The growing awareness on arnis continues to reach Filipinos overseas. In fact, the FMA’s popularity abroad was one of the factors that piqued the interest of environment consultant and now arnis practitioner Lessandra Berbano. “Back in late 2011, a friend I met at a party started telling me about FMA and Prof. Bot Jocano [Felipe Jocano Jr.]. She isn’t an arnis practitioner herself, but she was doing research on FMA for her college thesis. I was more than a little intrigued by what she was relating about FMA and how much more popular it is abroad than in the Philippines,” said Berbano.