. The songs followed me through the streets, through downtown sidewalks, through small grocery trips before heading back to the apartment.

It felt like bringing a small piece of home into a place that still felt foreign.

Sometimes I would wander through the city a little longer than necessary, letting the songs stretch the walk. Even something as simple as buying groceries and walking back home felt easier when there was music in the background.

Certain songs felt different now that I was living abroad.

“ILY ILY,” for example, carried a heavier emotional weight than before. Listening to it reminded me of the many people I knew whose lives were shaped by distance—families separated by oceans, relationships sustained through video calls, parents and children living in different countries because work demanded it.

I understood that story more deeply now.

For a while, music and faith became two of the quiet anchors of my transition. Rediscovering a faith community in the city helped give my weeks a sense of structure, and P-Pop filled the spaces in between.

But reality eventually has a way of asserting itself.

After about three months, the situation I had hoped would resolve quickly began to weigh more heavily on me.

I was still unemployed.

Every day started to look the same. I would wake up early, cook breakfast, and help prepare my wife’s things before bringing her to work. Then I would return home and open my laptop.

Indeed.

LinkedIn.

Email.

Applications.

Waiting.

Some days I attended free review classes while preparing for the exams required for doctors trained outside Canada. Other days I spent hours searching through job postings, adjusting resumes, and refreshing pages that rarely showed anything new.

By the afternoon my energy was often gone.

Instead of exploring the city the way I had in the beginning, I found myself sitting at home, scrolling through job listings or staring at the same open tabs. The excitement of discovering a new country slowly gave way to something quieter and heavier.

Worry.

One thought returned to me more often than I wanted to admit.

I am failing my wife.

She was working every day while I lived in a strange in-between state. I was studying, applying, waiting, trying to move forward, but the days sometimes felt like they were slipping by without visible progress. It created a kind of pressure that quietly sat in the background of everything I did.

And slowly, almost without me noticing it at first, the music began to fade.

It did not disappear overnight.

The songs were still there in the background sometimes, playing through the speakers while I looked through job listings. But I realized that I was no longer really listening. The melodies passed through the room without leaving much behind.

Eventually I stopped turning them on.

Not because I stopped loving them.

But because it felt strange to play music that I could no longer appreciate the way I used to.

When survival begins to occupy most of your attention, art sometimes becomes difficult to receive.

The songs were still beautiful.

But my mind was somewhere else.

Watching From the Side

It took me a while to realize that something had quietly changed.

For months, music had been woven into almost every part of my daily routine. The songs played during commutes, work breaks, grocery runs, and late evenings when the day finally slowed down. Even writing about P-Pop had become a natural extension of that routine. It felt like I was participating in something larger than myself, a growing movement of Filipino artists and fans celebrating music that was beginning to reach wider audiences.

Then, slowly, the routine shifted.

The playlists stopped updating.
The earphones stayed in my pocket more often.
The blog posts became less frequent.

Nothing dramatic happened. There was no clear moment when I decided to step away from music. Life simply demanded more attention elsewhere.

When most of your energy goes into survival—finding work, studying again, worrying about finances—it becomes harder to receive art the way you once did. Songs that used to feel comforting began to play in the background without fully reaching me. Eventually I stopped pressing play altogether.

Still, the world of P-Pop continued moving forward.

I would catch glimpses of it the way someone sees distant fireworks through a window—beautiful, but slightly removed from where they stood.

One evening I was sitting on the sofa with my wife, the television playing softly in the background. I was scrolling through Facebook when I saw a repost from someone I follow: Jhoanna’s mother.

The post announced that BINI would be performing at Coachella.

For a moment I simply stared at the screen.

Then I smiled.

It felt less like the excitement of a fan screaming at a headline and more like the quiet pride of an older brother watching his younger sisters achieve something extraordinary. I imagined the countless Filipino artists who had dreamed of standing on international stages and the long road it had taken for any of them to arrive there.

Seeing BINI reach that point felt like watching a door open.

Not just for them, but for the future of Filipino music.

I felt proud in a way that surprised me.

Later, when ALAMAT released their new album, I did not listen to it immediately. I wanted to wait until I had a moment when my mind was calm enough to appreciate it properly. By then their single “LuzViMinda” was already circulating everywhere, and the excitement around the release was hard to miss.

When I finally sat down to listen, one thought stayed with me.

They had grown.

The sound felt more confident. The group felt stronger. And as I watched fans celebrating the release online, I realized something else as well.

I was not as present in those conversations anymore.

Part of me felt a small hint of what people now call FOMO—the fear of missing out. There had been a time when I was deeply immersed in those discussions, sharing thoughts about new songs, interacting with fans, and writing about the artists with genuine excitement.

Now I was mostly watching from the sidelines.

But strangely, the feeling was not entirely sad.

There was also a quiet sense of satisfaction. Even if I no longer participated as actively as before, I had still experienced that season of fandom fully. I had listened closely, written about the music, and shared in the enthusiasm of a community that believed deeply in these artists.

In some small way, perhaps my writing had helped others discover them too.

I do not know if that impact was large or small. But the thought itself felt enough.

And when I later saw announcements about G22’s upcoming concert, or when my wife and I found ourselves watching SB19 performances together on television, I realized that the admiration had never truly disappeared.

Sometimes we would watch a video and simply sit there afterward, mouths slightly open, amazed at the level of talent on the screen.

The music was still there.

The difference was that life had changed the way I listened.

The Music Is Still There

For a while I wondered if stepping away from the music meant that I had somehow left that part of my life behind.

When routines change, it is easy to interpret the silence as an ending. The songs that once filled every day are no longer playing. The conversations that used to appear on your screen move on without you. The communities that once felt like daily companions continue their lives at a distance.

It can feel like you have quietly walked away from something you once cared deeply about.

But the longer I reflected on it, the more I realized that this was not really what had happened.

Life had simply rearranged my attention.

There are seasons when art occupies a large part of our lives. During those moments, music feels like oxygen. It helps us process long days, loneliness, distance, or uncertainty. Sometimes it becomes the background to important chapters of our lives without us even noticing.

Then there are seasons when survival takes priority.

Immigration, job hunting, financial worries, and the responsibility of building a life in a new country demand a different kind of focus. In those moments, the mind becomes practical. The days revolve around applications, schedules, plans, and small steps forward.

Art does not disappear in those seasons.

But it sometimes becomes quieter.

Looking back now, I realize that the months when P-Pop filled my days were not wasted time or a distraction from my responsibilities. If anything, they gave me something valuable during a period when many parts of my life felt uncertain.

They gave me comfort during long commutes.

They gave me community during a time when my wife and I lived on different continents.

They reminded me that Filipino artists were building something vibrant and worth celebrating.

And perhaps most importantly, they reminded me that joy can appear in unexpected places.

Today my life looks different.

The routines are more practical now. My days involve studying again, searching for opportunities, and slowly rebuilding my professional path in a new country. The concerns that occupy my mind are often more immediate than the release of a new song or the excitement of a fandom conversation.

But the music has not disappeared.

Sometimes I still listen when I have the chance. When ALAMAT released their new songs, I waited until I had the right moment to sit down and appreciate them. When I heard that BINI would perform at Coachella, I felt proud in a way that surprised me. When my wife and I watch performances by SB19, we still find ourselves amazed by their talent.

Those reactions remind me that the connection is still there.

It is simply quieter now.

And I think that is alright.

Fandom, like many things in life, moves in seasons. There are moments when we are deeply immersed in it, celebrating every release, following every update, and participating in every conversation. Then there are moments when life asks us to step back for a while.

Stepping back does not mean the appreciation disappears.

It simply means the music waits.

Sometimes, when I think about the future, I imagine a small and simple scene.

I am at home here in Canada. My guitar rests on my lap, the way it used to when music was part of my everyday life as a worship leader. I try playing the chords of a P-Pop song I once listened to constantly during my early days as a new doctor.

Maybe I will remember the lyrics. Maybe I will have to look them up again.

After a while my hands will get tired, the way they always do when I have not practiced in a long time. I will set the guitar down, turn on the television, and see the same groups whose songs once accompanied my commutes and quiet evenings.

By then they will probably be even bigger than they are today.

More stages.
More fans.
More stories.

And I will sit there watching, feeling something simple and steady.

Not the frantic excitement of someone chasing every update.

But the quiet happiness of someone who once walked beside that music for a while, during a season when he needed it most.

Sometimes life gets louder than the songs we love.

But the songs remain.

Waiting for us to return when the noise softens again.

Catch-Up, Part 1

(On stopping without meaning to)

I wrote my last post on October 21.

I remember that day more clearly than I expected to. We were still in our previous home, surrounded by boxes that didn’t yet know where they were going. Some were sealed neatly, labeled with care. Others were half-open, their contents exposed, as if I couldn’t quite decide what deserved certainty and what needed one more moment of hesitation. I kept folding clothes and unfolding them again, not because I was reorganizing, but because my hands needed something to do while my mind tried to stay steady.

I was shaking then.
Not visibly.
Not in a way anyone else would have noticed.

It was the kind of shaking that happens inside, when disappointment hasn’t found words yet and failure feels too raw to say out loud. I had some reminders that the future I was working toward would not arrive on the timeline I had hoped for.

That post I wrote talked about waiting. About presence. About staying still long enough to notice that the lights were still on. At the time, it felt like reassurance. Like something gentle I needed to tell myself so I wouldn’t panic.

Now, when I look back at it, it feels more like a pause before a longer silence. A breath held without realizing it would take months to release.

I didn’t plan to disappear after that. I didn’t decide to take a break. I didn’t make a quiet promise to return when things felt better. I simply stopped opening the editor.

At first, it felt temporary. One morning missed. Then another. Early mornings were always my time. The hours before work, when the world was still quiet enough for thoughts to line up properly. I would wake up, make my way to the laptop, open the editor, and stare at the blank screen. Sometimes for a few seconds. Sometimes for several minutes.

Nothing came.

Not because there was nothing inside me, but because everything inside me felt unfinished. Too close. Too exposed. Writing didn’t feel blocked. It felt impossible. Like asking a wound to explain itself before it had even stopped bleeding.

So I closed the editor.

I told myself I would come back later.

Later kept moving.

Life didn’t slow down because I stopped writing. It didn’t wait for me to catch up emotionally. It continued at its own pace, piling days into weeks, weeks into obligations, obligations into routines that didn’t leave much room for reflection.

Somewhere in that stretch, depression slipped in quietly. Not in a way that announces itself. Not in a way that asks for help. It arrived as heaviness that followed me into the morning. As fatigue that didn’t lift after rest. As a dullness that made things I loved feel distant.

I couldn’t enjoy writing.
I couldn’t even enjoy watching videos mindlessly.

I would sit on the bed or the sofa, scrolling through my phone, opening apps and closing them again. Nothing held my attention long enough to matter. Rest felt undeserved. Distraction felt empty. Everything required effort, including things that used to feel automatic.

There were things I didn’t want to say out loud. Not because they were shameful, but because saying them would make them solid. Real. Permanent. I didn’t want this space to become a place where I explained why things didn’t work out. I didn’t want to sound like I was justifying my existence.

So I stayed quiet.

I kept telling myself that writing would be my refuge. I still believe that. But refuges aren’t always accessible when you need them most. Sometimes you know exactly where they are and still can’t step inside.

November arrived without warning.

Not softly.
Not gently.

I needed a job. Not as a personal goal or a milestone, but as a necessity. Survival has a way of narrowing your options. I found one quickly, faster than I expected, and I remember the moment I received my first paycheck. It seems like a small thing when written down, but it wasn’t.

That paycheck told me I was really here now.
Not visiting.
Not preparing.
Not waiting.

Here.

It grounded me in a way nothing else had. It also scared me. Because grounding yourself in one reality means letting go of the comfort of imagined ones.

This was my first real experience in the Canadian workforce. Everything felt new and familiar at the same time. The systems made sense, but the rhythms were different. Conversations moved differently. Expectations were shaped by politeness, restraint, and unspoken rules I was still learning how to read.

I learned quickly how much listening mattered. How silence could mean respect, or uncertainty, or simply space being offered. I learned that not every pause needed to be filled, and that sometimes saying less carried more weight.

Leadership came earlier than I expected. I didn’t ask for it. It arrived quietly, almost casually, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I accepted it without much hesitation, not because I felt ready, but because saying no felt riskier. Because being new and visible at the same time creates its own pressure. You don’t fully understand the rules yet, but people are already watching how you move within them.

At work, I care for people with health needs. That part feels familiar. My mind still works that way. I notice small changes without trying to. When someone looks pale. When their movements feel different. When they say they feel unwell in a way that sounds heavier than usual.

My medical instincts respond before I can stop them.

And then I stop them.

Because I’m not treating patients here. I’m supporting individuals. That distinction matters. It exists for good reasons. But it is also draining in ways I didn’t anticipate. You see something. You know what question to ask. You feel the reflex to intervene, to help in the way you were trained to help.

And you hold back.

Again and again.

That restraint takes something from you. Quietly. Slowly. Not enough to notice right away, but enough to accumulate over time.

The most surprising part of this stretch wasn’t the stress. It was the boredom. Not the lazy kind. The hollow kind. The kind where your body is tired but your mind refuses to rest. The kind where evenings blur together, marked only by hunger and sleepiness arriving at the same time.

Some nights, an ambulance siren would cut through the quiet. We live close to the headquarters, so the sound is sharp and sudden, impossible to ignore. It shocks you awake even when you aren’t asleep yet. It reminds you where you are. What kind of urgency exists beyond your own head.

It always made me pause.

Canada still feels like an adjustment. That word fits better than anything else. Not loss. Not arrival. Adjustment. The structure feels logical. The texture is still unfamiliar. I’m away from medical practice. Away from an identity I carried for years. And without writing, another part of me felt suspended.

I started asking myself questions I didn’t have answers for yet. Who am I if I’m not practicing medicine right now? Who am I if I can’t write the way I used to?

I didn’t post much on social media either. Sometimes I didn’t even check. Silence felt easier than explanation. I felt guilt about that. I also felt relief. Both were true, and I didn’t know how to reconcile them.

There were anchors. Church. My wife. Ordinary moments that held me together more than grand plans ever could. She hugs me when I look too tired. She reminds me to eat supper when I forget. These small gestures mattered more than anything else I could list.

I worried, quietly, that people might think I was fading. That thought hurt more than I expected. Writing has always been how I stay visible to myself. Feedback matters, not because of attention, but because being read tells you that your voice still reaches somewhere. When no one asked why I stopped writing, it stung. Not because I wanted to be noticed, but because absence going unnoticed feels like confirmation of a fear you don’t want to admit. That you’re easy to forget.

Still, I know I would have written this even if no one read it.

Because writing is how I stay alive inside.

I’m losing ground, but I’m still trying to expand. That sentence scares me. So I’m keeping it.

This isn’t a return announcement. It isn’t an explanation. It isn’t a promise. It’s just where I am right now.

Still here.
Still adjusting.
Still trying.

Catch-Up, Part 2

(On returning without pretending)

There was a moment, somewhere between exhaustion and routine, when I realized the silence had stopped protecting me.

It had done its job for a while.
It let me function.
Let me work.
Let me adjust without narrating every step.

But silence, if you stay in it too long, starts to feel less like rest and more like erasure.

I noticed it in small ways. In how days passed without leaving a trace. In how I struggled to remember what made one week different from the next. In how conversations ended and I couldn’t recall what I had contributed, only that I had shown up.

Functioning is useful.
It is not the same as being present.

Writing used to feel like translation. Experience in, clarity out. Now it feels more like excavation. You dig without knowing what you’ll hit. You don’t know if what you uncover will be usable, or even survivable.

That clarity never arrived.

What arrived instead was a quieter truth.

I don’t return to writing because things are resolved.
I return because they aren’t.

There is a strange pressure to come back only when you’re better. When you can frame the struggle neatly. When you can say, this is what I learned, this is how it helped, this is how it ends.

But that isn’t how most things end.

Most things stretch.
They blur.
They refuse to become lessons on command.

I am still not practicing medicine. I am still learning how to be useful in ways that don’t align perfectly with how I was trained. I am still adjusting to being competent and uncertain at the same time. I am still trying to understand what kind of professional I am becoming here, and what parts of myself I am allowed to keep intact.

Some days, that question feels urgent.
Other days, it feels distant.

Both are acceptable. I think.

Writing now feels different. Slower. Less certain. Less interested in performing coherence. I don’t sit down with a point to prove. I sit down because something inside me needs room to speak, even if it speaks badly at first.

Life is happening whether you narrate it or not.

And still, narration matters.

Not because it changes outcomes.
But because it keeps you tethered to yourself.

I am still trying to be normal, in the most practical sense of the word. I study. I work. I show up. I learn how to move through systems that don’t bend just because you’re tired. I learn how to lead without overexplaining. I learn how to listen when silence is the safer choice.

At the same time, I’m trying not to lose my wide-eyed self. The one who pauses too long at small details. The one who asks questions that don’t have immediate value. The one who believes that curiosity is not a luxury, but a way to stay human.

This space will probably change.
So will I.

I don’t know how often I’ll write. I don’t know what shape the next pieces will take. I don’t know if they’ll sound like this, or nothing like this at all.

I’m no longer trying to promise consistency.

I’m choosing presence instead.

If you’re reading this and you’ve gone quiet too, I don’t have advice. I only have recognition. Silence can mean many things. Sometimes it means rest. Sometimes it means grief. Sometimes it means you’re still here, just conserving energy.

Coming back doesn’t have to be loud.
It doesn’t have to explain everything.

Sometimes it’s enough to say: this is where I am.

This is not a restart.
It’s not a pivot.
It’s not a clean slate.

It’s a continuation.

Imperfect.
Unresolved.
Alive.

And for now, that’s enough.

You look at the city from a window again.
The skyline doesn’t change much, yet somehow it looks different every time. The buildings stand still, the air carries a faint hum of traffic, and from where you are, everything feels like it’s waiting for something that never comes.

It’s not sadness that holds you there, not exactly. More like a stillness that asks to be understood.

You have been here long enough to know that waiting becomes a habit. Morning light cuts through the same curtains. Nights last the same number of hours. In between, there are dishes to wash, meals to cook, and tiny rituals that keep you from falling apart. You wouldn’t call it progress, but it’s a kind of survival.

Some days, when the city hum deepens and the lights turn orange, you catch yourself tracing the glow across the buildings. The skyline looks like a heartbeat in slow motion — steady, patient, alive even when no one is looking. You think of how many people out there are doing the same: waiting, breathing, enduring.

You imagine one of them standing by another window, eyes tired, maybe holding a mug that’s gone cold. You imagine that they, too, are wondering when life will start to feel like something more again. And maybe, in some small way, knowing that others are waiting makes it easier to keep going.

You used to think perseverance looked dramatic — like running marathons or climbing mountains. Now, it looks like doing the dishes. It sounds like traffic noise behind a half-closed window. It feels like silence shared with someone who understands.

Your wife sits on the couch sometimes while you finish washing up. You can hear the vlogger voice of a TikToker, or her scrolling through her phone. There’s nothing grand about it. But when the plate clinks against the sink, when the water runs warm against your hands, you feel something close to clarity.

You remember your therapist saying presence can be found in the ordinary. You didn’t believe it at first. But lately, you think he might be right.

Silence used to scare you. Now it feels like a room you can enter without apologizing. You move slower these days. You breathe deeper. You stop chasing after the big answers and let the small truths speak instead.

That maybe surviving isn’t about understanding why things happen.
Maybe it’s about waiting without bitterness.

You tell yourself this when the skyline starts to blur in the evening haze. When you feel the weight of another day that looks too much like the last. You tell yourself, wait.

There’s power in that word. It doesn’t promise relief or reward. It just asks you to stay.

The city hums, cars move below, someone laughs faintly in the distance. The air carries fragments of other people’s lives, and you listen, almost unconsciously. Somewhere, a bus door shuts; somewhere, a siren fades. You don’t know their stories, but you feel their pulse.

You are part of it. Quietly, stubbornly.

You stay at the window for a few more minutes. The lights flicker on one by one — buildings, houses, the street below. Each light feels like a reminder: something still works.

Even in the stillness, the city breathes.

You whisper it to yourself before walking away —
Still, the lights stay on.

In another hour, you’ll wash the dishes again.
It’s not a special act, but it’s one that happens every day, like punctuation between waking and sleeping. The water hits the metal sink, forming tiny echoes that fill the silence. You used to dislike the chore. Now you treat it as a kind of therapy — not the kind that heals everything, but the kind that reminds you you’re still here.

You hold the plate gently, as if it knows your tiredness. You rinse, you scrub, you rinse again. Sometimes your wife joins in, doing her own chores beside you. You talk about nothing in particular — the weather, the groceries, what to cook tomorrow.

And though the talk is small, it’s real. It feels like building a bridge, one small plank at a time.

There’s comfort in routines that don’t demand explanations. You start to see how life rebuilds itself in these tiny ways — by surviving one morning, one errand, one meal, one conversation that doesn’t spiral into worry.

You think back to what the therapist said last week.
That perseverance isn’t about fighting the storm. It’s about learning to stand still inside it.

You didn’t know standing still could be so tiring.
You didn’t know silence could be so loud.

But you also didn’t know it could save you.

The first few months here, silence was heavy. You filled it with scrolling, music, anything to distract the thoughts that made the air too thick. But over time, you learned that quiet isn’t empty — it’s where things settle.

Sometimes, when you stop resisting it, silence tells you the truth gently.
That it’s okay not to know where you’re going.
That healing doesn’t always mean happiness.
That surviving is not failure.

You’ve been learning to live beside that truth.
You don’t chase after joy the way you used to. You let it come when it wants to, like light through the curtains — not bright, but enough to see the room.

And when it comes, you notice it in the simplest things.

The warmth of dishwater.
The sound of your wife humming.
The flicker of the store sign through the window curtain.

There’s something honest about these small things — they don’t ask for gratitude, but they give it anyway. They don’t promise better days. They just exist. And somehow, that’s enough.

You used to write about big moments — exams, journeys, endings, victories. But lately, you find that life’s weight lives elsewhere. Not in achievement, but in the quiet practice of staying.

Staying when your mind says you should run.
Staying when there’s no applause.
Staying when the day offers nothing new.

You don’t have to like it. You just have to last.

Outside, the sound of traffic never stops. Even at night, cars hum through the city’s veins like blood. It’s strange how comforting that can be — knowing that life continues, with or without you.

The city doesn’t wait for your permission to move.
But it also doesn’t leave you behind.

When you can’t sleep, you sometimes sit by the window again. The skyline looks different at night — colder, more distant. But the lights are there. Some windows are bright, others dim. You wonder what stories unfold behind them — arguments, laughter, meals, small reconciliations.

Maybe everyone’s waiting for something. Maybe waiting is the common language of being human.

You think of the word again: wait.
It’s strange how such a simple word can hold so much ache. It doesn’t ask for action. It doesn’t even ask for hope. It just tells you to remain where you are — until something shifts.

But maybe the shift doesn’t come from outside.
Maybe it happens inside, quietly, like the slow unfreezing of a river.

You feel it sometimes — not joy exactly, but a soft loosening.
Like the breath you didn’t realize you were holding finally leaving your chest.

It’s in those moments that you remember: this is life, too. The long middle. The in-between. The still water before the next current.

You used to think you had to keep proving something — your worth, your direction, your reason for still being here. But lately, you wonder if there’s more courage in simply being.

You whisper it to yourself sometimes, when the night feels longer than usual.
Stay. Just stay.

Your therapist once told you that healing rarely looks like recovery. It often looks like endurance, like living alongside the ache without letting it consume you.

You think he’s right.
Because every time you wake up again, every time you wash another dish, every time you tell your wife goodnight, you’re still choosing to stay.

And though the choice is quiet, it’s not small.

You catch a glimpse of your reflection in the window. The city lights blur against the glass, mixing with your own faint outline. You stare at it for a while, thinking about how long it took to reach this version of yourself — the one who doesn’t run from silence anymore.

You still hurt, yes. But now, the hurt doesn’t define you. It just sits beside you, like an old companion you’ve learned to live with.

And maybe that’s what perseverance really means. Not triumph, not strength, not unshaken faith — but the willingness to wake up again, to face another ordinary day, to let the lights stay on even when you don’t know what they’re lighting for.

You go back to the sink, rinse one last cup, and let the water run for a few seconds longer.
There’s no rush to turn it off.

Morning comes softly, almost unnoticed.
You open your eyes before the alarm, not because you’re rested but because the body has learned the rhythm of waking. There’s a faint blue light spilling through the temporary blinds you bought from the home improvement store. Somewhere outside, a bus sighs at the corner, doors sliding open, closing again.

You lie still for a moment. You listen. You think about how every sound means something is still moving — people going to work, engines starting, the world rebuilding itself one commute at a time.

You remind yourself that you, too, are part of that rhythm. Even when your life feels paused, it still belongs to a larger pulse.

You stand, stretch, walk to the window again. The skyline is quieter in the early hours. The glass towers reflect the sky like mirrors, and for a moment, you can almost see the outline of yourself framed by light. You think about the person you were when you first stood here — restless, searching, certain that life would only start once the waiting ended.

You were wrong about that.
Life doesn’t wait for you to be ready. It keeps going, with or without your permission.

You get a coffee pod, place it in the machine, turn it on while its noise fills the room, and realize how much this small act means. There was a time you couldn’t imagine mornings like this — not calm, not bright, but steady. Maybe this is the reward for staying. You learn to find peace in what used to feel like emptiness.

You sit down, sip slowly. The bitterness grounds you. It’s not joy, but it’s something close.

Sometimes, you still think about the word perseverance. It used to sound heroic, the kind of word reserved for people who win, or overcome, or finish. Now it feels quieter, heavier, more human. It lives in the pauses, not the headlines. It exists in the person who wakes up to the same skyline, breathes, and does it all again tomorrow.

You once thought perseverance was about never breaking.
Now you think it’s about learning to live with the cracks.

You look at your hands — a little older, a little worn from soap and water. They’ve carried so much routine lately. But routine, you’ve learned, is not emptiness. It’s structure. It’s the scaffolding that holds the rest of you together while you figure out what’s next.

The traffic hums again. You can almost map your day through its rhythm. Morning rush, then quiet. Evening rush, then calm. Somewhere between those hours, you’ll laugh with your wife, maybe watch something together, maybe sit on the couch without words.

You’ll look at her and remember that life is rarely grand but often kind in small ways.

There was a time you feared stillness — mistaking it for failure. But now, stillness feels earned. It means you’ve survived long enough to stop running.

Maybe this is what it means to rebuild a life — not by chasing movement, but by letting stillness teach you how to begin again.

You think of the people you’ve met who carry their own silences. The ones who smile through exhaustion, who keep going because there’s no other option. You wish you could tell them what you’ve learned: that there’s no shame in slow healing, no weakness in simply existing.

You don’t have to turn your pain into purpose every day.
Sometimes, breathing is already purpose enough.

Outside, the city brightens. You watch as sunlight crawls down the buildings, washing over the glass and steel. The view never changes much, but you do. That realization settles quietly in your chest.

You remember the phrase you’ve been whispering to yourself. Wait.

It used to sound like a punishment. Now it feels like a promise. A soft command from the universe: Don’t rush what still needs time.

You’ve waited through grief, through loneliness, through the strange hollow months that felt like they’d never end. But even in waiting, you were becoming. You just didn’t see it yet.

Sometimes growth is invisible — like roots expanding under frozen soil, unseen until spring.

You don’t know what your spring will look like. You don’t know when it will arrive. But you’ve learned to stop asking “when.”

Now, you simply live beside the waiting.

The skyline shifts again as evening approaches. The traffic grows louder, a steady stream of motion and sound. You open the window slightly, just enough to let in the chill. The air smells like rain and exhaust, and somehow, that combination feels honest.

You think about how life keeps finding ways to continue. Not perfectly, not beautifully — but truthfully.

Your wife calls from the other room, asking where you stored that thing. You answer without thinking. The words come easy, like breath.

You don’t realize it yet, but this is what healing looks like: speaking, responding, existing, without forcing meaning onto every act.

You glance at the window one last time. The skyline is alive again, glowing under the weight of night. Each light holds a story, a pulse, a life. You don’t know any of them, but you feel connected all the same.

You think:
Maybe that’s what keeps the lights on.
Not certainty. Not success. Just connection.

People going about their evenings, doing dishes, calling loved ones, folding laundry, dreaming of somewhere else but still staying here. Still choosing to keep the lights on.

You smile faintly at that thought — that survival, in its quiet form, might just be love disguised as endurance.

You turn off the faucet. You dry your hands. The room falls into an easy hush.

You walk toward your wife, the sound of traffic still faint through the walls. You don’t need to say much. You’ve both learned the language of silence well enough to call it peace.

And as the city hums outside — bright, loud, unending — you let that thought rest in you:

Even when everything else slows down,
even when nothing seems to move,
even when all you can do is wait—

Still, the lights stay on.

I didn’t even start in that world.

When I first entered university, I was a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration major in Marketing student. A “safe” course. The kind that sounded good when relatives asked, “So, what are you taking?” I could answer confidently without having to explain too much.

But there was this nagging thought. A quiet pull toward something else.
I kept wondering—what if I became a doctor?

The more I sat in business classes, the more that question grew louder. It wasn’t a lightning bolt moment, more like a slow drip. And when I finally considered shifting, Biology seemed like the natural step. Partly because it’s a common pre-med choice, and partly because it was my mother’s pre-dentistry course. A sentimental echo.

I didn’t do a deep analysis of career outcomes or weigh pros and cons like a good business major should. I just thought: If I’m going for medicine, this is the way in.

So I shifted.

Early Fascination

My relationship with Biology actually started long before college.
I remember being in elementary and doing my first dissection—a live toad. That might sound cruel now, but at the time, I was fascinated. While some of my classmates were grimacing or holding their breath, I was leaning closer, eyes wide, watching the way life was arranged inside a body.

It was one of the few times I felt like I was doing something real in school. Not just reading about processes in a book, but actually seeing them.

That early fascination carried over into high school, where Biology was one of my favorite subjects. I liked the balance of memorization and understanding, of facts and patterns. You could study a system, learn its parts, and understand how they interacted. There was a logic to it.

I thought that logic would make Biology as a degree manageable.

I was wrong.

The Reality of the Course

Biology in college was a different beast entirely.
Sure, some subjects felt familiar at first—basic botany, introductory zoology—but they quickly evolved into something much more technical. Comparative Anatomy demanded hours of memorization. Cell Biology felt like diving into a microscopic ocean where every molecule had a story. Genetics challenged me in ways I didn’t expect. Histology made me doubt my own eyes.

Then there were the rotating exams, where you had seconds to identify a specimen, a structure, or a process before moving to the next station. It was a kind of academic pressure that felt like a trap—either you knew it in an instant or you didn’t.

Some days, I’d walk out of a lab feeling confident. Other days, I’d feel embarrassed, especially when I blanked on something I’d studied the night before. In those moments, you start questioning why you’re even there.

And yet, the professors kept me anchored.

Professors Who Loved the Subject

I was lucky to have teachers who treated Biology not just as a pre-medicine stepping stone but as a field worth dedicating a life to. They spoke about ecosystems, evolutionary processes, and research like these were treasures to be preserved, not just topics to be passed in an exam.

That passion rubbed off on me, even if I was more focused on medicine. I could see in them what it meant to truly belong to the discipline.

Still, passion alone doesn’t make you immune to doubt.

The Trap Feeling

There were times I felt like Biology was a trap. That if I didn’t get into medical school, I wouldn’t be satisfied with anything else. It was a narrow kind of ambition—doctor or nothing. And that made the stakes feel higher than they needed to be.

I had classmates who were natural achievers. Many of them treated grades like currency and research projects like personal milestones. I wasn’t competing with them. In my circle, we built community instead—helping each other, sharing notes, laughing off the stress when we could. It made the long semesters feel bearable.

I did join our official Biology organization, Microbia, but my real extracurricular commitment was outside strict science. I became active in our university student paper, Forum-Dimensions, eventually becoming its chief editor. Writing gave me a break from lab reports and practical exams. It was another way of studying life, but through people and stories rather than specimens.

Surviving the Coursework

People assume that because Biology isn’t as specialized as Nursing or as clinically focused as Medical Technology, it must be easier.

That’s not true.

All our Biology and Chemistry courses were demanding in their own way. They didn’t require the same kind of hospital exposure, but they drained you with sheer volume and precision. Hours in the lab. Mountains of readings. Plates that had to be labeled perfectly. Experiments that could fail simply because the weather wasn’t cooperating or because the equipment was older than some of us.

And then there were the “minor” subjects.

Teachers liked to say we took minors in other fields because we were expected to do well in them, too. As if our schedule wasn’t already stacked. History, literature, physical education—they were meant to balance us out, but sometimes they just added more pressure. I don’t even know how I survived them while juggling all the major courses.

There were nights I thought about quitting.

Not because I didn’t like Biology anymore, but because I was worried it was all or nothing. If I didn’t become a doctor, what was I going to do? Teach? Go into research? Neither felt like my dream at the time.

The NMAT and the Leap to Medicine

When NMAT season came, I didn’t prepare as hard as others. Some of my classmates enrolled in review centers, armed with thick binders of practice tests. I had… a reviewer. Just one.

I didn’t feel prepared, but strangely, I wasn’t too nervous either. Maybe because I had this quiet hope that all the years of studying life sciences would at least give me a fighting chance.

And in a way, it did.

Biology didn’t make me a perfect NMAT taker, but it taught me to face the unexpected. To look at a question, find a clue, and work my way toward an answer.

When I finally stepped into medical school, I thought some subjects—like Parasitology—would carry over seamlessly. I quickly learned that medicine was a completely different domain. The transition was less about applying what I knew and more about starting from scratch with a different set of expectations.

The Weight of Comparison

In med school, the comparisons began. Not official ones, but the quiet, internal kind.

I’d see classmates who were Nursing or Medical Technology graduates confidently navigate clinical terms I was only learning for the first time. They had hospital stories, practical skills, and a way of moving through patient cases that seemed instinctive.

It was hard not to feel insecure. I questioned whether I should have taken another course instead. Nursing was my wife’s (then-girlfriend’s) suggestion, but we couldn’t afford it at the time. MedTech was another option I’d considered in passing, but Biology had felt like the right choice back then.

Over time, I brushed those thoughts away. I realized that no pre-med course could fully prepare you for medical school. The playing field levels out eventually—what matters is how you adapt.

The Misconceptions

One thing I learned is that a lot of people underestimate Biology majors.

There’s the idea that it’s “just” one of the best pre-med choices and nothing more. That we’re not as busy as other science students. That the only fallback is teaching in high school.

Those assumptions erase the skills we actually develop: investigative thinking, deep appreciation of local flora and fauna, an understanding of conservation and preservation. We learn how to observe, record, analyze, and connect details.

And yes, it’s true—some of us go into research, some into medicine, some into education. But the field itself is richer than people give it credit for.

Lessons Beyond Medicine

Even now, I find subtle ways Biology has stayed with me. The way I think about systems. The respect I have for how complex yet fragile life is.

I still remember dissecting an oyster in class and, strangely, coming out of that experience appreciating it more as food. Biology is like that—it makes you notice things you wouldn’t have thought twice about before. It can even create a kind of reverence for life that parallels spiritual beliefs, even if the course itself is rooted in Darwinian principles.

It taught me that understanding life scientifically doesn’t have to cancel out the sense of wonder. In fact, it can deepen it.

The Emotional Baggage

When I think back to my Biology degree, the memories aren’t just about labs and lectures.
There’s a layer of emotional weight to it—delays, failures, and the constant shadow of “what if I don’t make it to medicine?”

I carried those questions everywhere. They weren’t loud, but they were persistent, like a low hum you can’t turn off. It didn’t help that I also felt the pressure of living up to my mother’s legacy. She had taken Biology as her pre-dentistry course, and here I was, walking the same path. It felt symbolic. But it also felt like a responsibility I couldn’t fail.

Another layer was trying to convince others that Biology was useful outside of medicine—even though I was headed for medicine myself. I knew its worth, but I also knew the perception. People wanted clear, linear career stories. Biology didn’t always give you that. You had to carve your own.

Why I’m Still Proud

Despite the struggles, I can say without hesitation that I’m proud of taking Biology.

It’s more than just a degree. It’s a way of seeing the world—rooted in observation, analysis, and curiosity. Even the Latin root of the word species, specere, meaning “to look” or “to observe,” speaks to the heart of it. That’s what we do. We look closely at life. We try to understand it, in all its forms and scales.

The course connected me to people, ideas, and experiences I wouldn’t trade for anything. It trained me to think about details, to see patterns, to respect the complexity of the smallest organism and the largest ecosystem.

If I had to choose again, I’d still say yes.

Advice to Future Biology Majors

If you’re thinking about taking Biology—whether for pre-med or not—know this: it’s one of the most remarkable and useful courses you can take.

But usefulness isn’t always obvious right away. It’s not like Nursing or Engineering, where the job title is in the degree. Biology’s gifts are in the skills it hones and the perspectives it gives you.

Whether you end up in medicine, research, conservation, or education, the field is rich. And I hope more people choose to explore it beyond the usual medical path—especially in research and environmental preservation. We need more voices there.

You’ll face people who think you’re taking an “easier” route. You’ll hear the fallback-teacher comments. But you’ll also discover moments that make you realize how much life there is to study, protect, and appreciate.

Closing the Circle

Looking back, the “woes” of being a Biology major weren’t just about the workload or the doubts—they were about growing into someone who could live with uncertainty and still move forward.

I entered the program with the idea that medicine was the only finish line. Somewhere along the way, I learned that the degree itself had value beyond that path.

Biology didn’t just prepare me for medical school—it prepared me for the unexpected turns in life. And maybe that’s what education is supposed to do.