Chapter One: Our JOB (Journey Of the Broke)

Fely and I were both engineers. We were both the first engineers in our respective family. We were both high flyers in Elementary, High School and College. Fely graduated Valedictorian in Elementary and is consistent honor student in High School, while I am always in the Top 5 of the class and obtained my Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering on a Scholarship Grant by the National State Scholarship of the Philippine Government. All the academic preparations are motivated by a dream of making it good in school and landing on a good job. The usual dream of parents in our period is for us to complete our education so we can land a good job in a company. Work on the company we get into and retire in it.

After my graduation, I was taken in as an Instructor in the Mechanical Engineering Department of Adamson University where I finished my engineering. For three years, I was in the academe and as fate would have it, this university is where Fely and I would meet and fall in love.

My first taste of an industry exposure is at Intel Philippines. It was the largest semiconductor manufacturing company at that time I was employed. After two years in that company, Fely also joined the company. We were not yet married at that time. We both enjoyed good paying job. We then got married and were happy to have our combined income to be more than we need. We also had the opportunity to be assigned for an overseas training. We were very good in what we do and got ourselves go up the corporate ladder. So who needs to get into business at this state?

Fely stayed on with Intel and completed about 25 years of faithful service. I moved from Intel to Amkor to Orient Semicon. For many years, we enjoyed our career growth and our pay increase. We had major wins and achievements in our job that hypnotized us to believe that our jobs can bring us to our comfortable retirement