Ang Kwento ni Ineng

When I was working in Manila, far from home, my parents would call me with phone questions. How do I make the letters bigger? Why did the sound disappear? Anak, what is this message asking for?

"I'll teach you when I get home," I always said. Then I'd get home, and we'd talk about everything else, and I'd forget. Again.

One night, my mom and I spent an entire video call canceling a subscription she never meant to sign up for. She kept saying sorry — as if she'd done something wrong. She hadn't. No one had ever sat down and shown her. The person who was supposed to was me, and I was always busy, always far, always "next time."

If you've ever gotten that call — "Anak, paano ba ito?" — while you were at work, in another city, in another country… you know the feeling.

They wait all day to ask us one small question, because they don't want to disturb us. And we answer in thirty rushed seconds, because we're in the middle of something. Neither side says what they really mean.

So I built Ineng — a patient helper that lives on their phone. It answers the questions they're shy to keep asking, in Tagalog, in big letters, as many times as they need. It never sighs. It never says "diba tinuro ko na 'yan?" It's the patience I wish I'd had, available at three in the afternoon on a Tuesday when I'm in a meeting and Mama is staring at a screen she doesn't trust.

And the name? My family calls me Ineng. I couldn't always be there to answer — so I made an Ineng who always can.

— Abi