proverbs 15:22

i was touched by this passage: “plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed”the “consultative council” thing that i have been practicing for years was amazing to see in a bible’s passage. its included in bro. pio español’s talk on the kerygma feast last feb 7. the talk was about “the key to winning every race”. perhaps it is true. this has been my secret for not loosing a dime in business. i talk to a lot of people on critical decisions without hesistancy. most of them thinks that i’m better to decide on my own and that their opinion is of less value (since most are not entrepreneurs). if only they knew, that i really draw ideas from them and mix it.  even if i don’t follow all of their ideas perfectly, its helpful..hehehe

i talk to people coming from the streets, from people where i strucked a 2 hour conversation out of nowhere (most of the times not remebering their names), to people from the academe, to corporate folks, to government people, to inventors, to artists, to pedicab drivers, to experienced entrepreneurs, to old people (which i like talking because of timely wisdom), to kidnappers even, to our parish priest, to some crushes here and there and to my key people. this process offers a diverse view of things on differents social, political and just plain life setting! this diverse view of things taken piece-wise will be anything but utterly useless. but if mixed together with an open mind you would consider things that were not done before.

something quite magical. something excitingly genius. some idea that’s as pure and complicated as love..hehehe perhaps when people ask, where did you get all these new business concepts? im answering “we developed it”. ofcourse its the only thing we did, build on and develop to what would have been useless singular ideas. i guess most of the heralded genius concepts are found on the streets and the bible. its not mostly from white-collar corporate desks..hehehe and i guess even my most wildly-creative marketing concepts are influenced by the bible..its seeing outside the box of normalism!whahahaha what a word..

let me give an example, a pedicab driver whom i talked wants water to be priced low for him to afford it for his family (market demand), an entrepreneur friend says that its impossible for a lot of costs are involved (cost acctg), an electronics enthusiast was excited about automating magnetic valves but is blank on how to use it (the cost controller), an established eccentric inventor friend can draw up the plan for the challenge’s sake but do not know how to sell (technical design), an automation engineer friend who don’t have a break to be popular wants to use a PLC-SMS controller (R&D), another one has capital but only knows typical busnesses bound to lose (financial)..hehehe what i did is just add a little of improvements in the engineering design, management of product development and aesthetics and drawing up a marketing plan and voila! its something..waaaaaaaaaaah!hehehe

ok. so enough for that..where is the moral of the story? in our present day society which pushes us to specialize with higher education it kind of veers away from “knowledge enlargement” needed in business and life in general. we are made to be good “technicians”, specialist in a sense (even on office work) for us not to own our time to develop a compendium of ideas..or simply not to have the time to have coffee and pasta with these diverse friends at our time..hehehe because of the above paragraph, we tend to be proud and not even consider talking to a lowly takatak boy. because “what would we get from them?” our specialist mind thinks..hehe “im more intelligent than a takatak boy so as for him to not deserve even a minute of my time”.

to cut the story short, to have success in life is to humbly ask for advices from a mix of people contrary to what our white-collar success pushes us not to believe. its to listen and ask. plain and simple.hehehe and not complain and wish for something in the sky!

fearfully excited!

for the past days i was afraid and excited!

i was afraid that i can’t handle this oppurtunity that god beyond comprehension allowed me to have and i was excited that this might just be the oppurtunity that god provided to me to afford a decent family life.  this oppurtunity is sm prime holdings approval of my 4-year on process concept profile!  a satellite tv office inside sm malls.  im afraid that i can’t handle the 10,000 subscribers of panay and the 400 or so being added each month.  im afraid that i can’t handle the financial requirements of the subscriptions (10,000 x 690 subscription/month) is 6.9M.  AccuDish will earn 10% from that. because of the amazement of dream satellite tv’s top execs of our company breaking into the sm mall fortress that had been eluding them for years (for non provincial residing people, this is the best biz site in a provincial setting) they offered us from 4,000 margin per new installation at a minimum.  an out of sm dealership can handle 100 new subscriptions a month at 2000 margin per new installation.  i’m realistically expecting at least this number when the ship runs calm.  and mind that each time we service non-warrantied subscribers from other dealers we could charge 1,000 at a minimum.  im expecting 10% of the market on the minimum, 60% on the maximum and a likely 25-30% on the average.

the above paragraph is my fear.  i fear that i have most of the pieces of this puzzle. i have time and tested experience on satellite systems (even on hacking the firmwares), i have a long-trained experienced core staff for this, i have the support of dream’s top execs because of amazement, i have the support of sm prime because of our accumosaic concept and being bullish, brilliant in a product innovation sense and young! as of now, i have only the amount to support 1 day of inventory requirement and initial development of site.  even if dream would provide me beyond comprehensible credit lines because of long relationships and track record, i am very fearful!

now, where’s the excitement part? i was excited to tell her after that intro that maybe this is the thing that could help us afford to have a decent family life. a respectable duty for our future kids and the likes.  but i was dismayed the past week, it can’t even reach to the above paragraphs.  she says “dali lang, busy gd.” and then cuts. that’s 12mn! i know that sgv is that squeezingly efficient with their personnel so i understood continously.  but as the days past by all of my positivist thoughts are slowly loosing morale.  so this evening i forced the issue and told her my piece.  we ended up arguing about time and attention because she would want the topic cutted as fast as possible (maybe because of work pressure that i still understand). i never had the chance to tell her how excited i am to start a family with her.  well maybe its not meant to be.  i’m sad.  but i never have the guilt feelings.  i never felt i did anything wrong.  unlike the previous instances where i’m fabricating problems because i may have been more interested with business, some women or some other stuff. 

i still respect her. this is the consequence of loving a successful person.  but all i wanted was for her to listen without arguing about petty things for 10 minutes to maybe feel happier amidst pressure cooker situations! just listen and nothing else! am i too selfish to continually call for 20 or more times the previous week for a solemn 10 minutes?

daw kasala.

decongesting unemployment

let us first treat the words as separate concepts.

decongestion (errr…not checking the dic again and giving my own..whahaha) is giving a lee-way to a very tight situation.  look at my newly uploaded pic where my nose was decongested with our regular almost 4-inch cotton buds (it was eye poppingly painful!whaaaaaaaaaa).  and imagine that the doctor enticed me that it feels like nothing (what a heck!).  when he prepared the 18-inch flexible laryngoscopy camera i was saying to myself are you sure what your going into rj (this is just a simple cough rj right?)?

slowly the snakelike thing entered the insides of my nose and made a “u” turn to enter my mouth (i was tearing with pain at that moment).  when he further pushed thru my throat to see my larynx (i shouted and coughed..coughing while that “thing” was inside my oral self!whahahaha).

let’s define the other word..unemployment.  it is a very far reaching topic than what most of us in the educated metro thinks.  its not only seeing our college classmates not being employed (yet still subsidized by their parents) and not only usual UP folks jumping in and out a job wishing a deserving job!  in a more graphic manner, it is the unavailability of the local government and local industries to support a living for the regular barrio folk.

and even if decongesting my nose to reach the larynx was such a painful and hard experience, this “unemployment” is in the same way a more painful and hard experience for our society.  for me, it erases the respectability of the “honorable-prefix” of our politicians because we are ineffective as a society if we become great while leaving a lot of people in the countryside on the “unemployment quick sand”.

i really feel disheartened hearing that what unemployed people want is only a 300 peso/week job to support their families yet no one can give it to them on a more stable frequency.  it is largely dependent on the seasonal variations of our economy.  they go from people to people just to ask for “jobs” or “food” (and not even money!).  from planting rice, to tilling the soil, to harvesting palay, to being a helper in a construction, to odd jobs here and there, to being a sex-provider of the town-plazas at night (receiving a 20-peso “janitorial fee” from the town gays or fish traders), to being an ingenious theif (most nang popular “illonggo group” are from nearby towns)!

i can not simply blame them..in fact, if i’m in that predicament with my wife crying seeing our son squeeze sa “gutom”, i might do any of the things above.  people can not simply say, magtrabaho ka!  kasi they are!  i can not really imagine how 300 pesos per week is budgeted by the lucky ones who get a 2-month milling job in the rice mills (and it just crushes me thinking of the unlucky ones who don’t).  parang hindi na ako pwede kumain nang steak sa pancake house when i want to kasi i just imagine that it’s a week of substinence to a family of 4 and isang kain ko lang!

kaya when someone from the metro goes to a town and start asking questions relating to minimum wage provided by the local employers and how is it different with their “city standards”, people emphatize the local employers.  puro naman “dada” yung intellectuals na yan at wala naman maitulong sa local unemployment scene as they say.  and the minimum wage earners of the city can never have a larger “disposable income” than the underpayed countryside employees (considering travel expense and/or billeting expense).

i feel really blessed, feeling the true concern of my people when i get a little sick (a simple cough for this matter).  parang i feel the sincerity and the concern (pinapagalitan na nila ako dahil hindi matigas yung ulo na hindi magpagamot!).  maybe because in my own little way i decongested “life” to them (offering at times twice, thrice or even four times the regular town rate with regularity).  with these, i will still continue employing the rejects of corporate philippines and help them dream of things not thought by most “highly graded morons”.  parang even if i don’t earn much, the fulfillment that this gives makes me see life in a brand new light!

continually use me dear lord to show your love to people in the countryside.  i challenge people, stop talking and start helping people in the countryside with employment (and not just 1 time give-aways) for a better philippines!