Language | The Adobo Chronicles

Daly City, California – The Daly City Police Department was deluged with calls Friday night from frightened local residents who reported seeing Aswang in their neighborhood. Twitter almost crashed, as did Verizon wireless, due to thousands taking to social media and smart phone texting to warn their friends and relatives about the sighting.

Aswang is a mythical character described as an evil creature that preys on fetuses. According to Philippine folklore, the Aswang lives like any other normal human being during the day but transforms into a wicked being at night in its constant search for pregnant women.

Daly City is home to a diverse population of about 100,000 people, a third of whom are Filipino.

After investigating the reports and tracing the origins of the viral tweets and text messages, the Police Department confirmed the sighting. The Aswang was seen between 9 and 10 pm Friday on NBC’s episode of ‘Grimm,” courtesy of Lt. Wu, played by Filipino American actor Reggie Lee.

New York, NY – With Super Bowl XLVIII just days away, the country’s leading poll organization, The Gallup Poll, released a new survey that showed Americans can’t find Yemen on the world map. But that was not the most revealing result of the new poll. Part Two of the poll showed that Americans — football fans in particular — can’t count in Roman numerals.

There was only one multiple-choice question on the second part of the survey: “Which of the following Arabic numerals correspond to the Roman numerals XLVIII ?” The choices were 28, 38, 48, 58 , 68, and “none of the above.”

Thirty percent of respondents answered 28; twenty five percent answered 38; fifteen percent answered 68, and ten percent answered 58. Only 5% answered 48 which was the correct answer. The remaining fifteen percent answered “none of the above” because they didn’t know that the numbers 0123456789 were called “Arabic”numerals. They thought that Arabic numerals referred to the special characters used in Yemen and the rest of the Arab world.

Upon learning of the poll results, the National Football League board of governors met in an emergency session to unanimously approve a resolution to change next year’s official Super Bowl name to “Super Bowl 49.”