 Enjoying calligraphy, as mentioned earlier, I think it's a very interesting topic. Usually folks ask about the technicalities. But in my context, when I talk about the joy of calligraphy, I have to start with what got me into it. Because I practice it not only just as an art, but as a cultural practice. And let's start with this image. So Ferdinand and Marcos, just like a lot of Filipinos, my family migrated over to the San Francisco Bay Area because of martial law. And come in in that context kind of caused a cultural identity crisis. I remember when I was in school, I had this assignment, make a family tree. And so I had to make a family tree. And a lot of my classmates had an image like this more or less. But my tree wasn't a tree. It was a bush. Because I can only go as far as my grandparents. So it was wide. I just had my cousins and have lots of aunts and uncles. But you shake it, maybe a Spanish friar will come out. So I didn't really know much about my past. Because we had this disconnect. And it always confused me. One day I was walking with my grandfather to the neighborhood here in Chinatown. And I asked them, what's that writing on those signs? And he said, oh, that's how they write in China. And I asked them, well, how did you write in the Philippines? And he said, we wrote in English. I was around eight years old. I couldn't fully comprehend. But it just seemed kind of off to me. Then one day I went through these ancient manuscripts that don't exist anymore. And I went to the letter P. And I found this image. And I said, OK, this is an old revolutionary flag that they were using to identify as the rebellion to fight against the Spanish. And I thought, oh, that looks like an eye, capital I, standing for independencia or independence. And I was kind of digging into the culture a bit. And I went to a festival once. And there was this man selling books, Filipino books. And I saw this flag. And I said, hey, that's letter I for independence. He says, no, that's a K. That's an old writing system. Then I was hooked. But of course, he didn't have any info. And this was back in the day. So I came to this very library looking for the writing system from the Philippines, talked to everybody here. And it was before they had the Philippine room. And they never heard of it. So it wasn't until I go to the Philippines for eight months after high school to find myself. But I ended up staying for 10 years. And in that 10 years, I found a chart. But now, what do I do with it? What is the value? What is the context? And that's where I kind of learned it. Then this magical thing came out called the internet. And I said, oh, I found, let me see if there's any other people. Because I was the only one amongst my friends. And my cousins never knew this writing system. Then I found this gentleman. And I started emailing him. And he would converse via email and Tagalog. And then something hit me. I said, wait. So a white guy in Canada when I saw his picture. So I was like, I didn't even know. And he's a linguist. He's a hobbyist. And he knows the script up and down. So I learned from him. And then from there, I kind of took the academic part and then started applying the art to it. So when I was living in the Philippines at that time in my early 20s, I started a blog. And I used that sign, that Ka symbol, which is the K, as sort of my logo on the website. When I started to write the script, it wasn't a typical fashion where you go to school and you learn this calligraphy because no one really practiced it. But I got my practice using this format, which is a napkin in names. So this is actually, it says Nicky. Because my cousins, we'd go to bars and they would use me as a way to get girls to come to the table. So they would say, hey, my American cousin, he can write your name in the old writing. I'd be at a bar. What's your name, Nicky? There you go. Hopefully, hopefully, none of them got him tattooed because I was still new. Maybe some of them would be wrong. But eventually, I started my own website. So I started my website by buying.com that was more on the art and academic, historical, cultural aspect. Because a lot of people would get tattoos. I felt this kind of cosmetic. So I wanted them to dig deeper, sort of as a doorway to enter this. And as what happened to me, I wanted to pass that on. But then this also then created other opportunities, collaborations with clothing lines, applications, opening up an online school, filming a documentary. This is in 2010. And even publishing books, I'm not a good writer, but there was none. So I said, all right, if there's a hole, I'll try and fill it. So I put these three books out. And then a lot of opportunities with art. This is a collaboration I did with a dancer, where I chased them around with a camera and trying to find the shapes in their movements. And these are some images of artwork that I've done over the past couple of years. And then, of course, with the writing, with any calligraphy, you see a lot of it is with tattoos. And a lot of folks have been using my artwork. A lot of them, you see, would be online. They would be wrong. So I said, all right, a lot of my commissions are becoming these tattoos. So you kind of have a responsibility to teach also. And whether it starts off as cosmetic, then hopefully they'll dig in deeper. As I started doing art, people would ask, can you do a live? I said, I don't know. Let me try it. So I tried to paint in bigger, bolder pieces. This is at a bookstore. This is at Union Square. The other is at a winery. And this is at Asian Art Museum a few years ago. And with this image right here, it was such a great experience. This image kind of went viral. And then it allowed me to travel to talk about the writing, just based on that image. So some context about the scripts in the diaspora. So these are the manongs. They are the ones that farm California up and down. And this gentleman right here, Dan Inosanto, is a Filipino, the top student, the heir of Bruce Lee's martial art of Jikwondo. And I remember he's around seven years old. I did a lecture at his instructor's school in Southern California. He came up to me and said, hey, I know how to write my name. I said, no way. I've never met anyone over 30 that knew how to write this. He said, here we go, Inosanto. And I asked him, how did you learn how to write that? My father taught me. And he came here in the 1920s. And how did you learn it? Well, I saw this calendar about the Philippine Revolution. And I saw this flag. And that's how I learned. So it kind of came in a full circle. So the way I like to, when I talk about the script, it's three prong, identity, cultural identity, promotion for whether it's your goods or your culture. And then when you promote it, you add value. Because without value, there's no preservation. So why would you want to preserve it? So try to add value to all the things that I do. Cultural value, we know that. Then there's also social value. A lot of the closest friends I know, this community is because of this artwork. And then the obvious one, economic value. You've heard the term starving artist. We don't want to be starving artists. We have to figure out how we can make this economically valuable for us. And one way is doing commissions and identity. This is a company that I worked with in London. And they are a Filipino restaurant. But the problem is that Pepe, they thought it would be Spanish. So they would walk in there thinking they would have Spanish food. But Pepe is her grandfather's nickname for Jose. Because of our colonialism, we're kind of mixed. Are you Asian? Are you Spanish? What are you? So we use a script. Because the younger people can recognize it. They might not be able to read it, but they can see it. So much like if you go to a Thai restaurant, you see the Thai script. You can't read it. Most people can't read it, but you can tell the difference. So you have this cultural immersion based on a writing system that's unconscious. Because you know the difference between the Arabic script, Japanese script, Hangul, all of those things. So some parts of the scripts. So this is originally, it was scratched in bamboo. It wasn't really considered artwork, per se. But the poetry was artwork. So the output of it was very transactional. This is a legal document. And the guy was so smart, because we would write our legal documents on organic materials. And this is written in copper plate. And basically, it's releasing him and his family for future generations from debt. So it survived the test of time. So this is like the first book printed in the Philippines, the Doctrina Cristiana, when the Spanish came. They found that everyone was literate and said, well, they could read. So let's print the Christian doctrine in the writing to convert them. So there are 17 characters. These are my versions. I did a collaboration of two characters of the Roman alphabet, Times New Roman, which is the basic font, and then my brush style. So I like to deconstruct letters, mixing modern and traditional. And a lot of my, we'll talk about the influences in the panel. And there are three vowels. There's a, e, or i, and then o, or u. And changing the vowel sounds, we have these markers. And we have, let me go through this real quick. So this right here is, let me go back. So one of the things is that we just have one vowel sound for an e or i. And sometimes linguistically it doesn't translate when we speak English. So sometimes we get the, even went to this day. This was just taken last year. So if you see the sign, bed sheet, but then we only have one vowel, so that's why we do that. But then it's all about context. And this is one of the things within the tribe, I get these questions like, oh, why is Jennifer so hard to write in every amen I do? Why is Jennifer so hard to write? Because there was no Jennifer back then. We didn't need to write Jennifer. So that is the obvious reason. So it's about context. And I like to end it with the fountain of youth is your legacy. And honestly, if you leave a legacy, then you live forever. And this is why I enjoy my particular tradition of calligraphy. Thank you.