By Michael Caesar C. Tubal It’s Halloween season, and as someone who is chronically online, I have been enjoying the ghost stories and supposedly real-life supernatural encounters that Filipinos have been sharing on Threads, Meta’s microblogging platform. These stories have been going viral again, and I must admit that I have spent more time reading
October 15, 2026
By Michael Caesar C. Tubal Two weeks ago, I began the first installment of my two-part series exploring literary works in the Philippines that feature the aswang, kapre, manananggal, and other creatures and deities drawn from Filipino folklore and mythology. This seems like the perfect time to continue, especially with the growing buzz around the
October 8, 2026
Whenever downtown Iloilo comes up in conversation, a flood of memories returns to me. Some are ordinary, some funny, and some bittersweet. But that is what makes downtown special to me. It is not simply a place I visit. So many parts of my life happened there. One of my
October 1, 2026
Just last week, a friend jokingly advised me to write about him teasing me as an aswang, given that I hail from Dueñas, the birthplace of Teniente Gimó. “Of course,” I replied in jest. This prompted me to write today about aswang, focusing on literary works that feature them and
September 24, 2026
What do we work for? For many people, the immediate answer is survival – paying for food and bills while supporting family. Yet work also carries expectations of success, stability, and happiness. I still felt that tension after reading “Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop” by South Korean author Hwang Bo-reum.
September 17, 2026
“Daw agi ka,” my classmate softly growled at me in Hiligaynon, exaggerating the movement of his lips to imitate how he thought gay men spoke. I had simply reminded him that we had an assignment due the next day. “Ano gina-Kinaray-a mo? Daw agi ka gid ya pamatian!” he added.
September 10, 2026
You have probably seen those viral videos where Filipinos translate the same sentence, expression, or movie line into the different “dialects” of the Philippines. One person says it in Cebuano, another in Ilocano, another in Hiligaynon, followed perhaps by Waray, Kapampangan, or Bikol. I enjoy watching them because they remind
September 3, 2026
By Michael Caesar C. Tubal A recent post from the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF) explains that if a word is borrowed from Spanish, aspecto, it should become aspekto in Filipino, while a borrowing from English, aspect, should become aspek. The explanation follows the KWF Manwal sa Masinop na Pagsulat, particularly its warning against so-called
August 27, 2026