Penoy and Balut: A Tender Argument at the Dinner Table

Have you eaten a Penoy or Balut?

There are foods you eat for nourishment, and then there are foods you eat for memory. Penoy and balut belong firmly to the second category. They are not merely eggs; they are conversations passed down quietly, choices that reveal temperament, comfort levels, and how much truth one is willing to encounter at the table.

At first glance, the difference seems simple. Penoy is gentler—an almost-formed promise. The egg is pale, yielding, mild. Balut, by contrast, is assertive. It arrives with history intact, unapologetic in its complexity, asking the eater not just to consume but to acknowledge. And yet, both are born of the same beginning.

Penoy is restraint. It is softness chosen. A kind of culinary mercy. It appeals to those who want the ritual without the confrontation, the warmth without the reckoning. To eat penoy is to lean into comfort, to savor the familiarity of broth and salt, to accept nourishment without complication.

Balut, on the other hand, is courage—though not the loud kind. It is intimate courage. The kind that unfolds quietly, spoon by spoon, in the late evening when the streets are still and the vendor’s lamp casts a gentle glow. Balut asks you to slow down, to look closely, to understand that flavor can carry history, and tenderness can coexist with difficulty.

To love balut is not to love shock value. It is to love honesty. The textures are layered, the taste deepened by context. It reminds you that life rarely arrives simplified, and that fullness—true fullness—often includes discomfort. What’s remarkable is how these preferences often mirror people’s inner lives.

Some of us gravitate toward penoy during seasons when we need reassurance. When the world feels sharp enough already. When we want gentleness without explanation. Others reach for balut not to prove anything, but because it feels grounding—because it connects them to childhood sidewalks, shared laughter, and the quiet pride of having learned to appreciate what once felt intimidating. Neither choice is superior. Both are valid expressions of care.

Penoy teaches us that softness is not weakness. That there is dignity in choosing ease. Balut teaches us that depth requires presence. That richness often reveals itself slowly, after we decide to stay. Together, they form a kind of balance—two answers to the same hunger. One whispers, You are safe. The other says, You are capable.

And perhaps that is why, at the end of the day, the debate between penoy and balut endures. Not because we need to choose sides, but because we recognize ourselves somewhere in between—sometimes seeking comfort, sometimes seeking truth, always seeking connection. In the warmth of an egg cradled in the palm, seasoned with salt and silence, we find more than food.

We find affection. We find memory. We find the quiet pleasure of being understood—no matter which one we choose.

-Othello

On Temper, Snapping Out, Passion, and Calmness

 

There is a particular kind of advice that circulates in leadership circles: Stay calm. Stay composed. Never let them see you emotional. It sounds reasonable, almost sophisticated, the way good manners often do. But beneath that guidance lies a subtle misunderstanding—that calmness, by itself, is evidence of strength.

Michael Bloomberg once remarked that he never liked anyone who didn’t have a temper. The statement feels abrasive at first, a little too blunt for modern leadership sensibilities. But if you sit with it long enough, you begin to understand what he might have meant. Hindi naman ibig sabihin na kailangan laging galit. The point is simpler: when something matters deeply, it rarely leaves you emotionally untouched.

The people who appear calm about everything often aren’t masters of discipline; sometimes they’re simply less invested. Nothing is at stake for them. Walang skin in the game. And when nothing is at stake, indifference begins to masquerade as composure.

Building anything meaningful—whether a company, a team, or even a personal craft—demands a certain intensity. Not theatrical anger, but a kind of internal urgency. A refusal to treat standards casually. A willingness to say, “Hindi puwede ‘yan,” when something falls short. That kind of caring doesn’t always look polite. It sometimes shows up as impatience, as frustration, as the unmistakable energy of someone who refuses to let mediocrity pass quietly.

Leadership literature often romanticizes calmness as though it were the highest virtue, yet history suggests something more nuanced. The leaders who move institutions, reshape industries, or build enduring organizations are rarely apathetic personalities. They are people who care—sometimes inconveniently, sometimes intensely, sometimes in ways that make those around them uncomfortable. Their emotions are not explosions; they are signals that something important is happening.

Of course, there is a difference between temper and tantrum. The former comes from conviction; the latter from insecurity. The leader who loses control carelessly damages trust, but the leader who never feels strongly about anything risks inspiring nothing at all. A team can sense the difference. People are surprisingly perceptive about whether a leader’s intensity comes from ego or from commitment to the work itself.

Most of us, if we are honest, have experienced moments when our patience slipped—over missed deadlines, over careless decisions, over situations where people seemed not to take the mission seriously. Hindi natin ipinagmamalaki ang bawat pagkakataon na nawalan tayo ng composure, but neither should we confuse emotional investment with weakness. Sometimes frustration is simply the emotional cost of caring.

The opposite of intensity is not calmness; it is apathy. And apathy rarely builds anything that lasts. Empires—corporate, creative, or cultural—are not constructed by people who shrug their shoulders at outcomes. They are built by individuals who remain invested even when recognition disappears, who continue making difficult decisions long after motivation has faded, who carry a quiet but persistent fire that refuses to switch off.

Passion, in real life, is less glamorous than it sounds. It means years of unseen effort, thousands of small judgments made under pressure, and the stamina to keep going when applause is absent. That kind of persistence requires energy, and energy often has a temperature. Minsan mainit, minsan tahimik, but always present.

So perhaps the more useful leadership question is not whether someone has a temper, but whether that temper is anchored in purpose. A person who occasionally burns with conviction may be difficult at times, but at least you know where they stand. You know what they care about. You know that something, somewhere, truly matters to them.

And in the long, patient work of building anything real, that kind of caring—imperfect, intense, undeniably human—may be far more valuable than perfect calm.

--Othello

Follow and Like our FB page

On the Shoes (La Sportiva) That Carried Alex Honnold Up Taipei 101

image from Alex's website

There is a tendency, when talking about extraordinary feats, to focus on the spectacle—the height, the danger, the person brave enough to attempt it. When Alex Honnold climbed Taipei 101, much of the conversation followed this familiar pattern. A skyscraper instead of a cliff. Urban geometry instead of granite. Gravity unchanged.

But what fascinated me most was not the building, nor even the climber. It was the shoes.

Specifically, the pair of climbing shoes that made contact with glass, metal seams, and architectural edges never meant to be touched by human hands—much less trusted with a human life.

Honnold wore climbing shoes designed not for spectacle, but for precision. Shoes built for friction. Sensitivity. Honesty. Models like the TC Pro—developed by La Sportiva—are not flashy. They are stiff enough to stand on nothing, yet sensitive enough to feel everything. They do not promise comfort. They promise truth.

During his recent free solo of the Taipei 101 skyscraper, Alex Honnold wore custom-made La Sportiva climbing shoes. The shoes were specifically designed for the ascent on glass and steel surfaces and featured a softer rubber than standard climbing shoes to provide better grip on the slippery building materials. 

Base Model: The custom shoes were based on either the TC Pro or possibly the Skwama model, but with significant modifications.

Customization: The primary modification was the use of a softer, yellow rubber compound, better suited for urban surfaces than typical rock climbing.

Appearance: They were all yellow in color, which also served as a psychological confidence booster during the climb. 

And that matters, because climbing shoes are not footwear in the conventional sense. They are instruments. They translate intent into contact. Every millimeter of rubber becomes a conversation between body and surface. On a mountain, that surface is rock. On Taipei 101, it was something far stranger—industrial, polished, indifferent.

What made this ascent remarkable was not just the location, but the mismatch. Skyscrapers are designed to repel touch. They are smooth, vertical assertions of control. Climbing them exposes their unintended vulnerabilities—edges where panels meet, seams where materials overlap. These are not flaws. They are consequences.

Honnold’s shoes had to find meaning in those consequences.

image from NPR

Unlike hiking boots, climbing shoes are intentionally uncomfortable. They compress the foot, curl the toes, and strip away padding. This is not cruelty; it is clarity. Pain sharpens awareness. It eliminates distraction. The shoe becomes less a barrier and more an extension of the nervous system.

In an ascent like Taipei 101, that sensitivity becomes crucial. The rubber must grip surfaces that were never tested for friction. The climber must trust that what feels secure is secure. There is no margin for optimism. Only feedback.

What’s striking is how little technology intervenes. No motors. No smart sensors. No automation. Just a human foot, a thin layer of rubber, and gravity doing what it has always done. In an age obsessed with innovation, the climb was almost stubbornly analog.

This is where Honnold’s philosophy reveals itself. He does not romanticize danger. He reduces it. Every piece of gear, including the shoes, exists to remove uncertainty—not to create drama. The goal is not thrill, but control. And that control is quiet.

The shoes don’t look heroic. They don’t announce the feat. If anything, they disappear into the act itself. But without them—without the years of design refinement, rubber chemistry, and structural discipline—the climb would not exist. There is something instructive about that.

We often attribute success to boldness, to courage, to personality. But beneath every extraordinary act is a foundation of mundane precision. Equipment chosen carefully. Systems tested repeatedly. Small decisions made correctly, over and over again.

image from NPR

The shoes remind us that greatness rarely stands on spectacle alone. It stands on preparation. On respect for physics. On an understanding that even the most daring acts are built from details.

In the end, Alex Honnold did not conquer Taipei 101. He negotiated with it. And the shoes—quiet, unforgiving, precise—were his most honest negotiators. They didn’t carry him upward.

They simply refused to let him lie to himself about where he stood.

--Othello | follow us on QuarantinedTipsters FB 

Pagsamba sa Loob ng INC

~  INC Pagsamba Convo with my sakop Jan24-2026 (Saturday) ~

Me: Kuys! How’s pagsamba kaninang 6am?

Kuys: super blessed po.

Me: How…?

Kuys: felt super grateful!

—

Insight:

Not the dramatic kind—the kind that announces itself with declarations or resolutions—but the quieter, less visible kind: waking up early, dressing in pressed clothes, walking into the same place, week after week, to do something that offers no immediate reward except presence, faithfulness, fulfilling what is expected of us, as servants of Him. 

Inside the Iglesia ni Cristo, this act has a name: Pagsamba. Worship.. Devotion - isang tungkulin. 

That was it - Just gratitude. Which is precisely the point.

The discipline of regular worship does not always produce revelation. Sometimes it produces something far more subtle: emotional recalibration. A re-centering of perspective. A reminder that the week is not solely defined by deadlines, pressures, or private anxieties.

In a culture obsessed with results, worship asks for presence instead of outcome - we call it, "ihandog ang sarili, bilang isang haing buhay at banal".

Most people arrive tired. Some arrive distracted. Others arrive carrying burdens they do not articulate. The act of showing up—physically, mentally, emotionally—becomes the real offering. Not eloquence. Not understanding. Just willingness... to feel the Holy Spirit.

Over time, something shifts.

The space becomes familiar. The rhythm becomes internal. The teachings begin to land not as information, but as orientation. The words no longer feel external; they start to feel like reference points for how to live, how to respond, how to endure.

Consistency builds meaning the way repetition builds muscle. Slowly. Invisibly. Reliably.

It is easy to underestimate this in modern life, where spirituality is often treated as emotional on-demand—something accessed when needed, ignored when inconvenient. The INC structure resists that impulse. It insists on return. On showing up whether the mood is present or not.

This is where gratitude emerges.

Not the loud kind. Not the celebratory kind. But the quiet kind—the kind that settles into the body..., and soul, that is indescribable, something profound and fulfilling. The kind that arrives after sitting still long enough to remember what matters. The kind that does not come from excitement, but from alignment of higher purpose, and the divine.

The question “How?” was logical. The answer “felt grateful” was not analytical. It was experiential.

And that’s what consistent worship really does. It doesn’t necessarily solve problems. It reframes them. It doesn’t remove hardship. It places it in context. It doesn’t change life’s conditions. It changes the internal weather.

In a world that trains people to chase intensity, worship trains something else: steadiness.

To keep coming back.

To keep listening.

To keep aligning your inner life with something larger than your immediate concerns.

Gratitude, then, becomes less a reaction and more a habit. A state cultivated through repetition. A quiet byproduct of presence and yearning for more... of the presence of the Almighty.

Not because every service feels extraordinary. But because consistency slowly teaches the soul how to notice what has always been there.

Sometimes, the most profound spiritual experiences do not arrive as revelations. They arrive as simple sentences, spoken without drama: “Felt super grateful.”

® billymacdeus.com | follow us on FB The Quarantined Tipsters

Signaling Early and The Dangers of Last Second Signal When Driving

 

We’re not traffic experts. We don’t have charts, citations, or sweeping proposals to fix the way people drive. We’re simply ordinary motorists—sometimes behind the wheel of a car, sometimes balancing on two wheels—trying to move through the day and make it home without incident. That modest goal alone has taught us something surprisingly important: signaling early matters far more than we admit.

Over time, we’ve come to believe that using a turn signal at least fifteen seconds before making a turn might be one of the most basic, and most neglected, forms of courtesy left on the road. Fifteen seconds sounds insignificant when measured against a full commute, but in traffic, it’s a meaningful window. It allows space for understanding. It creates order where there might otherwise be confusion.

When we signal early, driving begins to feel like a conversation instead of a confrontation. We’re quietly telling the people around us that a change is coming, that the flow of the road is about to shift. That simple notice gives others time to respond without panic. Cars behind us slow naturally. Motorcycles adjust their line. Everyone moves with a little less tension, a little more trust.

The contrast becomes obvious when we think about the last-second blinker—the signal that flashes only as the steering wheel is already turning. We’ve all been there, braking suddenly, swerving slightly, wondering why we weren’t given a moment’s notice. In those cases, the signal doesn’t prevent confusion; it merely explains it after the fact. It’s not communication so much as damage control.

On crowded roads, where lanes are tight and patience is thin, early signaling becomes a form of self-preservation. This is especially true for motorcycles, which exist on the edges of visibility. Riders depend on predictability more than anything else. A few seconds of advance notice can turn a risky situation into a manageable one. Without it, everything becomes reactive, and reaction is rarely graceful at speed.

Signaling early also carries an unspoken message about respect. It acknowledges that the road isn’t ours alone. It recognizes that our decisions ripple outward, affecting strangers who are simply trying to get where they’re going. In a small but meaningful way, it says that our convenience does not outweigh everyone else’s safety.

Some drivers hesitate to signal because they fear being cut off, believing that secrecy gives them leverage. But in practice, the opposite tends to be true. Most traffic conflicts don’t arise from competition; they arise from uncertainty. When intentions are unclear, frustration fills the gap. When intentions are obvious, the road becomes easier to navigate.

Driving, at its core, is a continuous negotiation among people who will never meet. Brake lights set the tone. Turn signals establish clarity. When that system works, traffic feels almost cooperative. When it doesn’t, every movement feels like a gamble.

There are days when we’re exhausted, distracted, eager to be done with the drive. On those days especially, signaling early becomes even more important. It reduces sudden braking. It lowers stress. It spares us the mental jolt of near-misses that linger long after the engine is turned off.

This isn’t about being a perfect driver, or about moving slowly for the sake of caution. It’s about being predictable. On the road, unpredictability is far more dangerous than decisiveness. People can adapt to almost anything—except surprise.

So the next time we’re about to turn into a side street, enter a U-turn slot, or ease toward a curb, we can make a small choice. We can signal before we act, rather than as we act. We can give others time to understand what we’re about to do.

It takes only fifteen seconds. But those seconds can smooth traffic, reduce risk, and make the shared experience of driving just a little more humane. And in a world where so many interactions feel rushed and careless, that small moment of clarity can make all the difference.

 ® billymacdeus | Facebook Page | Youtube