I was an eight-year old kid in the mid-1990s.
I grew up in the southern Philippines.
At that age, you are young enough to be oblivious
about what society expects from each of us,
but old enough to be aware of what's going on around you.
We lived in a one-bedroom house,
all five of us.
Our house was amongst clusters of houses
made mostly of wood and corrugated metal sheets.
These houses were built very close to each other,
along unpaved roads.
There was little to no expectation of privacy.
Whenever an argument broke out next door,
you heard it all.
Or, if there was a little something something going on
(Laughter)
you would probably hear that too.
Like any other kid, I learned what a family looked like.
It was a man, a woman, plus a child or children.
But I also learned it wasn't always that way.
There were other combinations that worked just as well.
There was this family of three who lived down the street.