Underrated and Animated

Something about me is that I would absolutely opt to live in an animated world. Exaggerated features, tropes that defy physics, impact being visualized in the form of orange stars and dust clouds? Sign me up.

It’s no surprise that pretty much any film that’s ever made me cry has been animated, and these days, a whole bunch of animated features are doing numbers, from Across the Spiderverse and Elemental running a strong theatre game to Nimona doing its thing on streaming.

At my house, my twins are on roughly their 200th viewing of the Aristocats and I’m continuing my very slow quest to catch up on all the Hayao Miyazaki goodies I’ve missed.

Animated films go under the radar quite often, largely because a big portion of the general public will dismiss them as kids’ stuff. And it’s their loss. Some of the most well told stories have been told via animation.

I decided to throw together a rough list of the most underrated animated features in recent years. Note that this isn’t exactly a list of bests or favorites. Some of my personal favorites like Coco, Big Hero 6, or the movie that made my YouTube channel- Raya and the Last Dragon- will be absent. This is a list for the underrated. The ones I simply think didn’t get their just attention. Hopefully you’ll come across a few you haven’t seen yet and make them slightly less underrated.

The Mitchells vs. The Machines

Okay, this one was directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, two of the biggest names behind animated features. It was also up for Best Animated at the Oscars when it came out, so can I really call it underrated? Well, I still don’t encounter enough people who’ve seen it. And the discourse has long faded since 2021. It sticks the landing hard. The plot of a family facing a robot takeover isn’t terribly innovative, but this film manages to stick out from the sea of generic animated adventures with strong visual gags and sincere relationships between characters.

Maya and the Three

I will never think this series gets enough love. Jorge Guitierrez dives deep into Mayan mythology and creates a truly large scale, maximalist quest. This is one where even the minor characters are a big delight. I loved this so much I did an entire YouTube breakdown of its cultural influences… even though that’s not really what I typically do on my channel. Maya is one of the main characters I’ve found most relatable in any series, and we are lucky we got nine whole chapters for this series to unfold. 

I Lost My Body

This film is so tragic and funny at moments, it nails a really uncommon and hard-to-pull-off tone. A severed hand makes its way around Paris and through its journey we uncover the life story of the rest of its person… a young man whose family moved from Morocco at an early age and faced some major traumas. I discovered this during my International Film romp of 2020 and this is one of the discoveries that I remember best.

The Book of Life

A second, older entry from Jorge Guitierrez, who is turning into one of my favorite modern animators. The Book of Life has the unfortunate distinction of being “the other animated Dia de los Muertos” movie, which really does a disservice to how beautiful it was. Yes, there are some similarities to Coco (though this precedes it by two years) and I love both films. I’m glad they both exist.

Kubo and the Two Strings

Another film where I'm not sure if it’s as completely underrated as the rest of this list, but it also never got the praise and attention it deserved. Kubo was such a visual delight to see in theatres back when it launched in 2016. The strong stylistic choices were a strong vehicle for a simple but well done plot. Also, Regina Spektor’s While My Guitar Gently Weeps cover is a bop.

Honorable Mention: Over the Moon

If you want a film that captures a lot of the high points of Kubo and the Two Strings plus The Book of Life, I’m also a big fan of Over the Moon. The middle slows down just a tad too much for me to consider it on par with the rest of this list, but not by too far of a gap.

Loving Vincent

Vincent Van Gogh knows something about being underrated and underappreciated… and it looks like his movie went that direction as well. He is truly a standout sensitive soul, and the film does a good job of drawing people in to the enigmatic but winsome artist. The whole film is animated in a visual style resembling Van Gogh’s paintings, and that in itself is a strong feat

Oscar Romero

If you’ve heard my @creativemornings_sd talk, you’ll know why this Oscar Romero quote is one of my favorites ever: “There are some things that can only be seen through eyes that have cried.”

I’ve been reading more about the life of the Salvadorian saint lately, and one of the things that stands out to me is how relatively late he came to the beliefs that he is now largely known for living out.

He’s now known for his social solidarity with the poor, which ultimately drew the ire of the CIA and other positions of power. But when he was appointed archbishop, he was uninterested in liberation theology, and probably held more in common with the socially conservative side of El Salvador from where his eventual assassin would emerge.

It was proximity to suffering and poverty that had a big impact on his shift.

I think we’re in a spot where we find our beliefs and ideals and then filter the world through them. Real proximity to people sparks change and there’s no substitute for that. When you have that, it’s no longer about taking the stance that sends the right signal to the crowd. It becomes about the people whose stories you’ll never forget.

A big lesson from my kids about creating change

You've got no control. You have a lot of influence.

Welcome to the start of a new series for me… all about storytelling for impact. Using creativity to make change. I’m using everything I’ve learned from the worlds of activism, art, communication science, and ecology to help anyone who wishes to make a positive change in the world.

Maybe you work at a nonprofit. Maybe you regularly raise funds or volunteer for a certain cause. Maybe you just have something you care deeply about and want to use whatever bit of influence you have to drive change… that’s awesome.

Sometimes I’ll probably share some really practical tools and exercises I’ve learned, other times I’ll be in the more philosophical realm. Share some paradigms that helped make the work I was doing make a lot more sense. Today, I think I’m playing ball over on that court. I want to share a huge lesson I’ve learned that’s helped me stay motivated to keep advocating for the things I care about. 

There’s this quote by Niels Bohr that’s like, the opposite of a deep and profound truth is often another deep and profound truth?

Well, one of the best examples of that comes from  my role as a dad. I have three kids- a three year old and two one year old twins. That’s right. They’re all super young. I like to describe my life as part miracle and part Animaniacs episode. But dad life is in full effect for me.

And being a dad has helped me realize something super important. The subtle but important difference between influence and control.

You have no control. You have profound influence. And you shouldn’t let your lack of control stop you from being the best steward you can be of that influence.

As a parent, I think it’s healthy to realize how little control you have over the choices your kids make. Like, they’re their own people, and that becomes true really early on. Like, I have twins. They grow up in the same environment, the same routines, it’s like the ultimate control study. And yet the choices they make are truly their own.

I’m not saying you can’t set boundaries and expectations and all that stuff. That’s important, especially in the early years. But soon enough, you realize, you don’t have control. What you do have… is influence.

Even though you can’t control the choices your kids make, you can have a hand in shaping the way they approach certain decisions. You can help shape their sense for what’s right and wrong, what’s important, and this is significant. So many older adults whose parents have long passed away still make decisions with their moms or dads voices in their head.

This isn’t just parenting advice, though. This distinction shapes how I approach advocacy, social change, and diving into complex and controversial issues.

You don’t have control. But you have influence. And you shouldn’t let your lack of control get in the way of you making the absolute best use of your influence.

I can’t control the U.S. political landscape. I can’t control public perception around major issues. I can’t control how a random person in the audience will react to something I write or speak about; they have all kinds of experiences and inner dynamics that shape whether or not it lands.

But, by speaking, by sharing anyways, by initiating a conversation I believe to be important, I’m making sure that my opportunity to have some influence isn’t going to waste. I believe that just like we’re supposed to be stewards of our natural environment as though it’s a gift from the Creator, and like we’re supposed to be stewards of our financial resources as some of the most privileged people in human history… we’ve also got to be good stewards of our influence.

I think sometimes, we think in order to have an effective conversation about climate change or about race, we need to do a bunch of homework and study so we can effectively persuade someone who sees things differently. It’s great to do research and learn. That is absolutely helpful and worth the time. But when we make persuasion our target, I think that often happens because we’ve fallen for the illusion of control. 

Maybe influence means making it normal to talk about something that would be easier to avoid. Maybe it means sharing a personal story that leads someone to think, hey I’ve experienced something similar, and now I know I’m not alone. Maybe it leads that person to share their experiences more widely, and you start to see a few more people speak out about a similar struggle. This is where acceptance for marginalized identities often begins.

I believe that a lot of the positive shifts we’ve seen in LGBT acceptance, in disability rights, in climate advocacy have come from people who’ve approached it from this posture.

A Taste of Old Dhaka

I was pretty much a stranger to Bengali cuisine.

Even though there are a number of Bengali restauranteurs in the U.S., from East Bengal and Bangladesh, their restaurants are often listed and labeled as Indian cuisine.

But, I had the chance to rectify that by taking a food tour of Old Dhaka with @rocky.hasan.official of @cholobangladeshtours

Here are some things I’m happy to now know:

🇧🇩 I love Tehari. Dare I say I prefer Bangladesh’s take on biryani over India and Pakistan’s?? I’ll give those countries a fair shot to convince me otherwise, but I noticed the Bengali version tends to use a lot less heat. I dig spicy food, but toning it down lets those deeper flavors of mutton or goat stand out a bit more.

🇧🇩 Who knew a tea made up of chili peppers and tamarind could be so delicious? Feels on par with my grandma’s ginger salabat as a great cold remedy.

🇧🇩 Eating a betel leaf wrapped around candy, sprinkles, and syrup then lit on fire is just plain fun. It’s apparently illegal in a bunch of places. I should research why, but my first reaction was: this much fun is definitely illegal.

Lessons from a Food Tour of Bangladesh

Don’t sleep on Bengali food!

One of my starting points for getting to know a place is by finding a legitimate looking food tour. In a lot of places, especially large cities that aren’t primarily known for tourism, you can find the kind of food tour that was started by a local with a simple passion for the stories told by local cuisine.

This is what I came across in Bangladesh.

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I connected with Rocky Hasan from Cholo Bangladesh online, and a few simple messages were all that it took to get started with a food tour of Old Dhaka. I loved the depth of Rocky’s knowledge around the cuisine. Dhaka- and Old Dhaka in particular- is a pretty fast paced and chaotic place. It made having Rocky such a bonus.

I definitely good a solid amount of food that day. Really good food. On top of that, though, I gained an appreciation for Bengali cuisine that I didn’t have before. In the U.S., Bengali food is often overlooked or swept under the blanket of Indian cuisine. But it’s absolutely worthy of its own attention.

Here are a few things I learned about Bengali/Bangladeshi food from my food tour of Old Dhaka:

1) Don’t say no to tehari

I love biryani. You know? Crowd pleaser. 

Now let’s talk about tehari. That’s biryani done the Bengali way… and I think that’s the way I like it most!

Most biryanis have an aggressive up front kick. I like a good spicy dish, but sometimes it can drown out other flavors, and flavors like the deep, savory mutton and spice in tehari? That’s stuff you don’t want to upstage too much.

2) Never doubt Bangladesh’s ability to make a stellar cup of tea

Bangladesh is the site where much of the world’s tea is grown. For centuries the tea plantations of South Asia were exploited to meet the demand for tea in Britain and pretty much anywhere they had trade and influence… in other words, pretty much the entire world.

But the taste for tea is pretty strong within Bangladesh, as well. And while I was there I got to try a couple cups of teas I never knew existed.

Jaggery is compressed conical sugar, which is used to sweeten things, but in some teas serves as its own main ingredient. Needless to say, the result is a sweet, milky tea. Somewhere in between a Hong Kong milk tea and a Mexican cafe de olla.

I also had the chance to try a chili tea, infused with chili peppers and flavored with tamarind. Upon ordering it, Rocky immediately started skimming out a bunch of the peppers, so I imagine the version he let me try was tamed down a bit for a non-local palette. But I guess that was an effective move. It was tasty, spicy, and sour. Seemed like a great thing to drink before a singing performance or while drying to fight off a cold.

3) Bengali food isn’t so easy to come by in the U.S.

Even though Bangladesh and the West Bengal state in India have massive populations, and the U.S. is home to many South Asian immigrants, there aren’t many stateside Bengalis. There are approximately around 250,000 Bengalis in the U.S. and the vast majority of them live in New York.

This is unfortunate news if you’ve gotten attached to Bengali food. Your best bet at coming across some restaurants will probably be around Queens. In other big cities, it’ll be much harder.

Another complicating factor is that many Bengalis are aware that eaters in the U.S. aren’t that aware of their cuisine, and might put signs advertising Indian food on their storefronts. Understandable move, knowing that this affects their livelihoods, but all the more reason why getting to know the restaurant owners is always a smart move.

4) Working class neighborhoods make wonderful meals

I think whenever you hear the phrase historic working class neighborhood, there’s a pretty good chance that it’ll be a good spot to eat. This has been true from Philly’s fish market to the ramen alleys of Tokyo to Old Dhaka.

The rationale makes sense. People come to these urban hubs typically to look for work. They bring ambition, work up an appetite, and import the tastes and dishes that remind them of home villages and farms. This is why a “village donut” was one of the most memorable things I got to try in Old Dhaka.

You see these tastes and traditions then adapted for a much faster paced lifestyle. One where people finish a long day of work with a massive appetite. Food stalls, vendors, delis, and carts rise up in an effort to meet that demand. This is where so much of the magic happens.

If you ever get a chance to do a deeper dive into Bengali cuisine, I absolutely recommend it.

TED Thoughts

Reflecting on a few thoughts following my first TED Talk

It’s been about a week since I got to take to the stage in La Jolla to speak at TEDx San Diego, and the day still feels as surreal as it did when it happened.

I honestly love public speaking. In school, I discovered that this put me in the minority. Where most people experienced stage fright, I got a rush from being in front of people. Whenever there were group projects that involved presenting in front of the class, I was always surprised when people were averse to being the presenter. Are you kidding me? I thought. Everybody else has to do the work, the presenter just talks about it.

All that to say, speaking is one of the things I most enjoy, and getting to speak at a TED event was a real milestone, as the most well-recognized public speaking platform. (Unless you’re in my mom’s social circle, that got really excited about how I was about to deliver a Tik-Talk!)

TEDx San Diego was an extremely well-orchestrated event. I’ve got to credit our curator and lead, Audrey Jacobs and her team for pulling it all off. Hair and makeup. A backstage masseuse. I can’t say I’ve ever gotten speaker support quite like that. I was the second to last speaker in a lineup of fourteen, plus five performers. I decided to simply take it all in, letting the day sink in slowly.

Here are some of the thoughts that kept coming to mind throughout the day.

This isn’t just an accomplishment, it’s an experience

A few of my fellow speakers told me they didn’t envy my position of going second-to-last.

Personally, I was flattered by the slot. If this was Coachella, I would be SZA! And she’s having a damn good year.

But I think the reason I heard that a lot was because a lot of folks liked being able to get it over with and then enjoy the show.

For me, a lot of the enjoyment was in the anticipation. The build up.

Over the past year or so, I’ve tried to pay more attention to the difference between things I’m glad I accomplished versus things I’m glad I’m experiencing. The former are things you look forward to having on your resume, having medals to show for, or being able to say “I did that.” Running is like that for me, at least a lot of the time.

Then there are those things you can keep doing because you love the act. You would be okay with it being an unending task. I suppose video games have this effect on a lot of people. For me, stage work is one of those things. So, the day of, I just tried to ride it out as slowly as I could. And to take plenty of mental images. I have one seared into my memory of being on stage, staring out to the crowd and thinking this is really happening. 22 year old me would be jazzed. And I’ve got a bunch of people I love watching on the livestream.

This ain’t just my stage

My talk was on storytelling as a climate solution, and the importance of approaching climate change with the lived experiences of climate vulnerable populations in mind. I told a lot of stories from my time in Burundi last year, sharing experiences from people I will never forget. Antwan. Enos.

As I shared their stories, I kept thinking, these are their stories. This is really their stage. Same with people in places like Haiti and Bangladesh that I referenced in my talk, or even people in places that I didn’t mention but had an influence on the way I receive these stories.

Storytellers are simply stewards of the stories. More often than not, we’re just little receptors and satellites of stories being transmitted by frequencies way bigger than ourselves. (Rick Rubin talks about this a handful of different ways in his book, which I’ve started reading if you couldn’t tell!)

Anyways, I kept thinking about how I was really on stage just as a relay person for people living in remote villages. In a more ideal world, they would get invites to tell their story directly. But like I noted in my talk, until then, storytelling can be our bridge.

Picking your message is a big deal

There is a lot of talk about the tricky parts of “telling somebody else’s story,” and not being the voice of the marginalized, but simply amplifying their voices. I spend a lot of time in my work talking about the importance of ethical storytelling and I wish I had more time to include a bit of that in my talk. If I had 15-20 minutes on stage, I probably would have. But that might just have to be a sequel someday.

I think I have a few strengths as a speaker, but I am aware that one of them is not brevity. In an era where whittling down communications to be efficient and essential, I still find value in the details or things that aren’t quite essential but add a whole lot to a story.

For my TED Talk, I was given eight minutes to work with.

It was really different than my CreativeMornings talk which went for thirty minutes, and gave me a chance to integrate my personal journey with a few key points that people might find helpful. TED is really all about the key idea.

I wrote this talk a little differently, knowing that a few key lines that express the idea with total clarity tend to get the most traction. I actually wrote this talk as a vehicle for the key idea and some highlight quotes, and I think it served me well. Not a bad approach when the space you have to work with demands efficiency.

TED doesn’t often do repeat speakers, and for the few exceptions this typically only happens after a good amount of time has gone by. With that being the case, it was important for me to pick a topic that I was comfortable with being one of the top search results when my name is searched on Google. I’m happy I went with storytelling. This also made me happy to have gotten this opportunity now, versus five years ago when I was younger but thought I was ready. That extra time gave me more confidence and clarity around the message.

I’m really, really thankful I got this opportunity. I’m thankful to Audrey and the TEDx San Diego team, I’m thankful to my fellow speakers for being a great community, and I’m grateful to the people of Burundi and beyond for entrusting me with their stories and experiences.

It usually takes several weeks for the overall TED brand to bless these talks, but best believe I’ll share the video once I’ve got it.

Bangladesh Brickmen

Last month, Cyclone Mocha made landfall on Myanmar and Bangladesh, claiming lives and threatening to displace hundreds of thousands of people.

It made me think of men and women I met on the Bangladeshi coast, not far from that area, last winter.

They told me about cyclone seasons. Bangladesh really is one of the most climate vulnerable countries on earth and it intensifies the impact of these cyclones.

I’ve heard so much about the climate vulnerability of Bangladesh. But you know what I hadn’t heard about as much? All the people- local people- who were doing something about it. Mothers, farmers, bricklayers, technicians. Yet another reminder to never see people as totally helpless.

Look for the helpers… but don’t forget to start looking among the locals.

Tao Po: The Untranslatable

I’m a fan of language learning. I especially love the fact that languages often don’t translate between each other directly. Whenever you see side by side translations, the words you see in the second language are simply the closest approximation to how to best express the idea of the first. Many words, phrases, or idioms have no direct translation. Whenever that’s the case, it typically reveals something special about the culture.

One of the things I’m proudest of, when it comes to my Filipino heritage, is the way visitors to the Philippines absolutely gush over the warmth and hospitality of my kinfolk. There’s something really special about being extravagantly welcomed somewhere. I’ve experienced being welcomed by entire villages waving palms and shouting. I’ve also experienced having somebody throw away a whole day’s plans just to spend the day with me, a foreigner.

At first, celebrating someone else’s presence like that might seem over the top. The idea of throwing away a whole day’s worth of my plans because somebody I don’t know is visiting my town seems absurd.

But if you think for a second about how miraculous each person’s life is, about the mathematical improbability of any one person’s existence… it’s a little less absurd. If you think that the connections we make with other people are some of the most important things we can experience in life… yeah, it makes a lot more sense.

But still, with our world becoming so digital, our schedules becoming so tightly packed, and our focus being so in-demand, it’s easy to lose sight of this. Instead, other people are treated more like distractions or inconveniences.

Lately, I’ve been trying to combat these habits by simply reminding myself: hey, there’s a human here.

There’s a human here, be present.

There’s a human here, be curious.

There’s a human here, be open.

There’s a human here. In Tagalog, visitors declare themselves by announcing tao po. This often replaces the need for a knock.

At a surface level, such a declaration helps the person at home know that their visitor is indeed a human, and not any one of the many less desirable creatures preeminent in Filipino folklore.Tao Po has both a social function, and a superstitious function. It’s at least partially an apology in recognition that you’re intruding on someone’s space.

As another Filipino expression puts it, madaling maging tao, pero mahirap magpaka-tao. It’s easy to be a human being, but it’s hard to act like one, sometimes. Part of the Filipino spirt is constantly aiming to tap into our shared humanity with another person.

It reminds me of what one of my friends Brad Montague says: We’re all just humans who want to be loved. In fact, he made stickers reading I’m just a human who wants to be loved to stick on your TV frame and the edge of your laptop and on newspaper photos to remind us that the people we so doing things that we often find frustrating and bewildering are still humans. Ones who want to be loved.

Perhaps it’s helpful to begin an encounter with the phrase, there’s a human here.

It helps with some of the heavy lifting, when it comes to humanizing one another.

People matter. And I love the way a simple phrase like tao po has meaning. Being human means something. And the humanity within each of us is always in search of the humanity within others.

How Hawaii Got So Filipino

Hawaii is a very Filipino state.

Even when compared to places with high Filipino-American populations like New York or California, Hawaii blows it out of the water.

About a quarter of the state’s population is Filipino, making it the second largest ethnic group in the state.

As someone with quite a bit of Filipino family living in Hawaii, it was something I never explored further. I figured geography had something to do with it. If you’re in the Philippines headed to the U.S., Hawaii conveniently cuts that journey in half. I always figured the seafaring ways of our ancestors had something to do with it.

And there’s some truth to that. Filipinos joined journeys by Chinese, Dutch, Japanese, and other traders that ran between East Asia and Hawaii long before the U.S. occupied the Kingdom of Hawaii.

But in other places that’s happened, the Filipino population isn’t quite as large.

This also doesn’t explain why Hawaii’s Filipino population largely hails from one specific part of the Philippines- Ilocos. Other Filipino-American hubs tend to have a wider mix.

The historical reason goes back to the early 20th Century, sugar workers, and a labor movement you don’t hear about too often that totally changed the United States’ political environment.

I made a new video to dive into all this. Come see!

The more I started simultaneously diving into the histories of Hawaii and the Philippines— and especially the relationship each of these countries had with the United States, the more I started to see some interesting patterns emerge.

I can’t call them parallel paths, because in many ways their timelines run in the opposite direction of each other.

Hawaii was a unified kingdom until its monarchy was overthrown by the United States government, and remains the newest state.

Meanwhile the Philippines really didn’t have a strong, collective national identity up until it’s resistance to Spanish colonization which is also right around the time of U.S. occupation. However, they emerged as an independent nation that has a fairly strong national identity today.

So maybe these two island states in the Pacific are more like twin flames?

I don’t think there’s nearly enough familiarity around the history of these two places and how the United States played a role in shaping that.

For many Americans, Hawaii gets treated like a playground. It’s a picturesque vacation spot, and perhaps the first mental image that comes up for most people when they hear words like paradise, vacation, or getaway. This association unfortunately often obscures some of the way American businesses coaxed the government towards overthrowing Queen Lili’uokalani’s rule.

The Philippines, from an American vantage point, is a strategic military location. A site of many military bases, and a place where a lot of people’s grandparents were deployed. This close diplomatic relationship also obscures the rockier parts of the relationship between the two.

In the late 1800s, sugar companies discovered there is a lot of money to be made from Hawaiian agriculture. Their intensive practices clashed with traditional values. They also established militias to protect their interests and resist being controlled by the Hawaiian government. In 1893,. Queen Lili’uokalani was overthrown and replaced with a businessman, Sanford Dole… you might recognize his name.

Meanwhile, a lot of people don’t realize how close the Philippines came to becoming a U.S. state. The Philippines' fight against Spain for its independence was in its eighth month in December of 1898. Spain’s forces were severely depleted, but managed to keep the fight going. Still, it was heavily going in the Philippines’ favor.

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How Hawaii got so Filipino

There's a story about imperialism, sugar, and the other side of Pearl Harbor...

PHILIPPE LAZARO

JUN 10

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Hawaii is a very Filipino state.

Even when compared to places with high Filipino-American populations like New York or California, Hawaii blows it out of the water.

About a quarter of the state’s population is Filipino, making it the second largest ethnic group in the state.

As someone with quite a bit of Filipino family living in Hawaii, it was something I never explored further. I figured geography had something to do with it. If you’re in the Philippines headed to the U.S., Hawaii conveniently cuts that journey in half. I always figured the seafaring ways of our ancestors had something to do with it.

And there’s some truth to that. Filipinos joined journeys by Chinese, Dutch, Japanese, and other traders that ran between East Asia and Hawaii long before the U.S. occupied the Kingdom of Hawaii.

But in other places that’s happened, the Filipino population isn’t quite as large.

This also doesn’t explain why Hawaii’s Filipino population largely hails from one specific part of the Philippines- Ilocos. Other Filipino-American hubs tend to have a wider mix.

The historical reason goes back to the early 20th Century, sugar workers, and a labor movement you don’t hear about too often that totally changed the United States’ political environment.

I made a new video to dive into all this. Come see!

Watch it now

Islands and Kingdoms

The more I started simultaneously diving into the histories of Hawaii and the Philippines— and especially the relationship each of these countries had with the United States, the more I started to see some interesting patterns emerge.

I can’t call them parallel paths, because in many ways their timelines run in the opposite direction of each other.

Hawaii was a unified kingdom until its monarchy was overthrown by the United States government, and remains the newest state.

Meanwhile the Philippines really didn’t have a strong, collective national identity up until it’s resistance to Spanish colonization which is also right around the time of U.S. occupation. However, they emerged as an independent nation that has a fairly strong national identity today.

So maybe these two island states in the Pacific are more like twin flames?

I don’t think there’s nearly enough familiarity around the history of these two places and how the United States played a role in shaping that.

For many Americans, Hawaii gets treated like a playground. It’s a picturesque vacation spot, and perhaps the first mental image that comes up for most people when they hear words like paradise, vacation, or getaway. This association unfortunately often obscures some of the way American businesses coaxed the government towards overthrowing Queen Lili’uokalani’s rule.

The Philippines, from an American vantage point, is a strategic military location. A site of many military bases, and a place where a lot of people’s grandparents were deployed. This close diplomatic relationship also obscures the rockier parts of the relationship between the two.

In the late 1800s, sugar companies discovered there is a lot of money to be made from Hawaiian agriculture. Their intensive practices clashed with traditional values. They also established militias to protect their interests and resist being controlled by the Hawaiian government. In 1893,. Queen Lili’uokalani was overthrown and replaced with a businessman, Sanford Dole… you might recognize his name.

Meanwhile, a lot of people don’t realize how close the Philippines came to becoming a U.S. state. The Philippines' fight against Spain for its independence was in its eighth month in December of 1898. Spain’s forces were severely depleted, but managed to keep the fight going. Still, it was heavily going in the Philippines’ favor.

That’s when the U.S. showed up and struck a really strange deal. It manages to position itself as an ally to the Filipinos while conducting secret meetings with Spain. The Spanish decide they would rather lose to the Americans than the Filipinos. The U.S. and the Philippines defeat spain, but rather than securing Philippine independence, it instead simply swapped out colonizers.

In both instances, there’s an interference with each place’s sovereignty, but this was the birth of the most influential relationship each country would have.

During World War 2, both places were considered territories of the United States. And on December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. At the same time, Japan also attacked bases in the Philippines.

In written drafts of FDR’s famous speech, the Philippines attack was supposed to be mentioned. Conspicuously, it shows up crossed out.

Reconciling the past and present always requires an honest embrace of history, which is oftentimes unflattering. However there is also the discovery that different groups of people all around the world are connected through a shared struggle for autonomy and better futures.

The Sakada Story

Have you ever noticed that Hawaii is super Filipino? It’s the state’s largest ethnic group and if you’re especially observant, you might have picked up that Ilocanos in particular make up the most of Hawaii’s Filipino population.

There’s a story behind that, and it’s tied to the present day political dynamics of the state, solidarity with Black and Japanese American movements, and significant improvements in working conditions.

Zoom a little further out and you’ll see the story of two island nations- one a kingdom turned into a state by imperialism, the other a collection of tribes turned into a nation by the forces of colonialism. Two histories running perpendicularly to each other, in the Pacific.

Here’s the story!

Mall-Walking in Southeast Asia

Shopping over here hits different

I’ve never been a fan of the mall.

Okay, there might be a small bit of nostalgia associated with the mall that comes from being a 90’s kid. In that era, the mall was your social hub. A meeting grounds for friends and a backdrop for some of the best teen movies of the time.

Unfortunately, even those warm feelings quickly fade when you start to unpack some of the reasons why this is the case: Cities designed to accommodate vehicles over people result in walkable spaces being only possible in an insular environment, like a mall. A culture built around consumption is all too eager for people’s social lives to be conflated with shopping. A society with severed ties to the natural world no longer feels out of place in a hyper-artificial setting.

In the U.S., this is largely becoming a moot point. There’s no need to rally against malls, anymore, as the changing tides of time have largely done the work better than I could. Every town has at least one abandoned mall, where the setting for many people’s childhood memories look a little more like that one episode of The Last of Us. Creepy abandoned spaces where the ghost of retail signage still lingers.

However, there is a place where the mall is still very much alive and well. Perhaps more so now than ever.

I’m talking about Southeast Asia.

I don’t think I’ve ever visited this region without a mall ending up somewhere on the itinerary. Often this isn’t intentional. Like I said, I’m not a big fan. But either the company that I’m with or the errands I need to do will ultimately send me by way of a mega retail center. On a solo weekend trip to Malaysia that I once intended to spend outside as much as possible, I didn’t pack enough underwear and spent the better part of a day navigating the interconnected maze of Kuala Lumpur’s mall system.

That said, while walking around the malls of Southeast Asia, I don’t feel the same ick I do back home. They have a charm that I can appreciate.

All the things I dislike about malls still apply to the ones in Southeast Asia. They’re cathedrals of capitalism. They thrive in cities like Manila or Jakarta which are not especially pedestrian friendly. And they are artificial tile-and-glass environments.

BUT- there are some pros that I think make them more interesting than the malls of North America and these might be the same reasons their survival has outlasted their Western counterparts.

Here’s my shortlist:

1. The food

The malls of Southeast Asia host the food courts of Southeast Asia, and that means some spectacular food, often for ridiculously low prices. I had about six different $1 meals during my unintended day spent in Kuala Lumpur’s malls, mostly because I kept discovering so many unique Malaysian dishes one at a time.

In most settings you can find some fast food interpretations of local favorites that still feel true to their place of origin. You’ll also find localized versions of international fast food chains, and that usually leads to some surprises. Like the tomato soup in the Philippines’ Dunkin Donuts.

2. The air conditioning

As much as I find the idea of spending an entire day off trapped inside a mall uninspiring, I can’t blame people in Southeast Asia for totally indulging an opportunity to escape the tropical humidity. The opportunity to be somewhere largely communal that offers this comfort is pretty tough to pass up.

3. The character

In many places, the Malls of Southeast Asia all typically have their own unique flavor. In the U.S., most major retail spaces have gotten so severely homogenized. It doesn’t matter if you’re in Florida, Kentucky, California, or Minnesota, you can largely expect the same recurring patterns of stores over and over.

In Southeast Asia, malls tend to have their own unique theme. Perhaps the one that lingers in my memory best is Terminal 21 in Bangkok, which is airport themed. Each floor of the mall is fashioned after a different global destination, and of course, the food court up top is a gem.

Unfortunately, income inequality in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand can be fairly severe. Although middle class members of these places opt to hang out in the mall often, it’s often done so against products priced so disproportionately against their income levels. The constant exposure to the prospect of a cushier life most likely contributes to a lingering unhappiness.

I will say, I’m still not a mall person. On my visits to Southeast Asia, these aren’t the draw. But, I mind them a lot less. And they’re so ubiquitous to Southeast Asian life that you might as well find elements of them to enjoy. I definitely have.

On Love and Opposites

When being the “most” doesn’t mean that much

During a friend’s bachelor party, those of us who had been married were asked to share one breakthrough piece of advice. I was one of the surprisingly few married guys, and easily the one who had been married the longest out of the bunch. But I always tend to dish out advice pretty conservatively so I had to give it some thought.

I landed on an observation that’s really been a game-changer in how my wife and I use our differences to understand each other better.

Most people already know that speaking in absolutes is detrimental to a productive conversation. I’m talking about times you catch yourself uttering those special phrases like “you always” or “you never…”

The catch is that in a more tense moment it’s so much easier to take it there.

My money is that something about flight-versus-flight responses and all that quickly yank our brains in the direction of black-and-white thinking. When our parasympathetic nervous systems get going, they’re wired for rapid decision making and seeing the world in binary terms can be pretty helpful.

Too bad that’s not a great style of thinking for better understanding your differences with another person.

So the big helpful reminder I had to share with my friend is this:

You’re never as opposite as you think you are.

Of course in this conversation we were focused on marriage and long-term romantic partnerships, but I think this really applies in any one-on-one relationship you have with another person where you’ll be interacting closely.

Don’t forget you’re a population size of two.

When your sample size is that small, each person will automatically occupy the most extreme position.

For example, it's common for one person in a relationship to have a greater need for social interactions, dinner parties, and getting out of the house, and for the other to be a little more home-oriented. 

But when the two hit an impasse over something, like trying to plan out a week, it might be easy for one partner to accuse the other of always being restless and unable to sit still, and for the other person to retort with accusations of being a hermit and total recluse.

In reality, for these two to end up together, it’s unlikely that they are as far apart on the spectrum as they feel.

At one point, one was probably attracted to their partner because they appreciated their outgoingness, their ability to create community, and their sense of adventure. And some of the reciprocal attraction might have been over one’s quiet stability.

Understanding personalities is fun, as long as we remember that we simultaneously contain multitudes. And sometimes those multitudes make space for all the traits and experiences of other people.

In the above example, I know plenty of people who’ve felt permission to take their foot off the gas when it comes to making friends, because they’ve coupled with a total extrovert. Finding ways to make your differences complementary can be a great part of a relationship, as long as you keep the ability to check yourself when thinking in absolutes.

Yes, in a population of two, you are always the most-something and least-something.

If the Premier League consisted of only Aston Villa and Tottenham, the latter would be the absolute worst team and Aston Villa would be incredible. In reality, their records are extremely similar, and only one point separates the two as of the time I’m writing.

How does remembering this help keep things in check?

There’s a number of ways, but whenever you’re in the position of trying to figure out “what do we do, given our differences,” remembering similarities can help steer you in that direction.

Grace Lee Boggs

“The only way to survive is by taking care of each other.”

I’ve used her words in my work so often I was a bit due to feature Grace Lee Boggs in a drawing herself.

Happy AAPI Heritage Moment. One of my favorite parts of belonging is meeting other people on their journey, seeing the way some paths run parallel and others take totally different routes. Keep taking care of each other!

BOHOL | Ecotourism in the Philippines

One of my big hopes in making recurring trips to the Philippines with my family would be the ability to discover other parts of the country I haven’t been to yet. I’ve mostly gone back to the same spots over and over, which is what you do when your family lives in those spots, of course, but there is simply so much to the country.

As a nature lover, some of the most intriguing things to do seemed to be located on the island of Bohol. Whale sharks. Diving. Tarsier reserves. Mahogany forests. Caves. And the Chocolate Hills of course. It seemed to offer a lot of adventure relative to its size.

What does ecotourism look like in the motherland?

I’ve often had a harder time appreciating places that pander more towards the experience of tourists than the quality of life for people that live there, but Bohol was a force for good in challenging those assumptions. I learned to see the interdependence that those things can have, and of course, really appreciated the time I got to spend surrounded by nature.

My kids keep asking to come back here! This video offers an idea of why.

"Touristy" but for good?

The smaller island across from Cebu is a beloved destination in the Philippines, and its appeal is fairly obvious. This place is teeming with natural wonders. The coastline gives you access to white sand beaches and coral reefs, and going to the heart of the island takes you to the Chocolate Hills, one of the Philippines’ natural wonders. You’ve got tarsiers and whale sharks and plenty to do.

Having actual family ties to the Philippines means I haven’t really gotten around to some of the big things that attract international visitors, and that’s always felt funny when I would hear people rave about their experiences. I really knew I needed to shift that, so on my most recent visit to the Philippines, I added Bohol to the itinerary.

The kids and I had a great time. BUT, there was a lot I didn’t expect. Like how curated the Bohol experience tended to be. I tried processing that encounter with the reality of ecotourism in the Philippines in my latest video- out now!

There are so many different ways to experience a destination. Loose plans, room for serendipity, sincere moments spent connecting with locals, and some encounter with nature is my idea of a good time. On the other hand, an overly planned, sanitized, for-tourists-only kind of experience isn’t really my thing.

At the risk of sounding like a travel snob, I absolutely hate the idea of using other people’s home and land as my own personal playground. An entire experience where working class locals cater to my own comforts and amusement feels like sitting in the driver’s seat of all that’s wrong in the world. This doesn’t mean I’m opposed to the idea of relaxing, being entertained, or having a whole lot of fun when I travel. But I believe there are a lot of ways to do so that support locals and nature, rather than reinforcing inequities.

Thankfully, my desire to travel in a way that’s good for people and nature generally goes hand-in-hand with my distaste for the typical tourist experience. I’ve come to associate over-planned experiences catered towards tourists with the exploitative side of the industry- cruise ships, all-inclusives, and the likes.

But are there times where something is planned and designed for tourists with the intent of being good for nature and culture?

I think I experienced this in Bohol.

My previous experience in Iloilo, of having to navigate my own way to remote villages in order to embark on mountain hikes was so positive. I felt deeply connected to the people who lived there and all the wild living things on that mountain. I also felt very free, having navigated that way using loose directions and the help of a local friend.

I was hoping to do some similar exploring in Bohol. Hiring a driver. Making our way to caves and waterfalls marked on maps… not because they’re on the list of must-visits, but because of loose hunches that they might be spectacular and a willingness to be wrong.

I was surprised by how difficult this was to actually do in Bohol. My efforts to hire a driver came with those drivers offering menus, all offering the same lineup of adventures: the Chocolate Hills, the tarsier conservation area, whale-shark watching. These were all fun, but even the way these big items were packaged– all in the same day– were different from how I envisioned our time in Bohol. Slower. More integrated with everyday life.

It turns out, the infrastructure of Bohol is simply different. One branch of it was very much designed for tourists. The other for those who lived there. And I sensed a good layer of separation between both. It was hard for non-locals to simply go out and explore freely. It seems like the way to gain access to caves, underwater wonders, or panoramic points, was to sign up for the right package.

Thankfully, being there for a longer stretch of time gave me a chance to bend this a little. I befriended drivers on curated outings and asked to explore some additional sites. I found more independent guides for paddleboarding and kayaking who then put me in touch with other excursionists. What I found over time, however, was that the extreme curation of experiences helped minimize disruptions to the environment and economy of Bohol.

I noticed Bohol didn’t have as many shopping malls or retail spaces compared to other parts of the Philippines, where mall-walking is a pastime. I got used to running errands in these spaces, which made me feel like Bohol was a more difficult space to live an “ordinary,” less-touristy life. It turns out that Bohol limited the ability of big brands to open up on the island so that local businesses could thrive.

I also noticed that in order to dive in most underwater spots of interest, you needed a guide. Not just to arrange the dive, but to accompany you and show you exactly where to go. While we had our equipment in hand, just waiting for a guide to be available, it occurred to me that a positive effect of this system was the way it safeguarded against bad behavior by rogue tourists.

I will always value being less of an extractive tourist, and more of a mindful visitor who seeks to make real connections with locals. But I love that Bohol gave me an opportunity to see different ways of doing this. Creating such a separate infrastructure for tourists probably wouldn’t have been my first pick, but I definitely saw its upside.

All the more opportunity to learn new things from new places.

Stepping Back for It

A deep clean of the weekly calendar

Earlier this year, I challenged myself to radically cut back on the things that were keeping me busy.

I mapped out how the 125 waking hours of a week in my life typically gets allocated. I looked at the hours that were dedicated to work, errands, creative projects, and other obligations and challenged myself to find a way to free up a third of it. 

I knew it would call for some pretty difficult cuts, but I knew I needed to do it. I ended last year feeling fairly burnt out, and my kids were growing at the rate of mushrooms after a storm.

A few months removed from drastically decommitting to things, I know I did the right thing. But it wasn’t an easy call.

Being busy comes naturally to me. I like to say yes. Overall, it’s a trait I like about myself. I think at times where I’m the most engaged and enthusiastic in life, I have a lot of things going on. However, I’ve also had quite a few experiences where that crosses the line from a healthy abundance to simply too much.

As an enthusiast, I’ve discovered that one of the most important lessons for me has been to understand where that line separating the two exists.

Last week, I celebrated a birthday and moved more firmly into my mid-thirties. I enjoy this age. I can be geriatric in the company of running backs and TikTok influencers, but a total kid in the company of congresspeople and Facebook users. One thing I’ve noticed as more and more of my adulthood moves into the rearview mirror, however, is the increasing importance of being selective of how I spend my time.

In earlier years, the consequences for saying yes to too many things were pretty mild. There were no kids to worry about. I could handle the sleep deprivation a little easier. Most of all, it was often in my benefit to say yes to things. It helped me build a diversity of experiences that enrich my life and create opportunities for me to do things I love.

But with age comes the realization that sometimes you have to pick and choose. I have quite an expansive range of interests and a really strong appetite to do things… which makes it mathematically impossible for me to actually do them all. I’ve experienced the benefit of being a little out of touch with that reality, in that my drive to do as many things as I can fit has taken me to places I never imagined. But now, I’m seeing the benefit of being selective.

You can enjoy life a little more when your commitments are more of a curation than a collection.

Perhaps my biggest alert was when I realized I had so many of the things I had always wanted in life. A big family. A creative job that lets me help people. A lot of opportunities to see the world. But I started to notice the days themselves felt like sprints to the finish in order to get everything done. I wanted to actually have the time to slow down and savor having a life I’ve always dreamed of.

I haven’t totally thrown out the idea that it can also be very valuable to take a big swing at a goal that seems impossible and out of reach. You often surprise yourself! But, having experienced that, I’m now finding most of the delightful surprises in my life are coming from the times I give myself a little bit more space for serendipity.

It’s a very rare, privileged, and special position I’m in, to be able to have practically every moment of my day filled with something I find valuable and meaningful, whether it’s hanging out with my kids or preparing for a storytelling trip to Africa. Even actions like cooking or walking the dog feel special. They just don’t feel as special when it feels like they need to be rushed so I can pack it all in.

There's Always More to the Story

There’s always more to the story…

I’ve been waiting a little bit to share this, but I’ve been seeing quite a few new faces around here and my birthday was over the weekend so this is probably a good time. Here’s my @creativemorningssd talk from last September on Depth.

Through my own journey, I share the lens through which I see the world. There’s always more than we can see. Like Oscar Romero says, some things can only be seen through eyes that have cried. There’s heartbreak, but there’s also hope. There’s uncertainty, but that’s our invitation to be curious. There are so many different people and places across our world, and only through proximity do we get that story that goes beyond stereotypes and headlines.

I loved giving this talk and sharing these stories, because it really felt like all the different parts of my life came together in a jam session. Philippe the traveler. The storyteller. The climate advocate. The dad. And it felt like I got to find the throughline that runs between them all.

“There’s always more to the story” is something I tell myself when the world feels heavy and it seems like we’re stuck. It’s the humility to admit you don’t know how everything will turn out, and the curiosity to walk ahead anyways.

I’ve stitched together some clips as a TASTE but please follow that link in my bio to watch the full thing at @creativemornings’ channel. Thank you so much to @_jordanhayles for the initial invite that got this whole thing started and @rameljwallace for the intro and set-up.

My CreativeMornings Talk

Of all the talks, videos, and creative projects I’ve gotten to do over the years, this is easily the one I’m proudest of…

Last September, I got the invitation to give a talk at CreativeMornings San Diego.

If you’re not familiar with CreativeMornings, you’re missing out on one of my favorite monthly events and creative communities. It’s not just in San Diego, but in nearly 200 cities around the globe, CreativeMornings hosts breakfast lecture series with each one coalescing around a certain theme.

I’ve been eager to talk at one of these events ever since I started attending back in 2017. This gathering attracts a crowd that I can simply say are my kind of people. Thoughtful. Intentional. Positive.

I finally got my chance last September. And I’m thankful, because so much of the life I’ve lived in between 2017 and 2022 ended up in the talk. I was asked to share on the theme of depth.

I had an absolute blast on stage, and I’m really happy with the story I had a chance to share. Based on the feedback I got afterwards it connected with people. And I got to speak as Philippe the traveler, Philippe the climate storyteller, and Philippe the dad, and explore the relationship between those different parts of my life.

Ever since I’ve gotten to deliver my talk at CreativeMornings, the phrase there’s always more to the story has become my signature. And I’m very much okay with that. It seems to be a theme that plays itself out across many parts of my life.

When I see news stories that make me feel like the world is in bad shape and destined to remain that way, I got to tell myself, there’s always more to the story. This is especially true when I’m confronting an issue that makes me feel strongly, but where I haven’t done a ton of work looking at the solutions, like gun violence. When I see someone like Shannon Watts note a changing zeitgeist and I know she spends every day working on this… I know there’s more to the story.

Whenever I travel, I immediately feel that there’s more to the story than what I’ve been told about a place. I’m someone who spends a lot of time researching and talking to people from different countries, places I haven’t been. And yet, I can never research to the point where I’m still not surprised and mystified by day one of a visit to a new place. Even a not-so-new place!

These days, I can point to some of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through with the gift of hindsight that allows me to say, there was more to the story than I knew at that moment and I am so glad I hung on to see it. Of course it feels different when you’re in the thick of things, but I hope that reminder sticks with me deep within for future hard times. Because, of course, there will be those ahead.

This week isn’t such a hard time. It happens to be my birthday, and I’m realizing that I’m quickly blowing past my “early thirties” and might now be in my “mid-thirties.” What a trip.

An amazing part of getting older is developing more humility and curiosity around things. You see beyond a binary way of looking at things, realizing that nuance and gray areas make the world what it is. 

I’ve heard so many people just a little bit older than me talk about this evolution, and I’ve already considered myself somebody who’s pretty comfortable with ambiguity. And I still find myself growing in this direction in surprising ways. Even this phenomenon is something I’m approaching with humility. There are still rights and wrongs and firm convictions, and gray areas can exist because of the presence of black-and-whites… but the humility to recognize the limitations of your own vantage point always sets up something exciting… curiosity.

The more I visit other places, the more I realize that I live in a cultural setting that values head knowledge, explanations, and certainty. And I get it. When everything’s changing, when things are uncertain, it’s very comforting to have some knowledge that feels concrete that you can clutch on to.

The thirst for certainty and true curiosity can be tricky lookalikes. I’ve been in both situations, and I suspect they come from the same inner place. The direction that they lead couldn’t be more different, however. People who chase after being the most enlightened, the smartest person in the room, are also often the most disconnected from the others. Those who are truly curious instead choose to pick apart something, connecting dots until explanations fail experiences. You reach the outer limits of your ability to grasp something and find delight. Maybe even absurdity.

I like the way St. Gregory of Nyssa describes this: “Only wonder understands anything.”

As I receive the gift of another lap around the sun, I’m hoping to spend as much of it as possible in this state of wonder. Whether I’m reading headlines, talking to people in an Ethiopian village, or facing uncertainty in my own life. There’s more to the story. Always.

Belafonte

"Many of the men and women whom I admire as artists, the things they write, the songs they sing, the admission is filled with inspired moments to overcome oppression.”

–Harry Belafonte

It’s probably not typical for a teenager in California during the early ‘00s to go through a calypso phase, but it happened to yours truly. As I meticulously entered in the information about every song I had in iTunes to keep these mp3 files organized, all the way down to the release year… I became pretty curious about the oldest tracks I had in my library.

There were some 20’s and 30’s jazz albums. Silence from the 1940s. Then some of Belafonte’s more popular songs. The album art itself was a relic of a past era. But the music, in its simplicity and brightness, was still so accessible. It was workers’ music. People’s music. I dug it.

Much later, I would learn about Belafonte’s legacy beyond music- particularly his support for the Civil Rights Movement and his direct friendship with MLK. He bailed him out of the Birmingham Jail. You know. The one from the letter.

I’m not much of a musician, especially these days, but Belafonte's still an interesting and unlikely influence. I want my work to represent the hard-working, everyday person resisting that oppression.

Where the World Gets Its Food

You know this is one of my favorite topics… food around the world.

I love visiting grocery stores in different countries, because it feels a lot more like I’m dropping in on people living the most mundane scenes in everyday life. And that gives me the strongest sense of what’s different and what’s the same country-to-country.

Recently, I’ve realized that this sense for the world has had a big, glaring omission.

Wet markets. A very large portion of the world doesn’t regularly go to a supermarket. The open air community market is the spot.

This video is one that I put together in installments over time, resulting in scenes filmed across four different continents… plus a nearby Seafood City.

Love the way food tells a story.