this one is dedicated to you guys. ♪ [singing in tagalog] ♪ thank you guys so much.reat evening. thank you. >> one more time. great job. thank you so much. amazing. amazing. ok, before anything else, we want to thank our sponsors. pixel creations. thank you so much for being part of tonight's event. we just want to tell everyone to please just continue joining -- enjoying the food. i just want to say it was an honor and pleasure hosting tonight's event with you. thank you for having me. >> likewise, and until next time -- [speaking in foreign language] [applause] >> hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us this evening. my name is sandra. i'm part of the arab heritage month committee. we would like to welcome you to our annual arab heritage month celebration. on behalf of the mayor's office and the city of san francisco. >> hi, everyone. thank you for joining. we were technically supposed to start at 5:30, but we are a few minutes early. that's pretty good. we're usually late. thank you for coming. this is the third year we have initiated the cemenevent. this is

this one is dedicated to you guys. ♪ [singing in tagalog] ♪ thank you guys so much.reat evening. thank you. >> one more time. great job. thank you so much. amazing. amazing. ok, before anything else, we want to thank our sponsors. pixel creations. thank you so much for being part of tonight's event. we just want to tell everyone to please just continue joining -- enjoying the food. i just want to say it was an honor and pleasure hosting tonight's event with you. thank you for having me. >> likewise, and until next time -- [speaking in foreign language] [applause] >> i want to introduce to you and adopted filipino woman, the supervisor district 10, maria cohen. when al and kim got married, maliagood evening, and welcome. we have many things to celebrate. first, i wanted to acknowledge all the women who helped make this event happened. thank you so much. [applause] absolutely. we need to continue to strengthen the philippine the women's network, not just here in san francisco, but all across the country. this network is strong and robust. i am honored to be here as a f

i am not very good in my tagalog, but i wanted to sing this song for you guys tonight. thank you.use me if i'd love any words. here we go. -- excuse me if i flub any words. here we go. this one is dedicated to you guys. ♪

pretty much grasping... and, you know, there's an expression in the phillipines where we say (speakg tagalog), which literally translated is "you are hanging onto the blade of a knife to survive." and... which means that you'll basically do whatever you need to, and do anything, no matter how denigrating or terrible, just to survive. and so within the dialogue of the show, a lot of the ad libs were, "gi, get me out, please get me a visa, get me a passport, please..." >> hinojosa: because this is when the united states is pulling out of saigon. >> exactly. and so the gis just really want to be there for the sex. and they know they're all getting out. and the women are trying to hook themselves onto one of these men to get out of what they know will be a very terrible situation once the americans are gone and the communists take over. >> hinojosa: when you stand back now and you look at the experience of what happened, the controversy around miss saigon, do you think that things have gotten better for asian actors? >> i'd like to think so. i'd like to think so, that there's certainly more asia