lessons in life i learned from chess

i guess i should never regret living my early teenage life the “chess life” way.  i have chosen this instead of focusing on secondary education.  it made me loose a lot of things in school based awards (but not on one time acad comp like abs-cbn toys and rotary regionals) because of simply being not in the classroom.  things i previously regreted because i was entering UP with no background of supposed to be learned things from highschool (kasi we simply get the 2nd highest grade as a rule if ever we win in compet1t1ons and we always do.  specially in speed chess).

it was a very exciting experience for me.  controlling people’s emotions and playing with their minds instead of the board.  just a quick snap..snap..snap.. with a 3 move faster than my eye hand movement and then wasting my time analyzing other boards while the opponent analyzes ours with my time ticking off, quickly rushes blood to opponents nerves.hehehe

but i guess that explains a lot of questions posted to me by one person i had coffee with last week.  he was amazed with my posts at www.entrepreneur.com.ph/board and quickly asked if i was the monicker “accukix”.

he was asking about my childhood and my young life trying to analyze why i think this certain way, which to him is kinda opposite to most people.  i guess he was referring mostly to my business dealings and influences.  so this is chapter 1 of my future biography..whahahaha

lessons in business i learned from chess:

1.  “alekhine’s defense” this defensive move is generally considered as a counter attacking stance.  it let’s opponent try to “overextend” by thinking that they have control and killing off the base for the tempted overextension. tjis is transformed as a weak point for attack.  in business and in life, it is very useful.  people will tend to occupy a lot morethan they could handle especially if they don’t know the opponent.  it’s letting people feed in their need for dominance and pride and then excitingly counterattacking them to demise!  people controlling the center will bring in “pride” and false feeling of control to a lesser compet1t1on and then hitting them boom..boom..boom.. will make them fall harder with pride.  a trap of weakness in layman’s term.

2.  “accepting king’s gambit”. kings gambit is on the attacking stance with quick silver-like moves.  it kind of shocks opponents with complications and uneasiness for fast developments.  i usually do these when people know less of it and know little of my developments.  that’s why i always develop things in business to use these technique more with ease and quickness.  it also explains why i “block” my own shots..hehehe contrary to how a usual business person does business.  i create the demise of my own businesses to bring in a new and better project.  people who fear battling fire with fire will bring this technique to a better success ratio..hehehe

3.  ruy lopez opening..hehe i use this when i don’t need to risk.  i don’t risk when i only need a draw to win the tournament.  so in business, i try to dance in the tune if compet1t1on is of lesser quality because i know that they will “fabricate” their own failure.  and i just need to wait with patience.  “patience” is a thing not used by most entrepreneurs.  they don’t have patience to prefer ideas morethan money.  kaya they self-destruct with the “emotionality of money” and that’s why 9/10 cease to exist in business startups after 5 years.  so no need to risk with “attack” or “counterattack” because they will just self destruct..hehehe

as i look back, this person asking me is quite a respectable fella and have been employed for morethan 20 years just to notice that this is not what is needed by his family and listening quite intently to my young thought.  i guess i may have lost out not getting good grades on the 1st few semesters in UP but i learned life lessons that may sound older than my age.  and in this case.  its equivalent to 20 years of his life.  he was amazed that i was helping 50 families 20-25 as FTEs and 25 or so others as independent distributors in different business fields at my young age of 25.  i’m happy that our lord help me sail this blessing-in-disguise-way..thank you lord.

sa diin ka connected?

i often hear this question and at that instant my brain processes a gazillion times and then stalls.. stalling like your memory-deprived computers!whahahaha sa diin gd man? and how could i say my complexity in a simple one sentence blow? truly, im disillusioned. “ano gd man ako?” is a thing i’m having a problem of answering. i know “purist” will always hate me coz i just bump and stuck out my middle finger “gta-style!” (for non gamers its grand theft auto..the violently controversial pc-game used as a metaphor..hehehe

a. for some part im an “artist” with a following and high-valued, high turnover commisioned works (@130,000 on my second month) for doing something which could angrily nerve-wrack computer freaks and traditional artists!whahahaha what a statement. perhaps that’s how i really feel and that’s how i read them. these people will always look at my things with eye-piercing guilt. a guilt that they should have done this if they were without inhibitions earlier in life! its a question of what is and what was supposed to be done. (details will be posted on my future blog entries)

b. for some part im a “hacker” with 2 televised on prime time major attacks. only people who see this things will believe on this. but i stopped. thanks to crystal. pero traditional computer experts will again hate me for doing something without really knowing its technicalities and just using common sense and getting popular..hehehe (details will be posted on my future blog entries)

c. for some part im a “businessperson” with 20 or more people earning directly or indirectly a compensation for the work rendered. but “purist” in a business sense will always hate my ways in which i just show how to better do things and how to do things most people thought not doable without getting the most out of it. not even for a large amount of money. its just to perform a “statement” to the wide theater of real life! (details will be posted on my future blog entries)

d. for some part im a “feeling intellectual” being awarded by abs-cbn a toys award, winning a rotary sponsored regional academic contest, having a 99th percentile entrance exam in UP in math but not using it on the classroom is a pill hard to bite for most people.

e. for some part im a “gamer”. joining and winning some of the pc gaming competitions with monickers like “quicksilver”, “zerc_off” and the likes. and hacking my way thru winning unfairly sometimes.hehehe

f. for some part im a “chess lover”. i havent ate for hours just thinking of the board during highschool. i dreamed of living a chess life when i was younger and got a lot of offers from universities as a varisty chess player. but my coach hates me. to date i remain the only player in an integrated meet match to purposely draw a rook-up game by placing it in front of 3-pawns so that i would only tie for 1st and drop my coach on the process..hehehehe i’m the only player playing on the regional meet with a deciding game against negros occidental with a walkman on! coz its just cool to do!hehehehe chess purists will always hate me..hehehe infact, will throw the table anytime when i play..hehehe

g. for some cases, i feel like a “mind-controller”. having attributed such from our ultra-secret “psychological chess” training in HS..hehehe people will hate me because im never fair with always assymetric information on the favorable side even in love.. my gf once cried for using the phreak-tool to listen in on phone conversations..hehehe

h. for some part i’m a “feeling inventor” not being able to fail in doing a thing where we don’t have any background. i feel specially challenged when people don’t believe that it is doable..hehehe like this cellphone bluetooth control of a powerpoint presentation on our MA to enable danicing on the floor on reports is near completion..hehehe when my parents say nga “ano naman na nga binuang toto ang ginapaubra mo sa tinawo mo”.. i laugh deep inside..hehehe

i. sometime i feel like a “good leader”. in which my team will jump to any challenge and war to support me even on the weirdest of idea. i know that they are esteemed when we do something new..hehehe i don’t even cross-check their records and they alone will auto-correct when someone on the team is astray or will auto-eject such..hehehe i even pay things on a blank check with my signature on and the amount and “pay-to” spaces left blank when i entrust it to them and nothing goes wrong..hehehe

j. i feel like a “shifter” in a sense that i will appear very differently and on far planes to people. i appear as the “pinkasabad nga tawo nga nakilala nila to some people” and a mear snob and introvert to some..hehehe this is perfectly useful in a micro-business environment.

so to answer “diin ka connected?” is such a dillema since most people expect an answer like “i have a water, gaming, vending, arts, satellite tv business” where i just consider being a business person as one part of myself. so to simplify i would like to answer “im your untypical kid which could not fit in in boxes of connections..”hehehe

a choice

crossroads.  which way should i take?

each day it continually becomes a more pressure packed choice.  should i again choose my love for entrepreneurship versus schooling?  one of the driving forces of my taking up of a master’s degree this year is my feeling of not hiking up to my potentials in school. 

in highschool, i chose several of my activities versus physically being in a classroom.  i chose competition chess morethan anything.  we were made by our coach to jog at 6 in the morning at the largest football field i saw (our town’s!whahaha), we were served food in our training area while seeing our classmates across the hallway eating their hearts out making tea-time with their school books, we were exempted from the dreaded stuff like CAT and community volunteer projects and we were trained psychological chess by one of the best chess teach i ever knew (we sometimes play to control their emotions morethan control the logicality of the game).  I also chose academic competitions so again i was exempted for weeks of class attendance because of this.  competed and awarded abs-cbn iloilo’s toys award, flared up the regional rotary club academic excellence competition (ate whole the bragging bacolodnons coz it was iloilo studs 1st time to join the competition.  5 on 5 and it was first 6 iloilo!hehehehe).  i also joined national boy scout jamborees (again exempted in class attendance..hehehe) and bring out more money in the process by playing speed chess in the other tents during the evenings..hehehe.  all in all i was out roughly 2 months of my graduating year.

it resulted in my poor and flunking grades in the general education subjects of college life because i can’t simply relate to something i got the equivalent highest score in HS without attendance and learning.  during the start of our specialized subjects for our course things ran quite differently.  it was our first on-base try in our accounting subjects, BA 99.1 Introduction to Accounting.  all are well and good excited of it and most are eagerly studying.  during that time i signed in the class cards the first day and has been absent 12 straight meetings until the 1st Long Exam.  classmates were complaining about our very strict professor, prof. gianina cainglet the accounting academic head at that time.  hambal ni GV pirmi sila ginasabon kung ma late.  paano na lang ako wala gaatend!whahahaha  i was not attending coz i opened my desktop publishing business at that time and i was pressured of the small loan that the PC suppliers and my Aunt gave me.  i did my best to learn things at the outset of the business in able to have a good and fast transition to decentralizing management.  i was crying because of the pressures of it as i can recall.  i was also sad with an emotional failure at that time.  i thought of quitting school.  but in the mix exam of all sections, i took the test.  surprisingly, i got the highest score (almost perfect i guess) and most of my classmates hardly ever know that i was on their class (its supposed to be an automatic DRP grade after an equivalent of 6 absences, 3 lates = 1 absent).  my classmates jokingly complained to our terror teacher why pinapagalitan sila kung ma late pero hindi ako hindi nilalaglag sa clase for absences.

i explained to my teacher the real situation and she advised that i shift to marketing even if i had the highest grade in our class without attending and making my own process sa blue book.  for she saw my love for entrepreneurship.  she saw that i was not for it just for the money but in seeing entrepreneuring ideas come to life.  because of these unproven capacities i thought na since stable na ang micro biz projects ko i can regain things i left in the past.

my plan to transcend my projects to a national significance after graduating master’s may come early.  offers are being faxed from all sm malls and a feeling of a special preferrence is given by SM’s top management.  i was informed that initial talks for my AccuDish Satellite TV is scheduled tommorow (in only took 1 week for this step when it took 2 months for my AccuMosaic.  this i guess is a function of respect).  slowly all the 4 installments of my AccuVentures projects are slowly getting in ahead of projections.  after all are in in Iloilo next na yung easier replication in all sm malls.

so what will i choose again?  entrepreneurship or schooling?  technically i wouldn’t need much of this skills since i have a future wife that is great with these things in a corporate setting.  being offered the chief accountant position at ORMAT for 85,000 at age 25 couldn’t be a better exclamation.  grad school is more for the release of my historical past nightmares than something i would actually need (errr..correction.  things i presume i wouldn’t need because of having a crystal..hehehe)

if you were me what would you do?