{"id":4264,"date":"2018-04-24T17:22:55","date_gmt":"2018-04-24T09:22:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/globalonerealtycorp.com\/wp1202\/?p=4264"},"modified":"2018-04-24T17:22:55","modified_gmt":"2018-04-24T09:22:55","slug":"life-is-a-lesson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalonerealtycorp.com\/wp1202\/life-is-a-lesson\/","title":{"rendered":"Life is a lesson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Life:<\/strong>\u00a0Businesswoman Merci Poblador Padolina of Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija is the seventh of eight children of a single mother. Back then, the nine of them \u201clived in the smallest house on the street.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe only had a\u00a0poso<\/em>\u00a0for our water supply so I had to fetch drinking water from a neighbor\u2019s house,\u201d recalls Merci of her childhood. \u201cNakikinood din kami ng\u00a0<\/em>TV\u00a0sa kapitbahay<\/em>\u00a0(We could only watch TV in our neighbors\u2019 homes).\u201d<\/p>\n

The cash-strapped siblings thus studied hard, enabling most of them to earn scholarships. After one graduated, he or she would send the younger ones to school, till all the siblings earned a degree. Eventually,\u00a0 one sibling became an accountant, the other a pilot, the other a school superintendent. Two became nurses, and still another a civil engineer like Merci herself. Growing up, Merci augmented her allowance by selling greeting cards because she gave her primary\u00a0baon<\/em>\u00a0to her youngest sister, whom she was very protective of.<\/p>\n

After she passed the board exams, Merci\u00a0 was hired as an estimator in the City Engineer\u2019s Office. On the side, she would tutor high school students in Math, which was her expertise.\u00a0 One of her students was the child of a real estate developer who asked Merci to oversee the construction of one of his subdivisions. From scratch.<\/p>\n

Merci took to the job like fish to water. The secret to her success was that she worked hard to make herself indispensable to her boss. \u201cNakuha sa sipag<\/em>\u00a0(I nailed it with hard work),\u201d she discloses. \u201cBecause of my hard work, I was able to run the projects efficiently. They didn\u2019t know what to do without me.\u201d During the \u201880s, she recalls, she was already earning P20,000+++ a month, much of which she saved.\u00a0 Eventually, she managed several projects till she decided to set up her own construction firm, which today handles multimillion accounts.<\/p>\n

Her children are following her footsteps: one is an engineer, another is about to graduate from a course in civil engineering and the other is taking up architecture. Because of their mother\u2019s hard work, they don\u2019t need to augment their allowance by selling greeting cards on the side.<\/p>\n

When one of them brought his classmates to their home in Nueva Ecija, one guest remarked, \u201cI thought you were bringing us to your home, not to a resort.\u201d<\/p>\n

And with a grateful smile, Merci\u2019s son told his classmate, \u201cThis is our home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lesson:<\/strong>\u00a0Education is a game changer, and hard work is an enabler<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Life: Unlike Merci, former BPI president\u00a0Gigi Montinola<\/strong>\u00a0was born privileged. During a recent trip to Boracay, I saw how being \u201cprivileged\u201d doesn\u2019t automatically mean being \u201centitled\u201d in Gigi\u2019s unique case.<\/p>\n

My family and I bumped into Gigi in Boracay. After dinner, we decided to explore the island and have a nightcap at a hilltop resort at the opposite end of the island. At the time we set out for the nightcap we saw a tricycle, a rundown one that could\u00a0 take five passengers, and Gigi hailed it. We traveled over the dusty, sometimes bumpy main road parallel to the beach and were enjoying the wind on our faces when the driver suddenly stopped because one of his tires was\u00a0malambot<\/em>\u00a0(soft). The driver then asked one of the male passengers to ride behind him on the motorcycle to ease the pressure on the tire (no, we weren\u2019t that heavy!). Then after another five-minute drive, the tricycle stopped again, at a vulcanizing shop this time.<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay\u00a0lang yan<\/em>,\u201d Gigi told the driver after the second\u00a0averia<\/em>\u00a0(breakdown). Then he told us, \u201cYou could see that he is working hard.\u00a0Kawawa naman<\/em>.\u201d Not once did I hear Gigi say, \u201cNakakainis naman<\/em>\u00a0(It\u2019s annoying).\u201d Perhaps, he knew the trike driver was going to lose his means of livelihood with the closure of Boracay on April 26. Or perhaps, as his Ateneo education ingrained in him, Gigi strived to be a \u201cman for others.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, we were on our way to the hilltop resort and midway up our climb to the resort\u2019s lobby,\u00a0Manong<\/em>\u00a0Driver stopped again and asked us to get off his trike and just meet him at the top of the road because the rinky-dink couldn\u2019t muster enough power to forge on. So, you could imagine the four of us walking up the hill and working up a sweat in our island\u2019s best attire. Finally, we caught up with\u00a0Manong<\/em>\u00a0Driver after having climbed what seemed like a mountain for our rendezvous with the rinky-dink.<\/p>\n

\u201cSorry\u00a0po, nasa<\/em>\u00a0reserve\u00a0na kasi ang gasolina kaya wala ng buwelo\u00a0<\/em>(Sorry, our gasoline is already on reserve supply),\u201d he scratched his head. My foot! But instead of berating the driver for taking on passengers despite his trike\u2019s lack of roadworthiness, Gigi said, \u201cOkay\u00a0lang yan<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Again, he turned to us and said, \u201cHe is working hard after all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gigi\u2019s demeanor that night humbled me, because I myself would have lectured\u00a0Manong<\/em>\u00a0Driver about making sure his tricycle was ready to take on passengers for the steep price of P250. I know I had a valid point, but I guess, seeing that there was nothing the driver could do but scratch his head at the moment, Gigi simply decided to treat the whole escapade as \u201can adventure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay\u00a0lang yan<\/em>,\u201d he repeated as he paid the driver the full fare, and off we went to our nightcap without further surprises.<\/p>\n

Lesson:<\/strong>\u00a0When the going gets rough, put yourself in the driver\u2019s place and say to yourself, \u201cOkay lang yan.\u201d Like a true man for others.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Life:<\/strong>\u00a0The first two lessons above trained the light on what is good in people. But this next story shows what isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

One of my officemates rode an air-conditioned bus at around 9 p.m. on a Saturday en route to a mall on EDSA. She took a seat, which could accommodate three, on a row midway inside the bus. While she was texting a message to the person she was supposed to meet, a man in his thirties made his way to the window seat. No sooner had he settled down when another passenger with a big backpack tried to get into the row. My officemate stood up to let him in, but instead he pushed her to the middle seat. Sandwiched, she was helpless when the man on the window seat poked a knife to her side and the man on the aisle seat cocked a gun to her other side. They took her phone, then her wallet. My officemate begged one of the holdup men to spare her IDs, so he threw her wallet to the floor. One man held\u00a0 her neck down. He told her in a menacing tone, \u201cHuwag kang sisigaw kung hindi babarilin ka namin<\/em>\u00a0(Don\u2019t shout or we will shoot you).\u201d My officemate was shaking like a leaf, and after the men alighted she started sobbing. It was only then that the conductor approached her, escorted her to the mall where the sympathetic guards let her use a phone to call her parents.<\/p>\n

My officemate said no one among the passengers noticed what was going on in her row, or bothered to do anything if they did, perhaps out of fear. She also wonders if the conductor was part of the act.<\/p>\n

At any rate, she says the moral of the story is: \u201cBe vigilant always and listen to your mother.\u201d Apparently, my officemate\u2019s mother tried to stop her from going out at 9 p.m. but she felt she was old enough to do so.<\/p>\n

Lesson:<\/strong>\u00a0One is never too old to be a victim.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more >>\u00a0https:\/\/www.philstar.com\/other-sections\/newsmakers\/2018\/04\/24\/1808703\/life-lesson#umkwsmUKqWPLeLEB.99<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Life:\u00a0Businesswoman Merci Poblador Padolina of Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija is the seventh of eight children of a single mother. Back then, the nine of them \u201clived in the smallest house on the street.\u201d \u201cWe only had a\u00a0poso\u00a0for our water supply so I had to fetch drinking water from a neighbor\u2019s house,\u201d[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4267,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[325,337,340,338,336,288,339],"class_list":["post-4264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-business","tag-businesswoman","tag-journey","tag-lesson","tag-life","tag-real-estate","tag-success"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalonerealtycorp.com\/wp1202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalonerealtycorp.com\/wp1202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalonerealtycorp.com\/wp1202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalonerealtycorp.com\/wp1202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalonerealtycorp.com\/wp1202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalonerealtycorp.com\/wp1202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalonerealtycorp.com\/wp1202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalonerealtycorp.com\/wp1202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalonerealtycorp.com\/wp1202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalonerealtycorp.com\/wp1202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}