Tupig — An Ilocano Delicacy and Its Quiet Nostalgia

Last weekend, we found ourselves craving tupig. Not in the casual, “masarap siguro kumain nito ngayon,” kind of way, but in the deeper sense where food begins to feel like memory trying to return to the surface. It could have been anything rice-based, really—kakanin, suman, bibingka—but tupig carried a different gravity. Perhaps it was because December was approaching, and in Filipino households, especially in the provinces, the holidays have a way of awakening sensory memories long before they officially arrive.

And suddenly, without warning, we were back there.

Back in the province where aunties and uncles moved with a rhythm that only provincial preparations seem to have. There was no formal coordination, yet everyone knew their role. Someone prepared the banana leaves. Someone mixed the paridusdus. Someone sat patiently beside the old wooden pangkayod, carving coconut flesh by hand in re

petitive, almost meditative motions. The sound itself was unforgettable—the scraping of coconut against metal, steady and familiar, blending into the afternoon noise of family conversations and distant radio music.

What stands out most in memory is the tupig pit itself, that rectangular makeshift trench lined with uling and heated patiently beneath the earth. Looking back now, it almost resembled a primitive kind of ceremony. The uncooked tupig, carefully wrapped in banana leaves, would be placed there gently, one by one, while everyone waited. There was no rushing the process. Tupig demanded patience. It cooked slowly underground, absorbing smoke, heat, and time before finally becoming what it was meant to be.

As children, we never thought much about how labor-intensive it all was. We only knew the reward: tupig fresh from the pit, still steaming when peeled open. Mainit-init pa. Soft, chewy, slightly charred at the edges, carrying that unmistakable sweetness of coconut and caramelized rice flour that somehow tasted richer because it came wrapped in smoke and effort. The banana leaf itself added something impossible to replicate in modern kitchens—a kind of earthy fragrance that belonged entirely to the province.

Earlier this week, a close friend handed us several pieces of freshly wrapped tupig (image below) brought from the province (thanks a whole lot kind buddy-yo!). The sight alone was enough to shift the mood of the day. There is something about receiving provincial delicacies that feels more personal than ordinary food. It carries the atmosphere of where it came from—the long travel, the hands that prepared it, the familiarity of traditions that survive quietly despite modernization. We were genuinely excited, almost childlike in our anticipation, immediately imagining the texture, the chewiness, the faint smokiness waiting beneath the banana leaves.

We honestly do not know the precise origin story of tupig, only that in Ilocos Norte and Ilocos Sur, it has become more than a delicacy. It is part of the emotional architecture of December. During the holidays, homes exchange their own versions freely, almost instinctively. One household sends a batch to the next house. Someone else sends theirs back in return. Recipes differ slightly—some sweeter, some softer, some with more coconut—but the gesture remains the same. Tupig becomes less about food and more about participation in a shared season.

What has always fascinated us is how long tupig lasts. Unlike other delicacies that spoil quickly, tupig seems to age with grace. Days later, it becomes denser, chewier, almost more flavorful. There is an aftertaste to it that lingers unexpectedly, making you crave another piece long after you’ve finished eating. Perhaps that, too, is part of its nostalgia—the way it stays.

And maybe that is why tupig remains such a profound comfort food for many Ilocanos and for those who grew up around it. It does not merely remind us of childhood; it reminds us of a slower way of living. A time when afternoons felt longer, when smoke from the cooking pit did not bother anyone, when joy could come from simply waiting beside the fire, hoping to be handed the first freshly cooked piece.

Life in the province was not necessarily easier, but it felt lighter. There was less urgency, less noise inside the mind. Looking back now, it becomes difficult not to notice how adulthood changes the texture of freedom itself. As knowledge accumulates and responsibilities settle in, innocence slowly gives way to awareness. The world expands, but in some quiet way, the carefree feeling of childhood narrows.

And so perhaps food like tupig matters because it momentarily interrupts that narrowing. It reminds us that there was once a version of ourselves capable of finding complete happiness in smoke-filled afternoons, coconut-stained hands, and a warm delicacy unwrapped beside family. Not everything meaningful arrives grandly in life. Sometimes, it returns quietly, wrapped in banana leaves, carrying the taste of home.

— billymacdeus

Some People Are Like Diamonds, Some Are Bread

(thanks to KuyaDapper for the insight, and explaining this analogy which got us inspired to write -- that not all people can flourish like diamonds, most are the ordinary - expanding & rendering results without pressure, parang tinapay)

We often hear the phrase that diamonds are made through pressure, and it has endured because it reflects something people instinctively recognize: hardship, when faced properly, can refine a person. Difficulty has a way of stripping away excess, revealing what is essential, and shaping character in ways comfort rarely can. But life, as it often does, offers a parallel that feels quieter, more familiar, and perhaps more honest. Not everything meaningful is made through pressure.

Some things are made like bread.

Tinapay does not require extreme force to become what it is. It depends on patience, timing, care, and just enough heat to rise. It expands not to impress but to nourish. It does not harden into brilliance; it softens into usefulness. It is ordinary, everyday, almost taken for granted, and yet it sustains life more consistently than diamonds ever could. This contrast begins to shift how we think about growth, because it suggests that not all value is forged in intensity. Some value is cultivated in steadiness.

It is easy to divide people into those who become stronger under pressure and those who collapse under it, but that framing misses something essential. Not everyone is meant to become a diamond. Some are meant to become bread, and there is dignity in that becoming that is often overlooked.

In leadership, we tend to celebrate intensity. We admire the leader forged in crisis, the individual who sharpens with adversity and emerges more precise, more unyielding, more capable of carrying weight. Organizations need people like that, those who can endure uncertainty without losing direction. But not all leadership is built in extremes. There are leaders who do not dominate under pressure but instead create space within it. They do not harden; they soften environments that would otherwise break people. Their strength is not in how much pressure they can take, but in how well they can absorb and redistribute it so others can continue to function. Like bread, they sustain, not through intensity, but through presence.

The same contrast appears in the workforce. There are individuals who perform best when everything is at stake, who rise to the moment when expectations are high and conditions are demanding. Their resilience is visible, often remarkable, especially in situations where failure carries immediate consequences. But there are also those whose contribution is quieter and less visible. They do not wait for pressure to prove their worth. They show up consistently, complete the work without noise, and stabilize systems that would otherwise feel fragile. They may not shine under pressure, but they prevent pressure from becoming chaos in the first place. Their value is not defined by how they respond to extremes, but by how they maintain the ordinary with reliability.

In life, this distinction becomes even more significant. We tend to admire what is rare, what glitters, what endures extraordinary conditions, but most of life is not lived under extreme pressure. It unfolds in repetition, in routine, in the steady accumulation of small acts done well. It is lived in providing, in caring, in showing up even when nothing dramatic is happening. Bread belongs to that life. It is present in everyday meals, in shared tables, in moments that do not ask for recognition. It does not compete with diamonds; it fulfills a different purpose entirely. One represents rarity and resilience, while the other represents continuity and care.

To reduce bread to something hollow or merely inflated is to misunderstand it. Good bread is not empty. It is structured with intention, balanced carefully, and made to sustain. It rises because it is prepared properly, not because it is filled with air. In the same way, there are people whose growth does not come from pressure, but from consistency, from choosing to remain steady when others are reactive, from building quietly rather than expanding loudly, and from becoming dependable rather than impressive. They may not attract attention, but their presence holds systems together in ways that are not immediately visible.

Perhaps the better question, then, is not whether pressure will shape us into diamonds, but whether we understand the kind of becoming that is required of us. Some roles demand hardness, precision, and the ability to withstand extreme conditions, while others require warmth, flexibility, and the ability to nourish those around us without drawing attention. Both forms of becoming are necessary, and both contribute to the functioning of a larger whole.

A society cannot function on diamonds alone, just as it cannot survive without bread. In the end, the measure of a person may not be how brilliantly they endure pressure, but how meaningfully they contribute, whether in moments of intensity or in the quiet, sustaining rhythms of everyday life.

--billymacdeus

Labor Day 2026 - Filipinos Are Overworked, UnderServed, OverTaxed

#opinions

Labor Day, Without the Posters

Filipinos are resilient. That’s what we’re known for. But resilience, when you look at it closely, is often just a response to pressure. It’s not always a choice. It’s adaptation. It’s learning how to survive conditions that were never designed to be easy in the first place.

There’s a subtle shift that happens when resilience becomes normal. What used to be considered excessive becomes routine. What used to be questioned becomes accepted. Pagod becomes part of the job description. Sacrifice becomes something you stop noticing. And then you hear it—“Ganun talaga.” 

(we really can't stop laugh ironically as "ganun talaga" echoes in my head).

Labor Day arrives the same way it always does—quietly declared, briefly acknowledged, then quickly folded back into the rhythm of work. There are banners, statements, and the usual language of appreciation. Saludo sa manggagawang Pilipino. It sounds right. It feels right. But for many Filipinos, the day carries a different weight.

Overtaxed. Overworked. Underserved. (we saw this poster in our feed: LaborDay in red fonts, glaring)

after namin ng konting walk, pumasok at nagshift / LaborDayPun

Hindi na kailangan i-elaborate minsan. Ramdam na. Work, in the Filipino context, has never been purely individual. It extends. A salary rarely belongs to one person. It stretches across households, across expectations, across emergencies that no contract ever prepared you for. You don’t just work for yourself—you work for stability, for family, for that quiet assurance na may maibibigay ka kapag kailangan.

And so, naturally, the effort multiplies. The hours extend. The roles overlap. The energy stretches thinner than it should. Commutes take longer than they should. Days feel shorter than they should. And yet, the expectation remains the same: keep going. That phrase has a way of ending conversations before they even begin.

But Labor Day, if it means anything beyond symbolism, should interrupt that thinking. It should pause the automatic acceptance and ask something simpler, something more direct: Is the effort being matched fairly?

Because beneath all the narratives of hard work and perseverance lies a quieter imbalance. Workers continue to show up. They deliver, adjust, endure. The system continues to function largely because they make it function. But what comes back is often uneven—wages that don’t always scale with effort, benefits that feel conditional, security that remains uncertain.

Underserved doesn’t always look dramatic. 

It looks like compromise. It looks like staying longer than you planned.

Accepting less than you hoped.

Delaying things you once thought were within reach.

And still, people keep moving.

There is dignity in that. There always will be. But there is also a risk in romanticizing it. When endurance becomes the standard, the threshold quietly lowers. You begin to measure success not by how well you are supported, but by how much you can carry without breaking. That’s not sustainability. That’s tolerance.

Labor Day, then, becomes less about celebration and more about honesty. Not rejecting work, but examining its cost. Not denying resilience, but asking why it is so constantly required. Because at some point, we have to move beyond admiration. We have to ask whether the system is built to sustain the very people it depends on. Hindi naman kailangan ng grand statement. Minsan, clarity lang.

To say Filipinos are overtaxed, overworked, and underserved is not an attack. It’s an observation. A lived one. The kind that doesn’t need data to be felt. And maybe that’s where things begin—not in louder recognition, but in quieter awareness. Because honoring labor is not just about saying thank you. It’s about making sure the thank you means something.

Õthello

The Quiet Cost of Asking AI to "Just Make It" (Artificial Intelligence's Subtle Effects)

(This essay was inspired because the author is currently taking the course Machine Learning Foundations and had a small talk of a GenZ Insurance Advisor, in one of the coffee shops; where the use of AI from a perspective of nonchalantness was freely discussed in an open-ended exchange of ideas)

There’s a version of this conversation that feels very Gen Z, esp those in the higher echelons of education — those Gen Zs who're "woke" and constantly seeking "information"to better humanity and the environment.

You’re in a university "tambayan"— laptops open, someone running a group chat debate about sustainability. Someone says, “We need to be more mindful with AI. It consumes energy.” Heads nod. It sounds right. It feels responsible.

But then, five minutes later, someone’s prompting an AI to generate a video for a class presentation. Another is using it to summarize readings. Someone else is creating images for a campaign pitch. No one thinks twice — because the impact isn’t visible.

That’s the strange thing about AI—it feels weightless. Walang usok. Walang ingay. No factory. No physical mess. Just a clean interface and a blinking cursor asking what you want - at least from a user's vantage point. But behind that cursor is something very real.

Every time you ask AI to generate something—a video, a set of images, even long-form text—you’re tapping into a network of data centers. Massive, always-on infrastructures that process enormous amounts of data, cooled continuously, powered constantly. These centers don’t sleep. They don’t slow down. They respond, and every response costs energy.

It’s not dramatic in isolation. One prompt won’t change the climate. One AI-generated video won’t tip the scale. But that’s not how systems work. The cost is cumulative, quiet; distributed across millions of users who all think they’re just doing something small. Which, in a way, they are.

But small actions, when scaled, stop being small. There’s a kind of irony here. The same generation pushing hardest for sustainability—reducing plastic use, advocating for climate policies, questioning corporate practices—is also the most fluent in AI. The most dependent on it. The most likely to integrate it seamlessly into daily life. And maybe that’s where the tension sits. Not in rejection, but in regulation. Because no one is realistically suggesting we stop using AI. It’s too embedded already—in education, in work, in creativity. The question is not whether to use it, but how much, and for what.

Do we generate a full AI video for a two-minute classroom report that could have been done with existing footage? Do we prompt endlessly for slight variations of the same output? Do we treat AI as convenience or as necessity? These aren’t moral questions. They’re behavioral ones.

It’s easy to underestimate invisible systems. We tend to care more about what we can see. A plastic bottle thrown on the ground feels wrong because it’s immediate. It occupies space. It lingers. But an AI request leaves no trace in your room. Walang kalat  - just output; but the cost has simply moved elsewhere.

In data centers. In energy grids. In cooling systems working overtime so the illusion of effortlessness can remain intact. And maybe what Gen Z is beginning to sense—especially those in academic spaces where ideas circulate faster than conclusions—is that sustainability, is no longer just about physical waste. It’s about digital consumption; about restraint in environments where excess feels harmless. It’s not about guilt. It’s about awareness.

You don’t need to stop using AI. But you might start noticing how you use it, the extra prompts you didn’t need, the outputs you generated just to see if you could, the convenience you chose over effort—not once, but repeatedly, beecause the real impact isn’t in a single decision - it’s in the pattern. And patterns, once established, tend to scale.

So maybe the conversation isn’t about restricting AI. Maybe it’s about maturing with it - understanding that even the most frictionless tools still carry weight—just not in ways we’re used to seeing. And learning, slowly, to ask not just what can AI do for me? But what does it cost when I ask it to - "just make it"?

- billymacdeus

National Women's Month: Leaders Who Move the Needle - with Intention

As March 2026 comes to a close, allow me to share a reflection of leadership essay which ultimately carve in this digital footprint journey — the recognition of women leaders in my circle.

This National Women’s Month, I find myself reflecting on the kind of leadership that doesn’t always demand attention—but quietly transforms everything around it. And in our space, I’ve had the privilege to witness that through Joy and Abie. 

Working alongside them in IT Service Delivery, I’ve seen firsthand how they navigate complexity with calm, and pressure with purpose. As IT SPOCs and Service Delivery Leaders, they carry a responsibility that goes beyond systems and tickets—they carry trust. Client expectations, stakeholder alignment, operational continuity—all of it converges in their day-to-day, and yet they handle it with a level of composure that is both steady and inspiring.   

There are moments when the pace becomes relentless—projects stacking up, ad hoc requests coming in, incidents demanding immediate resolution—and still, they show up with clarity. Not rushed. Not shaken. Just focused, grounded, and ready.  

I’ve seen Joy lead with a quiet strength that anchors the team. There’s a thoughtfulness in how she approaches challenges, a steadiness that brings confidence even in uncertain situations. She doesn’t just resolve issues—she builds trust in the process.     

And then there’s Abie, whose leadership blends precision with heart. She moves with intention, sharp in execution yet deeply aware of the people behind every task, every request, every deliverable. She reminds me that technical excellence becomes even more powerful when paired with empathy.   

What stands out to me the most is how both of them consistently move the needle—whether it’s through IT projects, operational improvements, or the countless unseen efforts that keep everything running seamlessly. They don’t just meet expectations—they elevate them.  Being in this field, I know how demanding IT can be. And seeing women like Joy and Abie not only thrive but lead with impact—it’s something worth recognizing, celebrating, and learning from.   

This March, I celebrate them not just as colleagues, but as leaders who embody what it means to make a difference—with skill, with resilience, and with grace.  Because when I look at the work they do, I’m reminded that leadership isn’t always loud. Sometimes, it’s intentional, and deeply human. And that kind of leadership?  It moves everything forward.

---billymacdeus