Jaiden Casapao Alyanna Sia
VP CommunicationsMarketing VP CommunicationsCreatives
Althea Astudillo
AVP Communications
Indy Sowy Web Director
Jaime Santos
Artistic Director
Martin Yulo
Patricia Ang Marketing Director
Kyle Dy
Artistic Director
Dea Rivera
Graphics Director
Media Director Zyrell Castillo Zine Director
As we continue to grow older, it is important to cherish your roots and to embrace your culture.
With all that happens in our daily lives - school, work, and other commitments, there are times where we forget how we were raised as Filipinos and what it’s like to be at home again. But one amazing thing about being a Filipino is that wherever we go, there are little things to remind us of the motherland and the culture itself, such as food, teleseryes, or even seeing another Filipino and saying “Filipino ka rin?!” (You’re Filipino too?!)
A project that we’ve been working on is the KABAZine: A zine that champions Filipino culture! We decided to make this the theme for our first KABAZine to pay respects to what home is like and to reminisce on days growing up - adulting can get hard at times but that doesn’t change the pride and love we have as Filipinos.
As a commuter student at UBC, I found my home away from home, and that is this club, UBC Kababayan. Everyday I learn something new about our culture and I’m so blessed to given the opportunity to learn other people’s stories growing up as a Filipino. Working with this KABAmilya keeps me grounded, and I’m able to reflect upon my past and share laughs with them, like laughing about some Filipino meme, or me rambling on about how good a teleserye is.
Thank you to this year’s KABAmilya for the continuous support and for all the memories we’ve made and will continue to make for the rest of the year! I would also like to acknowledge the Communications and Marketeams I’ve been part of since the start of my university life. I am so blessed to have learned from VP’s and executives from past years and I wouldn’t be here today without the guidance and endless support you provide me with.
Thank you to my Communications department - the graphics, videos, promotions, captions, merchandise created leaves me in awe and I can’t wait for the other projects to come - your hard work doesn’t go unnoticed. Each meeting we have is never a dull moment and I can’t wait to work with you all until the rest of the year! I would like to express my gratitude for my Co-VP, Alyanna, for her continuous support and for being someone I can work with easily, and most especially to our Zine Director, Zyrell, for spearheading this project and giving her all to make this a success!
We can’t wait to showcase everything we have planned for the rest of the year. I hope you enjoy this KABAZine and from the bottom of my heart, I appreciate you all for the support!
Cheers,
Jaiden Casapao VP Communications - Marketing
“Homage to Home” is the first Kabazine to be launched!
For those of you who don’t know, a zine is a small collection of creative artworks, photographs and a few written pieces to celebrate a central theme. This season, Kaba’s communications team decided to embrace all things Filipino!
Filipinos are everywhere! You may have seen them on Tiktok, class, or even your local Starbucks, and through this Kabazine, we want to share our culture's beauty, vibrancy and complexity. Whether that be through the tough love from Filipino parents to the never-ending dance parties, each aspect of its culture makes it uniquely Filipino.
Being Filipino means sticking together and having no one left behind. Our home isn’t just the archipelago of 7100+ islands. It’s the people that have your back no matter what. At UBC KABA, we proudly stand by each other. Our Kabamilya has only grown bigger and bigger, and with each new member, we welcome you with open hearts! Consider “Homage to Home” a sneak peek at our “Pamilya” (family). And for those of you who have been around for a long time, consider this a digital record of our Kabamilya.
And with that, I’d like to send my gratitude to my Kabamilya. Thank you for the endless memories and companionship throughout my university career. UBC KABA is where I found refuge from the intimidating university life, and I know most people will feel the same.Most importantly, thank you to my Communications team this year. I truly appreciate all your efforts and have never worked with a more talented team.
To my co-vice president, Jaiden, your work ethic never fails to surprise me! I could never ask for a better person to work with.
To Jaiden and my AVP, Althea, your intricate graphic designs and outfits never fail to impress!
To our artistic and media directors, Jaime, Kyle and Martin, the bright personalities and insane editing skills you bring never disappoint!
To our graphic director, Dea, your artistic ability truly shines through all your graphics!
To our web director, Indy, what you do is irreplaceable, and I can’t wait for more typing races!
To our marketing director, Patricia, despite having so much on your plate, all your captions are pure genius!
Finally to our zine director, Zyrell, thank you for the amazing zine you’ve helped us all produce. Your work is just the beginning of Kaba’s communications projects, and you’ve set an extremely high standard! Creating the visual design and content for this zine has been so effortless!
This Kabazine will not be the first! The communications department aims to produce at least two issues this academic year. Think of it as our digital scrapbook with some extra sparkle! KABA Comms is thrilled to share “Homage to Home” as our first purely comms project.
Yours Sincerely,
Alyanna Sia VP Communications - Creatives
“Homage”– expression of great respect and honor
In what way could you really honor your heritage? How do we pay homage? These are the questions I’ve asked myself throughout this project. I look at the way I live, from my habits to my morals, and see how I have been situated between modernity and tradition. I often find myself right at the cusp of my individuality and this ingrained desire for ‘sameness.’ I struggle to hold my culture close, without being stung by its ideals and expectations, as I try to figure out who I am in the world.
You forget to mano every time, you don’t pray before you eat, and you don’t really want to be an engineer like your dad. The things you don’t do become the things that push you just a little further away. It’s just enough to where you visit the Philippines and suddenly, “Do you still know how to speak Filipino?” feels more like an insult than anything. It’s in the way you try, and try so hard that it becomes frustrating–demoralizing. The good balance you thought you had seems to diminish, and then suddenly, what it means to be you and what it means to be Filipino become 2 different things.
I scrambled to figure out how this happened, before realizing I didn’t need to understand it. No matter what, I am the way I am because I am Filipino. I pay homage in the way I just be–
Be
This is the first KABA zine to be published! The Communications team and I have worked on this for some time now, and it feels great to be able to finally put it out there for everyone to see. With the time I’ve worked on this zine, it has definitely gone through its fair share of ugly stages before it’s reached a point where I’m satisfied. I’ve changed how something looks a million times, and even then, I don’t think it’ll ever be perfect; but I look forward to improving each time! Rest assured this won’t be the only KABAzine you’ll see from us this year. I’m excited for what else we can capture and share with all of you.
There’s so much more to come, so come join our Kabamilya! Here at UBC, when we’re so far from home, we find other ways to connect. KABA works to help all of us Filipinos feel at home, and get us closer to our roots than ever before. With the publication of ‘Homage to Home’ we hope to show you a little bit into who we are. However, this is just a taste of all that KABA has to offer. With open arms, we can’t wait to welcome all of you!
For my final remarks, I wanted to thank my VPs, Jaiden and Alyanna, for putting their trust in me, and also putting up with the amount of messages I send them about the zine. I’m also so thankful for my AVP, Althea, for helping me out with her immense graphics knowledge and creativity.
To the rest of the communications team I wanted to express how appreciative I am of all the time and effort you’ve put aside for this project. You guys bring such great talents to the table, and I’ll always consider myself lucky to be able to work with you all. Thank you!
With Love, Zyrell Castillo Zine Director, my mother sat across from me on the other side of our kitchen island, cutting up a persimmon, with twelve o’clock sunlight streaming in from behind her. “Are you asking for permission or letting us know?”
I had just told her about my plans for the rest of undergrad: finish up third year, spend next summer doing research abroad, do co-op in the fall, Go Global in the spring, and co-op again in the summer, then run for editor at The Ubyssey for my final year.
My shoulders tensed as I considered my reply. “Letting you know.” My mother looked at me with pursed lips. “Okay.”
I relaxed, fought back a smile, then stood up. I walked out the doorway feeling like I had finally reached a new tipping point in my life.
I spent most of my adolescence playing the role of the dutiful and obedient daughter. I spent Friday nights in my room, papers sprawled along my desk and across the floor. I filled my days with meetings instead of making plans with my friends. My parents never even told me I had a curfew because the only time I stayed out past seven was for volleyball practice. I’m used to asking my parents if I can make plans, not telling them I’ve made them. Most of my university friends have spent the start of their adulthood learning how to be an adult. As the only daughter of two overprotective Filipino parents, I spent them unlearning how to be my parents' child.
I’m turning twenty in two weeks and my stomach still ties itself into familiar knots when I try to exercise my own independence. I let the words spill from my mouth and dig my fingers into my palms, half-expecting the other shoe to drop. Moving out and having the freedom to discover who you are through important, and sometimes questionable, decisions away from your parents’ supervision is often a rite of passage into adulthood. As a commuter student who started university at the height of the pandemic, I spent most of my first and second year working from my childhood bedroom and acting the same way I did when I was 14.
I didn’t want to be scolded. I didn’t want to disappoint my parents. I didn’t want to find out what they’d be like if I shed my good girl persona. I didn’t want to find out if they would love me any less if I disappointed them. It didn’t matter how many times they told me they would always be there for me, always take care of me, always love me. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t scared that they were lying; I was scared that they’d be wrong.
So I caved in. I listened to my unfounded, irrational fears and pretended that they didn’t exist afterwards. I chose to be halfhappy rather than risk being proven right. I’ve lived for twenty years and I have spent so little of it actually feeling alive. But I do now.
Over the past month, I’ve slowly been learning what it means to be an adult. It’s been a series of small, insignificant, nervewracking steps.
Telling my parents that I’d be leaving for two retreats in November, the dates I’d be gone, and that I’d be paying for them myself.
One. Two.
Telling them I’d only share my location if they needed to know where to pick me up. Getting ID’d at mountain top liquor stores and drinking too much soju for my own good.
Three.
Bookmarking research programs in Australia, journalism programs in Italy, exchange programs in Scotland and Masters programs in California.
Four. Five. Six. Seven. Step by step by step.
The most important lesson I’ve learned while unlearning how to be a child is that I can grant myself permission. I can book the ferry tickets, apply for the internship, and buy the sleeping bags. I’ve spent most of my life settling, quieting my discontentment, and holding myself back to avoid potential disappointment.
I am so tired of feeling empty. This time, I’m choosing to be restless.
I want to study in the UK and spend long weekends in Edinburgh pubs. I want to lose my voice at Peach Pit concerts. I want to spend hours kayaking and reading secondhand books. I want to write bad poetry on mossy hilltops, go backcountry camping, style my friends in local thrift shops and really figure out what it means to live and not just exist.
I am greedy for adventure.
I’m grateful to my parents for the ways that they’ve taken care of me and held my hand as I grew up, but my hands are steadier now. I can hold myself up on my own. They’ve taught me how to be a good person but I’m the only one who can teach myself how to be my own person.
I need to make my own mistakes, clean my own wounds, and ice my own bruises. I need the space to be reckless, prudent, shortsighted and everything in between. I want to crack life open for myself and watch the blood trickle from my fingers as I run them over its ragged edges. I love my parents, I really do, but these days, I just need them to let me bleed.
I'm choosing to want. I'm choosing to want.
Filipino parents have a funny way of saying “I love you,” don’t they? But what even is love? And more specifically, how do you define it in a familial sense? In a way that is unique to the Filipino experience?
I’d like to think that familial love looks like a lot of different things depending on who you are. Familial love for Filipinos might be a slippery slope, because not all families have the same kind of love languages, and there are generations of trauma that contribute to the ‘Filipino way’ of raising a family.
In a lot of different ways, growing up Filipino has had its highs and lows. And I don’t doubt that a lot of us are familiar with the low lows just as much as we are familiar with and reminisce on the high highs. There’s no beating around the bush with Filipino parents, and it’s been well documented the ways that Filipino family culture can actually be quite toxic. Pretty much everyone is familiar with the judgemental, brutally blunt culture that has followed us since childhood, and there’s a whole other conversation to be had about generational trauma and the ways that toxic traditions have spilled onto the kids of this generation. A lot of it is passed off as a good ol’ reliable, ‘joke lang’ or more seriously, ‘tough love,’ and this presents itself in a ton of different ways that you may or may not have noticed.
For one, what’s up with the need to hyperfixate on a teenager’s weight? ‘Tumaba ka’ or ‘Pumayat ka’... At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter, does it? And with the way that we’re constantly spoonfed with the most delicious, mouth-watering food on the face of the planet how can we possibly say no?
Or how about the endless debate on what field of study we should go into for University? For a lot of Filipinos that have dared to venture past the field of medicine or even business, I truly do salute you for the endless debates and the passive-aggressive comments regarding a future career. Do I know what I’m doing with my degree yet? Absolutely not. But am I happy? Yes, and so what’s the matter?
There are a ton of different questions and scenarios being posed in this one article, and even still they only scratch the surface of what growing up Filipino is really like. As a first generation immigrant and painfully whitewashed Filipino, my experiences might be different from yours -- but what remains constant is the authentically “Filipino way” of growing up. Filipino parenting styles are interesting, because while you might be berated with comments and opinions that make you want to run away from home, believe it or not, they all come from a place of love (albeit in a slightly twisted way).
And so I pose the question again: how do you define familial Filipino love? What does it look like, feel like, sound like, or even smell like?
Maybe it looks a lot like a giant family gathering every so often, with faces and names you have never heard before in your life showing up ready to leave five pounds heavier and with knowledge about what their second cousin’s mom’s sister-in-law’s boyfriend’s dog is up to.
Maybe it feels like the warm hands of your lolo and lola in the midst of a mano.
Maybe it sounds like Tell Me Where It Hurts by MYMP or Forevermore by Side A being sung just slightly off-pitch with the ancient Karaoke machine on a volume that’s far too high.
Maybe it smells like the familiar aroma of freshly baked Pandesal at the Bakery in the morning.
I think familial Filipino love can look like a lot of different things, be it abundant or tough. When you start to grow up you realize the side of Filipino parenting that made you want to cry and realize that there was a lot more to it than you had initially thought. Don’t get me wrong, the past is no more romantic than the present, and growing up the “Filipino way” comes with its own set of controversies and passed on generational trauma, and choosing to disregard that only continues the cycle of toxicity in Filipino culture. But in spite of that, I’d like to think that Filipino love is a lot like the traditional tito uniform--a wife beater, basketball shorts, and tsinelas--constant and unchanging.
At the end of the day, you realize what matters most in Filipino culture is something that will remain the same till the day you die. Through generations of change and hardship, one thing is certain -- the ideology that family is forever.
Words by Zack Tesalona“Bahala ka sa buhay mo!” “Bahala ka sa buhay mo!”
In tagalog, you say “Mahal kita,” which means I love you. “Mahal” can also mean “expensive,” and I think that’s a beautiful way of communicating that love in our culture is priceless.
Our parents might not have been perfect. No one is. But they did teach us to be respectful, and to maintain an attitude of gratitude wherever we go. And for all of its low lows comes the highest of highs; core memories that you’d never even think to forget.
“Bahala ka sa buhay mo” translates to somewhere between “whatever” and “do whatever you want with your life,” and Filipinos know that this almost always comes with a hint of bitterness. But the reassuring thing about Filipino culture is that I do feel like I could do whatever I want to in my life, regardless of the acceptance of my parents. Because at the end of the day, no matter how far I wander, I know that I can come right back home to the passive aggressive comments, the head shakes of disapproval, and about a million “ay nako’s” just to be welcomed back with open arms, and without a moment of hesitation.
And I wouldn’t And I wouldn’t change it for the change it for the world. world.
The best thing about growing up Filipino is realizing how proud Filipinos are about sharing our culture. No matter where you go, Filipinos would gladly spark a conversation with you and make sure it ends with a smile on your face. When you ask a Filipino about our culture- from the food to teleseryes and our rich history- we would go on about it to the point that non-Filipinos also become interested and start enjoying the things we love about being Filipino. The fact that when you tell a non-Filipino you’re from the Philippines they would always say “I know a Filipino word”, and that Jollibee is literally all over the world brings out the nationalism and joy of being Filipino. Despite being away from home, the pride of being Filipino and finding our culture in the most unexpected people, places, and things make me more appreciative of growing up Filipino. .
In my experience, I noticed how Filipinos are good at finding happiness even in the smallest things. No matter what occasion it may be, Filipinos will definitely find time to celebrate and that is the best thing about being Filipino! Everyone knows how to have a good time and enjoy each other’s presence. It does not have to be a big event for Filipinos to have fun, all that matters is that everyone is together. Being a part of this environment while growing up in a Filipino household is definitely the best thing ever.
Being Filipino is like finding little pieces of home everywhere you go. Whether it’s the friends you make in your university or the food you cook at home, you’re bound to find something reminiscent of the Philippines. There is also tons of diversity in Filipino culture. You can order the same dish in one region and expect a completely different flavour a thousand kilometres south. You can also be in the busiest city with towering skyscrapers but drive two hours and you have a quiet beach. You can find a bit of everything wherever you are!
The best thing about being Filipino is the community. Whether you’re home or a thousand miles away, Filipinos always make you feel welcome. When you meet someone for the first time, they always greet you with a smile and open arms. After moving to Canada, I was scared of losing this sense of community. However, I feel it whenever I visit a Filipino restaurant and the food there reminds me of home or when I go to a Tims and the tita there adds an extra doughnut to my order. We can’t help but take care of each other. I especially feel it whenever I am with my fellow members of KABA. Despite being on the other side of the world, I always feel like I have a part of home with me.
The best thing about being Filipino is the familiar sense of family. Regardless of whether or not you’re actually blood related, Filipinos love to call each other by titles that imply familial connection, and I think that encapsulates very deeply what Filipino community and culture is like. Wherever you are, whoever you’re with, and whatever the situation is, Filipinos always feel a sense of pride and companionship alongside each other, and growing up, that was really comforting to have in constantly changing environments. Despite having moved a lot as a child, I always had a home wherever I went.
The best thing about growing up Filipino is that everything Filipinos do is for the best of the family. Filipinos are very family-centered and they would do anything to be able to provide the best for their families. Regardless of how difficult the task can be, members of the family are dedicated to putting their best foot forward in every decision they make just to put something on the table. Therefore, having this strong motive to make our families proud of us makes Filipinos hardworking and dedicated to all we do for our families. As a result, the strong values of family that Filipinos have make growing up to be a Filipino the best.
The people. Without a doubt, whether that's through social media, close friends or family, everyone knows that Filipinos have the most vibrant, warm and loving personalities. Being a Filipino doesn’t simply mean having a beach being your second home or having an effortless golden tan. Being Filipino means no one is left behind and everyone considers each other family. Filipinos have resilience, they stand for one another through thick and thin. Togetherness is the driving force for Filipinos, and you can find a family with anyone of them that you meet.
Despite growing up in Canada all my life, I grew up embracing Filipino culture through eating Filipino food everyday, watching teleseryes, and traditions. Also witnessing the love, unity, and support that Filipinos give each other - my family volunteers for a non-profit organization that aids students who don’t have the financial support for their education. Hearing the unique stories that each Filipino has is so inspiring because despite how some grew up less privileged than others, we are all somewhat the same. We remain optimistic at the hardest times in life and continue to spread joy to others.
What's the best thing about growing up Filipino?
