I rewrote the dialogue for this strip around maybe 5 times before I settled with this one. I was in a quandary on how Henry would address his older brother. Initially, I had him calling Ben the more respectful "kuya" ("older brother" in Filipino) but they are from Bulacan, Malolos specifically, and in my experience from my mom's side of the family, Bulakeños address their siblings with the prefix "ka" (short for "kapatid" a generic term that doesn't distinguish any gender). I tried that too, but I remembered that Ben lived more than half of his life in the U.S. and I wasn't comfortable with the idea of addressing with the ka-prefix before his name right now. Maybe later.

* Apologies to all who couldn't understand much of what is written in these strips. Much as I would have wanted to translate it into english, the punchline wouldn't have worked as well as I intended it to.

** This strip was published Nov. 10, 2004.