Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
May 14 – 18 Ricco-Renzo Gallery
May 21 – 25 Ricco-Renzo Gallery
May 28 – June 1 SM Southmall
June 4 – 8 SM Marikina
June 11 – 15 SM Batangas
June 18 – 22 SM Manila
June 25 – 29 SM Taytay
July 2 – 6 SM Clark
July 19 – 23 SM Megamall
Paradiso
I get myself invited to open houses – of summer houses – and I drag him with me.
For some reason, summer houses appeal to me. I tried to enter an exclusive one once and I was turned away (not a member, no invitation from a member, no appointment to go in – how was I supposed to know it was that exclusive?). And maybe that is where the appeal lies – it is so hard to get in (well, okay, that one time, but memories of experiences sometimes stick around longer than they are wanted).
Hard to get in but also hard to keep one. But that is another story.
Summer houses in exclusive enclaves. They are the playground of the rich, and when you own one, it means you have earned the right to squander money away – and squander you will because although you paid an arm and a leg for it, it is a place where you will stay maybe only 1 or 2 months in a year.
But like I said, I like them. So yesterday, we went again to another one – in Anvaya Cove which is off the coast of Bataan, very near Subic Bay.
To what end... labor?
Some of us make it our life’s mission to get something, the more obvious of it are material things – money, jewelry, real estate, a way of life.
And then we make a showcase of what we have. We parade that we have so much – like the jewelry and Louis Vuittons in the arms of women, parties in our lavish homes or summer houses, feeding ourselves in expensive restaurants, shopping.
Then the story turns something short of horrible.
Thank You
To think that YouWantToBeRich started as just a requirement to get a certificate in MavenSecrets, a professional blogging and internet marketing education seminar that I attended in 2009.
I did not know that it would change my life and give it colors that I never knew existed, or give me opportunities for self-expression and advocacy in a niche that I was just getting really interested in at that time.
At first, I thought I would go into food and travel because like Anton’s OurAwesomePlanet, it was my passion. I even asked hubby to buy me a camera to herald my entry into the blogosphere via a food and travel blog.
But I am glad I went down the path of learning about money and people and their money idiosyncracies (especially my own and my family’s). It felt good to chronicle this journey and to look back and learn from it again.
Harvest Time
One year. That was how long my relationship with the stock market has been. But there was a pre-story, which was training, lots of training, before I found the heart to jump in and play for real.
And to jump out too. But first things first.
Flashback to 2008. Giddy and excited and with fake money at hand, I started with the online stock exchange (it offered a practice account). Prepped by my financial planner, pumped up with some reading I had done here and there and some monitoring of the market, I found I gained some fake USD$600 in a few months. But I since I was in no real danger of getting poor or rich, I soon found myself bored. The market bottomed out too, wiping my gains, but ironically, it was also the perfect time to get in for real, to play for real.
Dawning of a New Day
My mind was filled with doomsday scenarios. After all, it is election time in present day Philippines. It is the first automated voting in the country, which was precipitated by calls for manual counting – the PCOS (precinct count optical scan) machines from Smartmatic were conking out, the mock elections (the rehearsals) did not go as expected, the practice votes were not counted accurately – and then there was the usual election fare – mud slinging, vote buying, violence.
The election bug bit long and it bit hard, raising the temperature of the country to fever pitch.