■ It has taken us a while to learn to love our own (food). Now, we’ve stopped trying to put our cuisine in a box and are accepting the fact that it is a combination of all these beautiful cultures that have touched our history at one point or another. At the same time, we have also learned to celebrate what was there before all these outside influences.

■ We finally appreciate what a great people we are, influenced perhaps by factors such as Manny Pacquiao winning or Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan’s effect on visitors who came here to help and their discovery of what a beautiful country we had; how delicious our food was; and how resilient the Filipinos were.