Book Series: 27th MOMENT: Vietcong strategy, Angelina Jolie and Eatery

27th MOMENT: Vietcong strategy, Angelina Jolie and Eatery

Vietcong war strategy:

While working in Vietnam I had the chance of getting into some friendly chat with our beneficiaries who were former Vietcong guerrillas. I asked them about their battle strategies. They said that if they were engaged in fighting under heavy shelling of cannons or mortars instead of running away, they advance towards the big guns. There is safety under the shells! ------------------------ Angelina Jolie in Anchor Wat: When you go to Cambodia don’t forget to visit Angkor Wat and look for the place where the film Tomb Raiders was shot. You can still smell the perfume of Angelina Jolie. It is similar to the smell of burning candles! ------------------------ Naming an eatery: Our TESDA driver in Region 5 brought news to me one day. “Sir there is a new restaurant in Naga”. I asked for the name and he told me “Cemetery”. I checked again and he said it is really “Cemetery”. I became curios so I asked him to drive me downtown after office hour. When we reached the place, I discovered that there was really a new restaurant – the name was “Sim Eatery”! ------------------------ Simple profit making: And then there is Fermin who just came back to the village with his brand-new Mercedes Benz. Knowing that Fermin never finished elementary his friends asked why he became so rich. Fermin told everybody – “I joined an entrepreneurship development training workshop run by a guy named Rudy Baldemor. After the training I got involved in buy and sell. I learned that to make profit you just multiply the cost of the good you bought with the profit margin that you want, and bingo you will make money.” So, his village friends asked him to explain how to do it. “It’s simple, it’s just like this. When you buy P10 worth of good and you want to make 5% profit, you just multiply P10 by 5 and you sell it for P50”. ------------------------ Guardians of the 7 lakes and 7 waterfalls: the T’bolis of Lake Sebu: I and my former project staff in Mindanao organized an NGO just to keep us in touch after our project for the MNLF ended. We called it Journey to Peace through Education and Development, or Journey Philippines. One of our projects was called GLAD, or Guardians of the Lake for Advancement and Development, a Bridging Scholarship program for poor children of Tiboli’s, the indigenous peoples in Lake Sebu, South Cotabato. ------------------------- We started with 4 high school students. After a year we met with the village elders who told us that our project was wrong because the problem was very few children were graduating from elementary, hence we will ultimately have no high school scholars to assist. So, we went backward with 74 young elementary scholars. We were able to graduate some until they were only 14 left. We called the project bridging because our philosophy was not to deprive the parents with the authority over the education of their children - when they start their secondary education. ------------------------ The worst tool that man has ever invented is the mirror – it never lies! It is the best gift to give to Toxic Friends! ------------------------ The best strategy of senior citizens in befriending young ladies is giving or loading a cell phone. ------------------------ Except for Hindus who have many kinds of Gods, all the big religions, or people of the Book, believe that there is only one God. I think the misunderstanding is only on His name! ------------------------ It is difficult to teach village people entrepreneurship. They interpret profit as cost of labor. In fact, sometimes they do not want to make profit from their co-villagers at all. ------------------------ I was wondering how we can improve the lives of small entrepreneurs if, whenever we buy their goods, we keep on bargaining to the point that they are almost always forced to borrow money for their fare to go back home! ------------------------ A bad lesson on advertising; There is a restaurant in Naga city that displays a sign “free sack of rice tomorrow” - very few customers come to eat. They wait for tomorrow! ---------------------- Before my laboratory tests after my car accident I thought Pipino (cucumber) is only for removing eye bags or age lines of women; and garlic is only to add flavor to foods or to drive away vampires. Now I am expert at making Pipino salad and my morning scrambled eggs looks like a garlic pizza! ----------------------- Community-based Enterprise: The technical definition of “community-based enterprise” is; they are informal profit-oriented economic activities found in between livelihood and microenterprise. But the easiest way to define it during training is that they are enterprises located in the communities! ------------------------ During the two- and one-half months under home quarantine due to COVID my only stress reliever were 4 dogs: Jack the Keeper, Panda, Panot and Pongit. They kept me company in lieu of the Red Hawk (car) and Black Panther (motorbike) which became inutile for not being used out of the house. But at least I become productive in developing online home-based practical tools in entrepreneurship and business management for people who, liked me were also Lockdowned by the coronavirus. -------------------------