Originally published in Manila Bulletin As a young student, seeing my name in the Manila Bulletin for the first time felt like being handed a microphone in a room full of grown-ups—and being told not to waste anyone’s time. The thrill came with pressure: to earn the space, to prove I wasn’t there by accident, to write a sentence sturdy enough to sit beside voices I’d been reading long before I ever dreamed of joining them. I drafted and redrafted with nervous energy, learning quickly that in MB you weren’t “a student writer.” You were a writer, period. I’m writing this now as part of the Manila Bulletin’s 126th anniversary, and the timing still feels unreal because my column—NightOwl—is also turning 10. A decade of deadlines and doubt, of late-night drafts and early-morning edits, of trying to make sense of the day when the city is quieter and your thoughts are louder. Ten years sounds tidy when you say it out loud, but it doesn’t feel tidy. It feels like a blink and a lifetime at the same time. The strangest proof of time is what people call you. Lately, more often than not, strangers and friends will spot me and say, “NightOwl!”—not Anna Mae, but NightOwl, as if the byline has become a second name. It’s flattering, yes, and also surreal. I chose a pen name for distance, for privacy, for a small mask that would let me be brave on the page. I didn’t expect the mask to become a face readers recognize, a shorthand for a voice they’ve invited into their routines. That is the quiet magic of writing in a newspaper: your private thinking becomes public company. The words don’t stay with you—they travel. They land in someone’s commute, someone’s lunch break, someone’s late-night scrolling, someone’s moment of needing a sentence that makes the world feel slightly more explainable. When you’re young, that responsibility is terrifying in the best way. It forces you to choose clarity over cleverness, fairness over performance, truth over the easy applause of outrage. MB gave me that training early. It respected young writers in the only way that really counts: by taking our work seriously. Not in a ceremonial way—no head pats, no “you’re the future” speeches—just an expectation that if you wanted to be heard, you had to do the work. Check the facts. Tighten the argument. Remove the line that sounds good but isn’t right. Learn the difference between a hot take and a thoughtful point. That kind of discipline is a gift disguised as pressure. Over the years, I’ve watched new waves of young voices arrive with the same mix of courage and uncertainty. Students with fresh metaphors and sharp questions. First-time contributors trying to sound confident while still figuring out what they believe. Young professionals who refuse to accept “that’s just how it is” as an answer. They don’t always land perfectly—and they shouldn’t have to. Their value is not perfection; it’s movement. Youth notices what older eyes have learned to ignore, and that noticing keeps the conversation honest. Of course, the noise outside the newsroom has changed. The internet rewards speed, spectacle, and certainty. It tempts writers—especially young ones—to confuse volume for impact and sarcasm for insight. In that climate, MB’s steady standards matter even more. It remains a counterweight to the frenzy, asking for sentences that can stand without shouting and opinions that can survive a second reading. It reminds us that restraint isn’t silence; it’s precision. If you’ve never written for a publication, you might think the work is mostly inspiration. It’s mostly revision. You learn humility the hard way: the column you loved at midnight looks sloppy by morning; the metaphor you chased turns unfair; the conclusion you wanted is not the conclusion the facts support. Over time, you start to respect the unglamorous parts—editing, verifying, cutting—because that’s where credibility is built. The public doesn’t owe us attention. We earn it by being careful. So on Feb. 2, with Manila Bulletin at 126 and NightOwl at 10, I find myself grateful for the pressure I felt as a student. Grateful for being small in a room that mattered. A place with standards doesn’t only give you a platform; it gives you a spine. And it gives young voices a rarer kind of confidence: not the confidence that you’re always right, but the confidence that you can keep learning in public without losing integrity. To the young writers stepping into these pages now: welcome. Let the pressure make you careful. Let it make you brave in the right ways. And to the Manila Bulletin—thank you for making room for the young, again and again. A publication that nurtures new voices is a publication that believes the future is worth arguing for. After 10 years as NightOwl—and a lifetime as a reader—I still believe that, too. This opinion column is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share, adapt, and redistribute this content, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and original source.

Originally published in Manila Bulletin Imagine two ordinary freedoms that many Filipinos still can’t rely on. An elderly woman leaves home with a small bag. The sidewalk is continuous. The stop is lit, shaded, and clearly marked. When the bus or modern jeep arrives, she boards without climbing, understands where to go, hears what’s next, and gets home without bargaining for help or feeling like she’s “in the way.” Nearby, a child plays within sight of home. Cars move slowly because the street design makes speeding difficult. Crossings are short, corners are tight, and parents don’t have to treat a quick game outside like a high-risk operation. If those scenes became normal, the Philippines wouldn’t just be “more inclusive.” It would be healthier, safer, more productive, and less trapped by congestion. The simplest truth about infrastructure is also the most ignored: we design for a “default” person who can climb, squeeze, sprint, and improvise through danger. Build for that imaginary commuter and you exclude everyone who isn’t him—older people, persons with disabilities, pregnant women, children, caregivers, injured workers, and those who can’t afford private vehicles. In a country where daily life already asks too much of the body, that exclusion is widespread. Inclusive planning flips the starting point: begin with the most marginalized user, because if a system works for them, it works better for everyone. This isn’t a foreign fad. It’s already Philippine policy in the Accessibility Law (Batas Pambansa Blg. 344) and the Magna Carta for Persons with Disability (Republic Act 7277). The principle is clear; the gap is execution. Filipinos feel that gap in their knees and ankles. A ramp appears, then ends at a post. A sidewalk is poured, then surrendered to parked vehicles, vendors, and broken slabs. Footbridges are offered as a universal answer even when they require climbing many bodies cannot do. Accessibility becomes a checkbox instead of a promise: can you complete the trip—door to destination and back—independently and safely? When an elderly woman can use public transport on her own, what you’ve built is a system that is legible and forgiving: walking routes that don’t punish slow steps, stops that respect time and comfort, vehicles that don’t treat boarding like athletics, and transfers that don’t drain a day’s energy. That same design helps the parent with a stroller, the worker with a sprained ankle, the vendor hauling goods, the student with a heavy bag, and the commuter coming off a night shift. The economic upside follows. Congestion is often treated like bad weather—unfortunate but inevitable. It isn’t. It’s a design outcome, and it has a cost. JICA has cited estimates from a 2017 survey that put Metro Manila’s transport costs from traffic congestion at about ₱3.5 billion per day, projected to reach ₱5.4 billion per day by 2035 without intervention. A network that people can actually use can pull trips away from forced car and motorcycle dependence—reducing traffic, lowering household transport costs, and widening access to jobs. Road safety is the same story. A child able to play outside is not nostalgia; it’s a performance standard: speeds managed by design, safe crossings, and public space treated as essential. The Philippine Road Safety Action Plan 2023–2028, developed with partners including the Department of Transportation and the World Health Organization, sets an ambition to cut road traffic deaths by 35 percent by 2028. You don’t get there by scolding road users while streets keep rewarding speed and surprise. People behave the way streets instruct them to behave. There is also a quieter dividend: dignity. Daily indignities of inaccessible transport shrink lives. A grandmother avoids trips because the journey is too risky. A person with disability turns down opportunities because the route is impossible. A caregiver declines work because moving children across town is exhausting and unsafe. Inclusion isn’t charity; it expands who gets to participate in economic and community life. The Philippines doesn’t need to choose between “big projects” and inclusive design. Inclusion is the quality standard that makes big projects deliver. A rail line is only as useful as the sidewalks and crossings that feed it. A bus corridor is only as successful as the safety and clarity of its stops and transfers. A road is only as modern as its ability to move people without injury. So the measure of progress should be simple: can an elderly woman complete her trip alone, without fear or dependence? Can a child exist outside without gambling with traffic? If the answer becomes yes, the Philippines will feel the benefit in its economy, public health, safety statistics, and everyday confidence. That is what good infrastructure should buy: not just movement, but freedom. This opinion column is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share, adapt, and redistribute this content, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and original source.

Originally published in Manila Bulletin I am writing this column because I know what fear can do to young people. I have watched it bend their posture before it bends their future, teaching them to shrink long before anyone tells them to. Fear does not announce itself as danger at first. It often arrives disguised as caution, responsibility, or realism. By the time you realize it has taken hold, it has already begun editing your life. Fear changed my life quietly. It taught me how to stay alert even when nothing was happening, how to replay conversations long after they ended, searching for mistakes. It made me attentive to tone, to silence, to what was left unsaid. Fear convinced me that safety came from anticipation, that if I could imagine every possible outcome, I could avoid pain. What it did not tell me was that constant vigilance is its own kind of prison. As a young person, fear narrowed my world. I chose what felt survivable over what felt meaningful. I learned to lower my expectations in public so disappointment would not humiliate me. I still dreamed, but I did it quietly, the way you hum to yourself in a room where you do not feel welcome. Fear taught me that wanting too much was risky, that being visible invited judgment. Then there was the disbelief. The moment you try to explain fear and someone does not believe you, something inside fractures. They say you are exaggerating, that you are too sensitive, that others have it worse. They offer reassurance instead of listening, solutions instead of understanding. They mean well, sometimes. But intention does not soften the impact. When people do not believe you, fear changes shape. It becomes self doubt. You begin to question your memory, your instincts, your right to name what you feel. You start editing yourself before anyone else can. You learn which truths make people uncomfortable and you hide them, not because they are untrue, but because you are tired of defending your own reality. This is especially dangerous for young people. Disbelief teaches them that authority lives outside their own experience. It tells them that their fear is not real unless someone else validates it. Over time, that lesson can be devastating. It trains them to ignore warning signs, to stay silent when something feels wrong, to accept harm because they have been told they are imagining it. Fear changed my life by making me cautious with my voice. I learned to soften my language, to add humor to pain, to turn confession into performance so it would be easier to swallow. Eventually, I learned silence. Silence felt safer than being dismissed. But silence allowed fear to speak uninterrupted. It explained why I should not try, why I should not trust, why I should not expect better. I am revising this column, and my own thinking, because I do not want to keep living by rules written by fear and reinforced by disbelief. I am writing this to remember that being doubted does not mean being wrong. It often means telling a truth that others are not prepared to hear. I know what fear feels like. I know how heavy it can sit in a young body, how convincing it can sound in your own voice. I also know the strength it takes to survive it, especially when no one is watching, especially when no one believes you. This column is for that younger version of me, and for anyone else learning this too late. You are not required to earn belief by suffering more quietly or explaining yourself better. Start by believing yourself. That choice alone can keep fear from deciding the rest of your life. This opinion column is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share, adapt, and redistribute this content, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and original source.

Originally published in Manila Bulletin I write this in the first week of January, for the first time reflecting on the year that was while sitting by a fireplace. The warmth reaches my hands first, then settles slowly into my shoulders. It is a temperature that feels almost unfamiliar—despite years spent abroad, or perhaps because of them. I notice how my body responds before my mind does, how comfort can feel surprising when you haven’t realized how long you’ve been without it. Looking back on 2025 from this quiet place, I feel less compelled to measure the year by outcomes and more inclined to remember how it unfolded. What stays with me most is gratitude—for people, for timing, for moments that could never have been scheduled. Families, in all their forms, across nationalities and geographies, anchored the year. Some were lifelong; others appeared briefly but meaningfully. Together they reminded me that belonging is not confined to one country or one language. It is built through care, consistency, and shared presence. There were random, serendipitous moments in 2025 that shifted everything. Encounters that began casually and evolved into collaborations. Invitations accepted without overthinking. Paths crossed simply because they did. These moments reinforced something I continue to relearn: not everything important arrives through strategy. Some of the most meaningful turns came when I allowed space for chance, when I followed curiosity instead of certainty. I am deeply thankful for breakthroughs in research and work—milestones that once felt abstract and slowly became real. Progress was not always linear, but it was honest. Opportunities emerged through trust and shared belief, and I do not take lightly the privilege of being able to explore ideas, to ask questions, and to contribute to something larger than myself. I am grateful for the people who challenged me, supported me, and walked alongside me through uncertainty. Celebration, too, shaped the year in both quiet and expansive ways. There were large gatherings and visible milestones, but also smaller rituals that felt just as significant. A meal cooked together. A conversation that stretched late into the night. A pause taken simply because it was needed. What mattered most was not the scale of the celebration, but the presence of those who mattered. Time spent together—intentionally, imperfectly—became the true marker of joy. Seeing and experiencing both the new and the familiar gave 2025 its texture. New places expanded my sense of possibility; familiar ones reminded me who I was before I knew how much I could change. Returning—whether to a place, a tradition, or a version of myself—felt different this time. Familiarity did not mean stagnation. It meant depth. Now, as 2026 begins—the Year of the Horse—I feel a quiet readiness. The horse represents movement, strength, and endurance, but also freedom. I look forward to a year defined not by speed, but by momentum with intention. By choosing when to move quickly and when to stand still. By trusting the direction even when the full path is not yet visible. Sitting by this fireplace, warmed by something that once felt distant, I realize how much has shifted. If 2025 was a year of gratitude and discovery, I hope 2026 will be a year of trust—trust in relationships, in work, and in the steady unfolding of what matters most. This opinion column is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share, adapt, and redistribute this content, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and original source.

Originally published in Manila Bulletin It’s January 2026, and the quiet in my morning feels almost suspicious. Not the empty quiet of avoidance—the kind I used to chase. This is the quiet that shows up when I’m actually present. When my phone isn’t the first thing I touch. When last night didn’t end in “just one more.” When my body isn’t negotiating with my choices. I lace up my shoes and step outside. The air is cold enough to sting, and for a moment my mind tries to bargain: Not today. Start tomorrow. You’ve had a long week. The familiar chorus. And then a newer voice—steadier, less dramatic—cuts in: This is the work. This is the point. Stoicism has done many things for me, but the biggest is this: it has turned my life from a debate into a practice. From ‘How do I feel?’ to ‘What do I choose?’ Before Stoicism, my days were ruled by my internal weather. If I felt motivated, I acted. If I felt anxious, I avoided. If I felt lonely, I reached for something that blurred the edges. Alcohol fit perfectly into that system. It didn’t solve anything, but it changed the lighting. It made stress feel softer, socializing feel easier, and late nights feel deserved. It also quietly trained me to believe that discomfort was an emergency. Stoicism challenged that belief at the root. One of its simplest ideas is also its most disruptive: some things are up to me, and some things are not. My body, my time, my attention, my choices—those are mine. Other people’s opinions, the past, the economy, the awkwardness of a party, the unpredictability of life—those are not. That division didn’t make my problems disappear. It did something better: it gave me somewhere to stand. When you stop trying to control what isn’t yours, you suddenly have energy for what is. Learning to stay with discomfort There’s a particular kind of discomfort I used to treat like a fire alarm: cravings, awkwardness, irritation, restlessness, sadness. I believed those feelings meant something had gone wrong—and that my job was to fix them quickly. Stoicism taught me a different approach: feelings are information, not instructions. This is where my life began to change in practical ways. When the urge to drink showed up—after a stressful day, at a social event, during that late-night window when my discipline used to clock out—I started practicing a pause. Not a dramatic pause. A small one. Just long enough to ask: • What am I actually trying to escape right now? • Is this urge within my control? (No. The urge isn’t.) • Is my response within my control? (Yes. Every time.) • What would the version of me I respect do next? That last question is the one that matters. Stoicism is, at its core, a philosophy of character. Not reputation. Not mood. Character. And character is built in the moments no one claps for—especially the ones that feel boring, inconvenient, or lonely. This opinion column is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share, adapt, and redistribute this content, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and original source.

Originally published in Manila Bulletin We don’t talk enough about crying. Not the cinematic kind—one perfect tear sliding down a cheek—but the real, messy kind that leaves your eyes swollen and your breath unsteady. The kind that comes from frustration so deep it feels like a knot in the chest. The kind that arrives in the middle of learning something difficult, or failing at something you thought you should already understand. Studying, growing, becoming—none of it is easy. And yet we often pretend that it should be. We speak of learning as if it were a graceful climb, a steady ascent toward mastery. But the truth, at least the truth I’ve discovered, is that progress is jagged. It stumbles. It circles back on itself. And sometimes it requires tears. There have been days when I’ve cried from sheer frustration—when I’ve read the same paragraph 10 times and still felt as if the meaning were dissolving in front of me. Days when anxiety surged because I couldn’t keep up, because everyone else seemed to understand, because I questioned whether I truly belonged in spaces I had worked so hard to enter. Days when the fear of inadequacy pressed so heavily on me that I could barely breathe. It is an uncomfortable thing to admit you are lost. It feels like weakness to confess that learning is stretching you beyond comfort. But I am beginning to understand that honesty—especially with oneself—is not weakness at all. It is a form of liberation. When you finally say, I don’t understand, you create the space to learn. When you admit, I am overwhelmed, you allow yourself to rest. When you acknowledge, I am struggling, you refuse to be crushed by the illusion that everyone else glides effortlessly through life. In the moments when self-doubt feels unbearable, I walk. It is the one practice that has never failed me. I leave the screen, the desk, the problem set, the essay draft. I step outside—even if it’s raining, even if it’s cold, even if part of me wants to collapse into bed instead. Something about moving my body helps move my mind. The rhythm of footsteps eases the tangled thoughts. The air loosens the tightness in my chest. Walking has become my reset button. My way of saying: I am allowed to step back. I am allowed to breathe. Along those walks, I often find clarity—not in the sense of suddenly solving everything, but in realizing that I don’t need all the answers right away. Sometimes clarity is simply remembering that learning takes time. That mastery is not a requirement for belonging. That even in the most brilliant rooms, many people are quietly battling the same insecurities. We are not taught that vulnerability is part of learning. We are taught to hide our confusion, to conceal our uncertainty, to pretend we grasp everything instantly. But growth thrives in the soil of humility. A cracked surface is not a flaw—it is an opening. If I have learned anything from the difficult days, it is this: you move forward not by pretending to be strong, but by acknowledging the moments when you feel weak. Progress begins when you allow yourself to sit with the discomfort, to cry if you need to, and to trust that the doubt will pass. Some of the most important lessons I’ve learned have come from the days when I cried. When I felt incapable. When I questioned myself so deeply that the only thing to do was keep walking until the world felt steady again. Because sometimes the path forward is not a bold leap, but a tearful step. And that step, fragile as it feels, is still progress. This opinion column is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share, adapt, and redistribute this content, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and original source.

Originally published in Manila Bulletin Eight years ago, in 2017, my dad and I had our last conversation—and I didn’t know it would be the last. His death was sudden. There were no prior goodbyes, no long talks that eased us into the idea of life without him. One day he was there, and then he wasn’t. The kind of loss that doesn’t arrive with warning doesn’t just break your heart; it rearranges your world. I replay that final conversation more than I’d like to admit, not because it was dramatic, but because it became permanent. When you don’t get a chance to prepare, you start searching for meaning in the ordinary. You cling to the last words, the last tone of voice, the last moment you were simply father and child in a normal day. And somewhere in the shock of it all, I made a promise: I told him I’d become a lawyer. At the time, it felt like the only thing I could control—something solid in a moment that suddenly had none. Grief doesn’t always look like tears. Sometimes it looks like determination. Sometimes it looks like showing up again and again when you’re not sure you have anything left. I carried that promise quietly and stubbornly, even on the days I doubted myself, even on the days when I couldn’t imagine finishing what I started. Life didn’t pause to accommodate my loss. It kept moving—fast, messy, indifferent. And I had to learn to move with it. I brought law books with me to Oxford and studied in between everything because I couldn’t let that promise fade. I studied in the margins: after long days, before early mornings, in waiting rooms, in borrowed quiet, in the small pockets of time most people don’t notice. It wasn’t elegant. It wasn’t always consistent. But it was mine. This was my first time taking the bar, and I walked into it thinking of him the whole way through. Not as pressure, but as presence. A reminder that love doesn’t end just because someone does. A reminder that the people we lose can still be part of what we build. When I finally got to put “Atty.” before my name, it didn’t feel like a victory lap. It felt like a breath I’d been holding for years. More than eight years later, I was able to say what I’d been working toward in silence: Dad, I kept my word. This journey taught me things I wish I’d learned earlier. First: It is not a race. Do it at your own time. Grief already makes you feel late to everything. Don’t add to that by measuring your progress against someone else’s timeline. Slow growth is still growth. Second: When people tell you, you can’t do it, it’s important you don’t believe them. Some opinions are just projections — other people’s limits dressed up as advice. Protect your purpose. Not everyone will understand why you keep going, especially when your reasons are personal. Keep going anyway. Third: Hard work matters, but not just for the outcome. Focus on the journey and not just the final result. The title is meaningful, but what’s even more meaningful is who you become while earning it—disciplined, resilient, and able to stand back up when life knocks the air out of you. I didn’t get a goodbye. I didn’t get closure the way people imagine it. But I got a promise—and I kept it. Dad, you can finally rest in peace. And for anyone carrying a promise born out of sudden loss: keep going. One day, you’ll look up and realize the most important thing you earned wasn’t a title at all. You will be proud of the person you become. This opinion column is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share, adapt, and redistribute this content, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and original source.

Originally published in Manila Bulletin In a world that rewards speaking—publishing, posting, persuading—it is easy to forget the quiet, transformative power of listening. Not the performative type of listening where one waits impatiently for a turn to speak, but the kind that requires presence, humility, and a willingness to be changed. I have been thinking about this often, especially since joining the Indigenous Council of One Young World. It is one of the rare spaces in my life where listening is not just encouraged; it is the foundation of everything we do. When I first joined the council, I expected to contribute ideas, share my experiences, and represent my own community. I did all of that, of course, but what I did far more—and what shaped me more deeply—was listening. I listened to stories of displacement and resilience, of communities fighting to preserve their language, land, and identity. I listened to frustrations that echoed my own and to frustrations born of realities I had never lived. I listened to strength disguised as softness, and to courage spoken in measured, steady words. Through listening, I encountered the kind of learning no classroom or policy document can ever replicate. There is something profoundly grounding about hearing people speak from places of lived truth. In those conversations, there is no room for pretense. No metrics. No performance. Just people speaking about who they are, where they come from, and what they carry. Listening to them made me aware of how narrow my understanding of the world once was. Not because I lacked empathy, but because empathy without exposure is limited. You cannot understand what you have never encountered. Traveling—physically and intellectually—has broadened the map of my understanding. It has exposed me to cultures whose histories stretch back centuries before colonization, communities whose relationships with land and tradition resist the pace of modern erosion. And each time I listened—really listened—I felt something inside me shift. I became more aware of how interconnected we all are, more grounded in the truth that identity is not a fixed shape but a layered story, and more authentic in my desire to speak only after I’ve understood. Listening, I have learned, is not passive. It is an act of generosity: you offer your time, your attention, your willingness to be unsettled or surprised. It is also an act of courage: you open yourself to perspectives that may challenge your assumptions or widen your responsibility. And it is, in its simplest form, an act of respect—especially in Indigenous contexts, where listening has always been central to community life. In the Indigenous Council, listening becomes a form of solidarity. By hearing each other, we affirm each other. By understanding each other’s struggles and strengths, we build connections that transcend borders and timelines. I began to understand that our collective power does not come only from shared advocacy, but from the relationships we nurture by giving space to each other’s voices. And with every story I heard, I found myself becoming more patient, more attentive, and more rooted in why this work matters. At a time when the world feels increasingly loud—when social media rewards interruptions, when opinions spread faster than understanding—listening feels like a radical choice. But it is a necessary one. If we are to build a future that honors Indigenous communities, marginalized voices, and cultures fighting to be seen, then we must start by listening to one another with sincerity and depth. I am a different person now than when I first joined the council. Not because I spoke, but because I listened. Listening has made me more aware. More grounded. More authentic. It has expanded my sense of responsibility—and my sense of hope. In the end, listening is not just something we do. It is something that shapes who we become. This opinion column is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share, adapt, and redistribute this content, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and original source.

Originally published in Manila Bulletin NIGHT OWL Whenever I am asked what children should be taught to survive in this age of artificial intelligence, people expect me to list technical skills: coding, robotics, algorithmic thinking. But my answer is always the same, and it always surprises them. We must teach children care. Not as a soft virtue, but as a foundation for the world we want to build. Because if we truly care about children, they would be reflected in the very shape of our cities. Their needs would guide our public spaces. Their safety would be the metric by which infrastructure is judged. Their right to exploration, mobility, and joy would be treated not as optional extras, but as core civic obligations. Imagine a city built from the perspective of a child: slower, safer, kinder. A place where sidewalks welcome small feet, where crossings are forgiving, where parks are plentiful, where public transport feels like an invitation rather than a threat. Such a city would not only nurture its youngest—it would protect its oldest, empower persons with disabilities, and embrace families and workers alike. If a child can use a city safely, then everyone can use it well. But somewhere along the way, we lost that warmth. We became accustomed to public spaces that require toughness instead of trust. We normalized designs that prioritize speed over safety, efficiency over empathy. We forgot that the true test of civilization is not how well it serves the strongest, but how gently it holds the most vulnerable. AI will change many things. It will alter jobs, restructure economies, and challenge our understanding of knowledge itself. But the skill that will matter most, the one that no machine can replicate, is care: the ability to connect, to empathise, to build for others and not just for ourselves. Teaching children care means modelling it ourselves—through the cities we shape, the policies we pass, and the communities we cultivate. It means designing playgrounds alongside train stations, and pedestrian paths before parking lots. It means noticing who is left behind and choosing, deliberately, to reach out and extend a hand. Children are not the future in some distant abstract sense—they are living in our present, navigating the structures we impose on them. If we care for them through thoughtful design, inclusive planning, and humane public spaces, we produce not only better cities but better citizens. Citizens capable of holding one another, and the systems that guide them, with compassion. In an age obsessed with intelligence—artificial or otherwise—care is the wisdom we cannot afford to lose. This opinion column is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share, adapt, and redistribute this content, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and original source.

Originally published in Manila Bulletin NIGHT OWL We often talk about the age of machines as if it were a competition. As if every advance in artificial intelligence were a direct challenge to human worth. The debate seems permanently framed around whether humans can still keep up—whether we can think faster, perform better, produce more. But I’ve come to believe that this framing misses the point entirely. The question is not whether humans can compete with machines. The real question is: What kind of life are we building for humans in a world shaped by machines? We are obsessed with numbers. Productivity scores, engagement rates, follower counts, exam marks, salaries, rankings—our lives have become a landscape of metrics, as if the only things worth valuing are those that can be easily measured. It is a strange irony that in an era when machines are allegedly becoming more “human,” many humans are becoming more machinelike—efficient, optimized, quantified. Yet the things that matter most do not fit neatly into spreadsheets or dashboards. There is no agreed-upon unit of happiness. No algorithm to quantify warmth. No global index for optimism, friendship, or care. And still, these are the qualities that make life worth living. These are the qualities that make us human. I worry sometimes that in our race to automate everything, we are automating away the imagination for what human flourishing could look like. We speak breathlessly about technological progress but far less about social progress. We measure the accuracy of a model, the speed of a processor, the scale of a dataset—but rarely do we measure the ease of a conversation, the comfort of companionship, or the quiet relief of feeling understood. If our technologies are evolving, then surely our conversations about society must evolve too. We have to ask: What kind of world are we passing on to the next generation? A world where success is a number on a screen? Where worth is determined by visibility? Where self-esteem is tethered to engagement metrics designed to keep people online rather than well? This is not a condemnation of technology. I work in artificial intelligence. I see firsthand its potential to expand human capacity, not shrink it. But precisely because I work with machines, I understand their limits. They can simulate conversation, but not the internal experience of connection. They can generate words, but not meaning. They can recommend content, but they cannot teach the courage it takes to live authentically, or the gentleness required to care for another person. If we are to talk seriously about mental health, then we must talk seriously about the environment in which our thoughts and emotions are shaped. We have built digital ecosystems where metrics masquerade as meaning. Where “likes” stand in for belonging. Where popularity often overshadows purpose. And yet we wonder why so many people feel inadequate, overwhelmed, unseen. The reaction shouldn’t be to retreat from technology, but to reclaim the narrative around what matters. We need to remind ourselves—and our children—that the metrics of social media are not the metrics of a life well lived. That being known is more important than being noticed. That being kind is more valuable than being ranked. That warmth, empathy, and optimism—though impossible to quantify—are the true foundations of a healthy society. In the age of machines, our task is not to compete with them but to elevate the parts of ourselves they cannot replicate. To design a world where human well-being is not an afterthought but the first principle. To cultivate a culture that values presence over performance, connection over comparison, meaning over metrics. Because the future we are building should not be one where humans act like machines. It should be one where humans can finally act more like humans. This opinion column is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share, adapt, and redistribute this content, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and original source.

Originally published in Manila Bulletin I keep a notebook in the pocket of my suit. Not the sleek digital kind that syncs to the cloud, not a tablet disguised as stationery, but a small, slightly battered paper notebook that feels like an anchor. It stays with me wherever I go. Sometimes it lies forgotten for hours, pressed flat against my chest; sometimes I pull it out three times in a ten-minute walk because a sentence, an idea, or a memory insists on being written down before it evaporates. I have come to see it as my private fight against time—against age, against the blur of days, against the quiet deterioration of memory we all pretend won’t reach us. It is my way of holding on to the thoughts that might otherwise slip through the cracks of routine and fatigue. A scribble today might be a lifeline tomorrow: a reminder of something I felt deeply but would have forgotten if left unrecorded. I walk everywhere now. That is something Oxford has changed in me. I walk to classes, to the pharmacy, to the parks. I walk through forests when I need solitude, and through busy streets when I want the noise to shake loose an idea. Walking has become both ritual and release: my break from the screen, my antidote to rush, my way of giving my mind time to resolve the knots it tightens through the day. There are moments during these walks when a problem I’ve been struggling with—something about my research, a line of thought about AI, a question I can’t articulate—suddenly becomes clear. Not solved, necessarily, but visible. As if stepping away from the computer allows my brain to unclench and approach complexity from a different angle. And that moment of clarity is always fragile, always fleeting. So I stop, pull out my pen, and write. It might be a fragment of a sentence. It might be a sketch of an idea. Sometimes it is simply a description of something I noticed: the way sunlight filters through a canopy, the quiet of a near-empty street, the sudden memory of a person I miss. Not all of it is profound. Not all of it ever becomes anything. But the notebook doesn’t ask for justification. It only asks that I pay attention. That is the real reason I keep it. Attention. In a world that demands speed, I want something that asks me to slow down. In a field where everything is optimized, automated, and digitized, I want the resistance of paper and ink. My work revolves around artificial intelligence—systems capable of extraordinary processing power, capable of remembering and retrieving information in ways that outstrip human capacity. And yet nothing feels as powerful to me as a pen meeting a blank page, creating meaning from silence. Maybe it is because writing by hand requires something from me that typing does not. It forces intention. It demands presence. And it keeps me tethered to the physical world, even as my research takes me deep into the virtual one. The notebook also reassures me that my thoughts matter, even the small ones. That ideas deserve space to breathe before they are polished or judged. That memory is not something we preserve automatically, but something we must actively cultivate. Sometimes I flip through old pages and find something I wrote months ago—a line, an observation, a fear—and I’m startled by how much it reveals about who I was then. Those pages become a map of my own becoming. One day, maybe, my handwriting will falter, or my memory will dim, or the speed of life will overwhelm my ability to hold everything in my head. But I hope that when that time comes, I will still have these notebooks: imperfect, ink-stained, and entirely mine. A small rebellion against forgetting. A reminder that even in an age of machines, the most powerful tool I carry is still a pen in my hand. This opinion column is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share, adapt, and redistribute this content, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and original source.

Originally published in Manila Bulletin NIGHT OWL This year will be my third year away from home. Three years since I last lived in the country whose heat, noise, and contradictions shaped me. Three years since I last woke up to the smell of breakfast drifting from our kitchen, or heard the familiar rise and fall of my family’s voices filling the house. Three years of airports, visas, new rooms, new countries, new selves. And despite how much has happened, or how much I tell myself I’ve grown used to distance, a part of me still feels the small tremor of leaving each time I pack my bags. Maybe that is why I return often—at least in memory—to a conversation with my dad. It was one of those ordinary afternoons that somehow rearranges your life in hindsight. We were playing chess at the dining table, the way we’ve done since I was young. Our games were never truly about winning; they were a kind of quiet language between us. At one point, after I made a clumsy move, he said something that seemed random at the time: “People change. I’ve changed over and over in my lifetime.” I remember looking at him, puzzled. “What do you mean—changed how? Like Charmander evolving to Charmeleon and then Charizard?” He paused for a moment, then burst into laughter. “Something like that,” he said. “But a little less dramatic.” It should have ended there, the kind of exchange families have where one person tries to be profound and the other, in being literal, accidentally turns the moment into a joke. But he leaned back, looked at the board, and added something that has stayed with me far longer than he probably intended. “The important thing,” he said, nudging his rook, “is touch move.” For those who don’t play chess: touch move means that once you touch a piece, you must move it. You can’t change your mind. You can’t pretend you were considering something else. You commit. He said it simply, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. But I felt the weight of it even then. At the time, I thought he meant it as advice for the game. Now I understand it was advice for life. Living abroad has a way of accelerating time. You shed versions of yourself constantly: the person who believed leaving home was temporary, the person who thought homesickness fades with routine, the person who underestimated how distance reshapes relationships. People change, my dad said. And the truth is, I have changed too—often in ways that reveal themselves only when I go home and realize I no longer fit perfectly into the spaces I left behind. But touch move. I chose this path. I touched this piece—the decision to study abroad, the decision to stay longer, the decision to grow in ways I couldn’t if I never left—and so I move it forward, even when it feels uncertain, even when I wonder what might have happened had I chosen differently. What I didn’t understand back then is that touch move is not about refusing to feel doubt. It is about refusing to be ruled by it. It is about honoring your own decisions enough to see them through, to give them the time they need to unfold, even if the board looks unfamiliar and the next move is unclear. Sometimes, when the loneliness catches me off guard, or when I feel the ache of missing birthdays and celebrations and ordinary days at home, I hear my dad’s voice across the years and distance. People change. And change is not a failure to stay rooted—it is the evolution required to keep moving. Charmander to Charmeleon to Charizard. A joke, but also a truth. We are always in the process of becoming something more. And once we touch the piece—our choices, our hopes, our futures—we move. We keep moving. This opinion column is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share, adapt, and redistribute this content, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and original source.